Any update on Highway Patrol (1 Viewer)

[JoeDoakes]

Back in the Timeless New Acquisitions thread the poster Neil Brock / Danny said that he understood that someone other than MGM MOD was going to release Highway Patrol (http://www.hometheaterforum.com/t/320902/timeless-new-acquisitions). Has anyone heard anything more on this? If not, Amazon is having a roughly 45% off sale on all MGM MOD titles, so it would be a good time to pick up Seaon 1 (the only season released).

 

[Wvtvguy]

I see season 2 has been released. I'd love to see some reviews. I'm curious about the video quality.

 

[Silverking]

Seasons 2, 3 & 4 were to be released Apl 2 by the same outfit who did 'Sea Hunt'. However they are showing as 'temporarily out of stock' at Amazon and the release date at Deep Discount where I ordered mine has been Jun 13 for a few weeks.

 

[Wvtvguy]

Thanks for the info. I don't know much about the show but I love the period.

 

[John Morgan]

I had bought the MOD first season of HIGHWAY PATROL when it first was released. When Seasons 2-4 were announced I ordered all three remaining seasons from Deep Discount. About a week or two ago, I received SEASON 4, and emailed Deep Discount about Seasons 2 and 3, which was in my original order. They emailed back that those seasons will be sent when available, so something must have delayed those middle seasons.

 

[Rob_Ray]

I had bought the MOD first season of HIGHWAY PATROL when it first was released. When Seasons 2-4 were announced I ordered all three remaining seasons from Deep Discount. About a week or two ago, I received SEASON 4, and emailed Deep Discount about Seasons 2 and 3, which was in my original order. They emailed back that those seasons will be sent when available, so something must have delayed those middle seasons.

I ordered through Amazon and received season 4 this week as well. Seasons 2 and 3 are backordered.

 

[Richard Gallagher]

I ordered through Amazon and received season 4 this week as well. Seasons 2 and 3 are backordered.

Seasons 2-4 are currently backordered at both Amazon and Deep Discount. Import CDs and DVD Planet say that Season 4 will ship in 5-10 days and that Seasons 2 & 3 haven't been released yet.

I'm expecting that the quality will be equal to that of Sea Hunt, which is to say it should be excellent.

 

[Richard Gallagher]

I just received an e-mail from Deep Discount that Season 4 has shipped. There obviously has been a production delay with Seasons 2 and 3.

 

[ChrisALM]

I have received Season 4, but Season 2 and 3 are on backorder.

 

[Mike*HTF]

Just received an email stating that seasons 2 and 3 won't be released until mid-June...

 

[Richard Gallagher]

Amazon has Seasons 2 and 3 in stock and shipping. $12.99 apiece. I would gladly have paid twice that.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BDZV4OW/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BDZV4OW/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[Richard Gallagher]

Season 2 and 3 arrived via UPS today, but unfortunately both seasons had one volume of floaters. Two discs in Season 2 are scratched and one disc in Season 3 is scratched. Back they go for replacements.

There's always that feeling of dread when you go to open the shrink wrap and you hear something moving around inside the case.

 

[revgen]

Rented Season 4 discs 2 and 3 from Classicflix today.

These discs are pressed, but they are encoded from analog broadcast masters. While the analog masters are very good and high quality, the limitations of the analog tape format still shine through with rainbows, dot crawl, and some field shimmering (noticeable on the grills of the cars). Fortunately, since this is a black and white show, you can eliminate the rainbows by turning down the Color Saturation level on your TV. Shimmering and dot crawl are also less noticeable with the saturation turned down. I wish the DVD producers could have just used a greyscale filter and removed the rainbows before encoding.

The season 1 set was encoded from digitally remastered film elements and looked better.

So basically, I weigh the plus side with the lower price tag and pressed discs with the downside of inferior picture quality than the season 1 set. Most of the downside can be eliminated with simple adjustments on the TV set, so I think they're definitely worth the price.

 

[Wvtvguy]

Are all the seasons equal in quality? I still haven't picked this up but would love to try a season.

 

[LouA]

Are all the seasons equal in quality? I still haven't picked this up but would love to try a season.

I'd say so. If you like Fifties cop shows this is a good one with a great performance by Broderick Crawford as Dan Matthews . Season one is DVD-r, so you may want to go with seasons 2 , 3 or 4 from TGG.

 

[Dave Lawrence]

Fun show. I'd say you can't go wrong with any of the seasons. But, as previously noted, the 1st season is DVD-R. It's also, last time I checked, about as expensive as the cost for the other 3 seasons combined.

(I waited and eventually got my Season 1 copy in an Amazon warehouse special deal. It didn't have the outer box; instead, the inner cases of discs were bundled together. That was fine with me, though, as the price was more reasonable, the outer MGM box was nothing special, and the discs all worked fine.)

 

[Wvtvguy]

Picked up season 2 & I'm really loving it. I love discovering shows from the 50's & 60's. I notice as I'm watching that the picture quality is excellent for a show from the 50's. I've got both M SQUAD & ROOM 222 in my collection so I know how bad these shows can look. Why does HIGHWAY PATROL look so good? I was so pleasantly surprised when I watched the first episode.

 

[JoeDoakes]

Picked up season 2 & I'm really loving it. I love discovering shows from the 50's & 60's. I notice as I'm watching that the picture quality is excellent for a show from the 50's. I've got both M SQUAD & ROOM 222 in my collection so I know how bad these shows can look. Why does HIGHWAY PATROL look so good? I was so pleasantly surprised when I watched the first episode.

Highway Patrol and the other ZIV shows had transfers done by Ted Turner in the 90s? The show and transfers were licensed to the company that released them. Essentially, they are a professional quality release. The show M Squad was licensed, but no transfers were (none may exist), so Timeless cobbled together the show from various bootlegs and old prints. Room 222 was licensed, but the available transfers were old and not in good shape. Neil Brock/Danny could tell you more about all of these.

 

[Wvtvguy]

Thank you! I knew the story behind ROOM 222 but was wondering why HIGHWAY PATROL looks so good. That explains it.