Lost In Space-Season 3 Vol.1 (1 Viewer)

[Jeff Koch]

I'm not too happy with this latest release of the series. The episodes look soft, as if someone didn't bother to run the focus correctly. I kept wishing I had the ability to focus these shows better. The sound quality is good with the exception of one of my favorite episodes "Anti-Matter Man." The sound has a noise gated effect that runs through the entire episode and is really bothersome. It's especially noticeable during softer passages. None of the other episodes suffer from this problem. Overall, this release is a bit of a letdown for me. I'm still going to buy Season 3 Vol.2. It contains "The Promised Planet" episode that has to be seen to be believed.

 

[Joe Karlosi]

That sounds lousy. Season 3 is my absolute favorite season of LIS and I wasn't able to buy it last Tuesday, though I'm going to get it today. I really don't like hearing what you said about the soft picture, and also THE ANTI-MATTER MAN; that is also one of my very favorite episodes too. I understand that LIS isn't exactly a huge seller, and I've been very supportive of Fox through the whole thing where they split the seasons and so forth -- but this really sounds like a very careless effort all around. Maybe I'll feel diferently when I see the episodes for myself.

Yes, I'll buy it - and yes, I'll get Season 3 Vol. 2. --I want all the episodes. But jeez...

 

[Mark_M8]

I too was very disappointed by the picture quality of this set, definitely not up to snuff for DVD, more like the VHS tapes put out by Columbia. In fact, it almost looks like they didn't encode it properly, with the way the picture blurs in and out at times.

 

[Dave Scarpa]

I read a review that basically siad they were bad. I picked it up anyway I guess the $27 bucks was a deciding factor. It would'nt surprise me if these were the columbia house VHS Masters. Shame on Fox they have probably treated TV On DVD Worst than any studio around what with LIS, No more NYPD Blue and MTM. I don't hold much hope if we ever do get Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea or Batman on DVD.

 

[paul_austin]

yeah I thought the image looked really bad on these, really a major letdown, however on the upside this set actually has a few bonus features, it was nice to see the original "...brought to you by...." bumpers and such. None of these sets have been remastered however for some reason this set looks much much worse than the others.

 

[Carlos Garcia]

Joe you can bet if the name of the show was "Star Trek" the picture quality would've gotten the platinum treatment, but we poor Lost In Space fans, it's bad enough we have to hear it from Star Trek fans how much better their show is (I don't think it is at all), but then the studios have to give us the shaft as well. Oh well, maybe Fox is just waiting to re-release the episodes in the new HD-DVD format before they'll remaster the picture. I hope so anyway, because the colors of Lost In Space were always far superior to that of Star Trek, though you'd never believe it if you were to compare the DVDs of both shows.

 

[Joe Karlosi]

Lovely. Well, I've already gone on record that I'm NOT going to be upgrading yet again, whether it be HD-DVD, Super-Duper-DVD, Blu-Ray, or Polka-Dot Ray -- I went from VHS to DVD and that was enough; I'm done with upgrading.

Oh well - I'm off to the store to buy this LOST IN SPACE set.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Let me add some additional insight here....

Being a huge LIS fan I read this thread with
much concern....so much so that I sprung out
of my chair to open up Lost In Space Season
Three Volume One. I immediately went to
disc four and the The Anti-Matter Man episode.

First of all, I didn't notice that the audio
had a "gated" affect throughout. Perhaps it's
just something I couldn't pick up on.

Yes, the picture quality is soft and slightly
unfocused. It's obvious Fox put very
little effort into restoring these episodes....

....but then again, I don't think Fox had a lot
of confidence in LIS from the very beginning. This
was a series that came out on the backheels of the
poorly embraced Mary Tyler Moore DVD set. It
is my opinion that Fox never really had the confidence
in LIS selling big. Even the fact that they had to
split the sets up into season volumes shows that
perhaps they had to push harder to get these sets
to sell.

I don't know the overall sales numbers on these
sets. Have no clue if this was a successful venture
for Fox or not.

All I can say is that minimal effort was put into
the release of the show. The shows don't look any
better than they did on VHS (other than lack of tape
grain). There was no imagination put into the
menu designs and none of the cool episode "facts"
that highlighted the Columbia House tapes are
present here. I haven't really looked at the
supplements yet so perhaps the set earns points there.

Am I complaining? Maybe I should, but I have to
take into account that LIS was never as huge as
STAR TREK and that the studio probably put as much
into this set as they thought they'd get out of it.

 

[James Landau]

I gave up on 20th Century Fox a couple years ago. I decided I could no longer justify spending my money on the continually shabby product they were (and still are) putting out. It's a shame too, because I would dearly love to have Lost in Space in my collection (especially the third season--my favorite). But not if it's going to look like garbage.

So all the money that could have gone to Fox over the last two years is still sitting in my bank account waiting for a decent studio to step up to the plate. It's looking more and more like that studio will be Paramount. I was very pleased with the first season set of Have Gun, Will Travel and they will soon be opening the flood gates on much more of their classic TV catalog. If they keep the quality up, I will be sending quite a bit of money their way. Fox's loss is Paramount's gain!

 

[Jeff Willis]

Hello, I have LIS Season 1 and am still working on it (I'm at Ep # 19 at present). The picture looks good and I was wondering how Season 2 compares to S1 regarding overall picture/sound quality? Also, is S2 in color? I couldn't remember if it was also in BW like S1.

OT, I'm waiting for that one-season Irwin Allen gem, "Time Tunnel"



Love that signature, Carlos

 

[Bert Greene]

I'm generally not as much a bug on print quality compared to many around here. Seasons 1 and 2 of "Lost in Space" were perfectly fine by me. However, I am pretty darned disappointed in the quality of this season 3 set. I really expect better from an 'official' dvd release. I've viewed the first few episodes, and they look like what I'd expect from 'video' releases from well over a decade ago. Somehow I felt the advent of dvds crossed us into a new era, but this release sure takes me backward.

Yet, I'm actually enjoying the episodes a great deal. These have been a lot of fun (especially compared to most of those 2nd-season episodes, which just seemed to pointlessly flail around; I certainly never minded the series' humor or juvenile aspects, but gee whiz, I at least needed a side supply of adventure and suspense to keep me glued, which so many 2nd-seasoners lacked). The series is certainly an eccentric concoction, to put it mildly, but when it's at the top of its game, it can be quite winning. I really like the cast and premise.

 

[Joe Karlosi]

Okay, I bought the set and I have to say that it's a mixed bag for me, though not as tragic as the early posts in this thread made it out to be. I watched four of my very favorite episodes from the entire series: CONDEMNED OF SPACE, VISIT TO A HOSTILE PLANET, HUNTER'S MOON (all on Disc 1) and THE ANTI-MATTER MAN (on Disc 4).

I agree with Ron -- I didn't hear any sound problem with THE ANTI-MATTER MAN. But what I did see was that the image on the episodes (especially the three from Disc 1, but not so much THE ANTI-MATTER MAN from Disc 4) looked slightly out of focus when you saw long shots of people. The mediums and closeups were actually quite sharp. I don't know what people are talking about when they say that Season 2 looked better; I've only seen several episodes from Season 2 (it's really the worst season) and many of those looked to be of lesser quality than Season 3. At least to my memory.

No, I don't think this was a very good job, but it's not as bad as it sounded here and I'm glad I gave it a chance. I probably should have kept my mouth shut until I saw the presentation for myself. At least the four episodes I watched looked dirt free and fairly clean.

I don't believe that acknowledging that "Fox didn't really have much faith in LIS from the beginning and it was never as big as STAR TREK anyway" is any excuse whatsoever, and pointing out the "reason" for doing a sub-par job doesn't make everything all right. But the bottom line is, all these episodes look better than the USA Network syndications I had on VHS tapes (I never owned the Columbia House releases) and I'm still quite happy to have these LIS DVD sets. I will definitely buy SEASON 3, VOL. 2 when it's released (and I sure hope it is, despite the negative vibe for SEASON 3, VOL. 1)

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Perhaps it is.

Look, I'm a huge LIS fan and I'm not here to
totally defend Fox on not putting their best
foot forward into this DVD set.

On the other hand, I always like to play
devil's advocate because when I am out in LA
I have the opportunity to talk to the people
in the home video department.

Saying LIS is no STAR TREK may sound cruel --
but it's totally on the money. STAR TREK was
a far more popular money-making enterprise
for Paramount than LIS was for Fox. I can
readily see why Paramount put a lot of money
into the restoration of Star Trek based on how
huge that franchise was.

Lost In Space? Probably one of Fox's most
noteworthy series of the '60s, but certainly
not on caliber with a show like The Twilight
Zone which deservingly got the restoration
it deserved.

Studios have to be very careful with picking
and choosing what to restore and how much money
should be put into such restoration. If they
threw bundles of cash into every TV show or
movie released the studios would go bankrupt.

As I have pointed out in a prior post, it is
my strong guess that Fox evaluated that LIS
would sell only moderately well. The fact
they split season TWO and THREE into separate
volumes sort of leads me to believe that it
was difficult selling the first season and
we should be thankful Fox did everything they
could to get us to Season Three.

Yes, we are all very disappointed in the
effort put into this boxed set. Realize
however that we are the core fanbase and
probably the vocal minority. Most people
who are casual fans will not even notice the
subpar effort that was put into this set. That
doesn't make everything "alright," but the
overall volume of complaints are probably going
to end up being negligible for this caliber
of a title.

 

[Joe Karlosi]

Well, Ron, keep in mind that my last post was probably the most positive so far

 

[Bert Greene]

Undoubtedly different viewers will have different peeves about print quality. Whereas I've never minded things like the appearance of a moderately beat-up 16mm film print, I have always hated things like 'edge enhancement' and a certain muddy blur courtesy of video transfer. The softness of the LIS-3 prints doesn't annoy me as much as that video blur that is particularly evident in the long shots. To me, this is less welcome than the horizontal lines you occasionally see in LIS-1 and LIS-2.

Since (belatedly) joining the dvd bandwagon, I've always viewed my sets at a closer proximity to my tv-screen than I normally do. The extra sharpness and detail made it nice to get up closer and enjoy the full visual impact. This set was the first time with such a dvd-set that I had to position myself further back from the screen (regarding an 'official' dvd release, as opposed to p.d. cheapies, which are routinely rough). So, true, maybe this is no worse than what I'd expect from watching cable-tv at any given moment. But, via other dvd-purchases, I've grown to expect something better. I still anticipate deriving a good amount of enjoyment out of these episodes, so I'm not necessarily lamenting the purchase. But, I am disappointed in the print quality.

 

[Gary OS]

Well, my set is in the mail (I finally found a great online deal for it and ordered it this past week) and I am somewhat disappointed to hear the reviews. But like Bert, I've never been one to closely examine picture quality or sound quality (although I'm not blind or deaf and can pick up on imperfections).

I think Ron is right on about the fact that FOX didn't have alot of faith in this series, and therefore didn't put much money into it. Does that bother me? Maybe a little. But I'm still tickled to have this series come out in the first place. Heck, I'd be more than happy to have a barebones set of "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" and "Time Tunnel", even without major restoration. Anything is better than nothing, especially if I can get these shows complete (since I never got to see any of them during their initial run).

Gary "I really wish FOX would rent out 'Voyage' & 'Time Tunnel' to some third party" O.

 

[Mark To]

I have mixed feelings on the subject. I also always liked Lost in Space much more than Star Trek which I felt was overrated, especially after they dropped Grace Lee Whitney from the cast. I can understand a studio doing things on the cheap as they are in business to make money moreso than to make the fans happy. I guess it comes down to a decision - will the extra expense involved in remastering a show be justified in sales, i.e., will the amount of sales lost by issuing a lesser product be more than the costs. That's what it comes down to. Each release and each show you have to take on a case by case basis. Questar really botched the Make Room for Daddy release as they took a great show and did everything wrong with it from accepting copies of the show that were cut by 4 minutes to chopping the opening credits off the episodes to no chapter stops. They took a show that had a limited audience to begin with, not from lack of quality but lack of exposure, and basically insured that half their potential audience would be turned off by the release. Unfortunately, MRFD is not a show that I could turn around and say the heck with it and use a better copy from tape. Since the VHS era, it was only sent to stations in pre-cut formats and the syndication episodes have never been available on film in any great number. So I did buy it. Other shows that have been released cut, Branded and Guns of Will Sonnett I bought, Alf and Too Close for Comfort I did not buy. The first 2 have changed hands a few times and I believe they couldn't come up with the masters very easily, if at all. The 2 I didn't buy, they could have but they were too cheap to.
I wish Fox cared more about Lost in Space but I'm happy to have it. With 40 year old shows, the options for complete episodes are limited.
And I agree with the above poster. This is my last format change. It'll take me many years to transfer everything to DVD and that's it for me for this lifetime.

 

[Jeff Koch]

Here are more opinions from LIS fans...and they're not good.


http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/cus...KIKX0DER&s=dvd

 

[Joe Karlosi]

Yes, those Amazon reviews are quite horrendous. I think a lot of them go way overboard, though. It's certainly better to have the set looking like it does rather than not having it at all. I can never understand when fans say "Thanks for the warning about the low quality - I won't buy this now!!" - I mean, what's their alternative? To not have it at all? To stick with their VHS? Neither is an option for the true fan.

I would really hope that FOX does not decide to abandon the series all together based on these complaints. Could you imagine them never releasing the last handful of episodes due to all the fans shooting themselves in the foot here?? Who wants a series that's 98% completed??

What would really be nice is if FOX could recall this volume and re-do it, or at the very least try and spruce up Season 3, Vol. 2.

Paging Peter Staddon .....

 

[Ronald Epstein]

They won't.

Season III Volume II has already been announced.