george kaplan
Senior HTF Member
- Joined
- Mar 14, 2001
- Messages
- 13,063
Well it all boils down to definitions and ideas about "not perfect".
I suspect we'd all agree that "not perfect" breaks down into:
"not perfect, but good enough"
"not perfect, and so bad it's compeletly unacceptable"
We're all going to draw the line differently, but I think most people would put an otherwise perfect dvd with a lack of extras in the first category. And I suspect that most people would put a dvd in which the only audio track available was one in which Danny DeVito dubbed all of the voices in Serbo-Croatian".
Now, for myself, things like cutting out scenes, pan & scanning, and music replacement, are things that cross the line.
In my opinion, if a studio can't or won't give those things, they'd be better off not releasing it at all. I'm not advocating a law for that, so I'm not stepping on any consumer's choice to pick up the Danny DeVito dubbed version of Citizen Kane, if that's what they want to do. But I remain steadfast in my opinion that released such altered dvds is morally, if not legally, wrong, and the studios shouldn't do it.
I certainly know I won't buy any such crap.
It also depends on what it means that a dvd can't be released that way. There's a huge difference between a case like Fantasia where certain vocal tracks did not exist and no amount of money could have brought them into existence, and tv shows, where they just don't want to pay the asking price for the music. That's not a case of "can't", it's a case of "won't".
I suspect we'd all agree that "not perfect" breaks down into:
"not perfect, but good enough"
"not perfect, and so bad it's compeletly unacceptable"
We're all going to draw the line differently, but I think most people would put an otherwise perfect dvd with a lack of extras in the first category. And I suspect that most people would put a dvd in which the only audio track available was one in which Danny DeVito dubbed all of the voices in Serbo-Croatian".
Now, for myself, things like cutting out scenes, pan & scanning, and music replacement, are things that cross the line.
In my opinion, if a studio can't or won't give those things, they'd be better off not releasing it at all. I'm not advocating a law for that, so I'm not stepping on any consumer's choice to pick up the Danny DeVito dubbed version of Citizen Kane, if that's what they want to do. But I remain steadfast in my opinion that released such altered dvds is morally, if not legally, wrong, and the studios shouldn't do it.
I certainly know I won't buy any such crap.
It also depends on what it means that a dvd can't be released that way. There's a huge difference between a case like Fantasia where certain vocal tracks did not exist and no amount of money could have brought them into existence, and tv shows, where they just don't want to pay the asking price for the music. That's not a case of "can't", it's a case of "won't".
