Dick Van Dyke on Blu Ray - What are the Chances

So far, it seems like two requirements of a TV show to end up on Blu-Ray are to be either a current popular TV Show (Mad Men, Modern Family, etc.) or a popular science fiction-related show (TZ, Star Trek, The Prisoner). Vintage black and white sitcoms may be one of the last of the groups of shows to make it to blu-ray.

If they're going to start doing this with any classic sitcom it would likely be I Love Lucy.

I have wondered about Dick Van Dyke on blu-ray, as well as I Love Lucy and Andy Griffith. Of the three, Dick Van Dyke appears to have the best video so it would seem like it would be a leading candidate. However, I Love Lucy is so universally loved and historically significant, it would probably be the first.

 

If Dick Van Dyke did get a Blu-ray release, I would certainly pick it up.

I'd like to be optimistic about the BR-to-classic TV release trend but I haven't seen that happen outside of the few shows that have been mentioned earlier. BR's been out there for a while and we're not seeing an increase of the older show's releases in that format. Those predictions have been made before and it's not yet begun to become evident. MAybe '12 will be the breakout year for this trend. We'll see how that goes.

When/if that begins to increase, I'll look at entering the BR scene.

Agreed.

 

However, CBS/P continues to release Lucy's series, first, I Love Lucy, then the hourly Luci-Desi Comedy Hour (S 7-9), and now appear to be headed toward finishing The Lucy Show. So, if CBS/P did a classic TV Blu-ray release, I Love Lucy would probably have the best chance from them if they decide to do any at all.

 

I am glad Image did such a good job with the Dick Van Dyke Show and I hope that makes it easier for them to do a Blu-ray release.

The issue, ultimately, is the image quality of these shows. Can any decades-old sitcom, recorded on videotape, ever look good enough for a Blu-ray release ?

Dick Van Dyke and all the Lucy series were shot on film. However, I think the shows shot with one camera, movie-style, like Twilight Zone (which is out on Blu-ray) would benefit the most. The previously mentioned shows were all shot with multiple cameras. To me they suffer from a stagey look, and telephoto lens looking close-ups, as compared to a one-camera show like Andy Griffith. They are also usually studio-bound as well with very few, if any, real outdoor scenes. I would like to see Blu-rays of one of my favorite shows, Hogan's Heroes, which was shot movie-style.

If by "good enough," you mean HD quality, it won't, because that extra picture information doesn't exist. But part of the reason they don't look so great on DVD is that the analog noise and the MPEG-2 codec are at odds with one another. AVC and VC-1 are more efficient codecs that handle film grain and video noise better and make smaller files. They won't make bad source material good—don't expect America's Funniest Home Videos to suddenly look like The Sound of Music—but they should have less of the problems associated with MPEG-2 compression. Plus, they can fit more episodes on fewer discs more comfortably. So they won't be as good as an HD or film source but they will be better than DVD unless they just dump the existing MPEG-2 files onto a BD. I wouldn't mind trading some of my more bloated box sets for whole series in a single, efficient case. And, of course, more extras and fixes of problems like editing will factor into it.

 

But The Dick Van Dyke Show is on 35mm film and should look good on Blu-Ray assuming there are 1080p HD masters that look good. Image is doing better and their Blu-Ray releases are helping. It may have a chance. Will it look as good as The Twilight Zone Blu-Rays, which I have yet to see, supposedly do? I doubt it. But will it look as good as it is ever going to? Yes.

 

I'll be happy to support such a release once it comes out.

I didn't think the transfers for The Dick Van Dyke Show were anything spectacular. It looked good 99% of the time on my 20" CRT from 5 or 6 feet away and it still looks good on my 24" Trinitron from several feet away. Although there are several spots here and there that look bad even from a distance, with one end credits section in particular looking absolutely horrid for one of the episodes, as I recall.

But upconvert them on my PS3 to my HDTV and I'm suddenly seeing tons of imperfections and film grain. I'm not sure there's a whole lot be gained from a Blu-Ray release of this series. The transfers are acceptable but they're very far from pristine under close scrutiny. Unless they can strike new transfers from the original elements and have them look significantly better than these, I don't think there's much to be gained in regards to picture qualify compared to just letting a good upscaling DVD player handle the job.

Still, I love this show and wouldn't complain in the slightest about a Blu-Ray release.