TV season sets on LD vs DVD (1 Viewer)

[Paul_Scott]

i've never been much for TV material, i'm a movie lover first and foremost, yet i'm enjoying the hell out of my Buffy sets at the moment.
i was holding S5 in my hands, in a nice compact box, and i just couldn't help but think...could this have been possible with laserdisc?
22 episodes would have come out to 11 clv discs ( unless they worked some very awkward breaks in to squeeze that down).
a set like that would have been humoungous and weighed enough that shipping alone would have been a good chunk (forget about free shipping with LDs).

it was then that i realized this was it.
this was one of the promises of dvd fulfilled.
22 hrs of quality content in a package i could hold in one hand, and that cost me as much as a single movie on laser did 12 yrs ago ($36 w/ free shipping from Amazon).

i'm so happy now i feel like buying more stuff i don't need, cause its such bargin

 

[David Lambert]

I think this is why Gord never made a site called TVShowsOnLD.com!

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Agreed.

 

[Jari]

Paul, be sure to get Angel sets too. I just finished Angel season 3 set (R2) and wow! It must be the best season of the Buffy/Angel (so far). 22 episodes in a couple of days is simply heaven.

 

[Jesse Skeen]

Ha ha, I STILL think of everything in laserdisc prices, so I'll buy almost any movie priced under $15 since that was the average price for "cutout" LDs.
One interesting box set I have is the "Family Dog" animated show, which only had 6 episodes and was put out as a 3-disc set (2 episodes on each side, the last side being a "turtle side"). I bought it when DVD was just coming on the market (swearing I'd never support it) and Pioneer had dropped the list prices of a lot of titles- this was list-priced at $14.99, a bargain for anything on laserdisc, much less something that takes up 3 discs.
I've always liked that all laserdiscs default to "Play All" however
BTW a first-season set of The Simpsons was rumored to be coming out on laserdisc several years ago, priced around $100.

 

[Phil_L]

This may sound like a stupid question, but when did LD officially die? When did they stop producing new LDs and LD players?

 

[Moe Dickstein]

Well there was some stuff from Criterion - The entire series of Treudeau and Altman's Tanner '88, that was made for HBO

They also released a disc of I Love Lucy (2 eps in original broadcast form, amd lots of extra features) and one or two Addams Family releases.

I also believe at least one season of X-Files was released in Japan, and i think some individual discs were released here that were identical to the VHS releases.

 

[Paul_Scott]

Japan seemed to have quite a few TV show boxed sets.
i remember seeing a listing for a couple of volumes of Lost in Space once, and CDjapan still seems to offer a vol 2 to Kolchak ( i'm assuming that would be 10 eps/ half the series) but that runs over $300 without the shipping which would be over $30 i'm sure.

 

[Moe Dickstein]

And the more i think - there were also Outer Limits and Twilight Zone on LD as well as Star Trek, ST:TNG, and the complete ST Animated Series...

 

[Joseph Bolus]

This may sound like a stupid question, but when did LD officially die? When did they stop producing new LDs and LD players?

For the domestic market, the last few LD releases trickled out in the Fall of 1999 and early 2000. By the time Star Wars: The Phantom Menace was released to LD in April 2000, it was only available in that format in Japan. (Gosh, it's really hard to believe that it's been over four and-a-half years since that film's theatrical release in Summer 1999!)

Internationally (mostly Japan), I believe that LD hung on until Fall 2001.

As to the topic: I wholeheartedly agree (as I clutch my Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season Seven box in my hands!)

 

[Christopher D]

It's interesting that the reverse effect also seems to be true -- the availability of TV shows on DVD has accelerated the popularity of the format.

 

[Tony Kwong]

Actually there were 7 seasons released for X-Files on LD in Japan.

 

[todd s]

I have a Japanese LD import of the New Twilight Zone series from the 80's. It has 4 episodes and I do remember seeing more volumes. I was in college when it came out and It was too expensive to get more.

 

[Michael St. Clair]

There were many, many complete seasons/series released on LD in Japan, and a few here.

Box sets of complete 'The Simpsons' seasons were in the works at one point.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

The series the had fan bases rich enough, fanatical enough and savvy enough to get complete seasons releaed on VHS in the U.S. also managed to get LD editons released. Which is to say The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits and the assorted Treks. Apart from some kids stuff there was nothing else that proved to have a sustained retail market on any form of home video in the U.S. - which is one reason that the studios were so resistent to the idea of TV on DVD. They took the failure of series on other formats to mean that "Nobody wants to own TV shows they can watch in reruns for free" when it really meant "Nobody wants to own TV shows on these expensive, bulky and hard to store formats."

Probably the last major attempt to do a TV Show on LD release in the U.S. was Babylon 5. Warner Bros. licensed the series to Image Entertainment for Laserdisc release in late 1998. But early the next year word leaked out that Warner Bros. was working on a DVD release (which was later scrapped) and sales for the LDs plunged to the point where the release was cancelled entirely after about half the episodes had been issued on very pricey 2-episode discs.

Sadly the B5 LDs weren't even released in order. Because the show moved from broadcast syndication to TNT for its fifth and final season, many fans missed the conclusion of the series. (Even fans with cable didn't necessarily get TNT, which at the time was available in around 70% of U.S. households.) So on both VHS and LD Warner Bros. alternated groups of S1 discs, for those collecting the show in order, with S5 discs, for those who never got a chance to see the last year on TV. When those two seasons were finished they did the same with S2 and S4 - working forwards from S1 and backwards from S5. When the VHS and LD releases were suspended for lack of sales only 12 S2 and 6 S4 episodes had been released - and of course they never got around to S3 at all

Regards,

Joe

 

[Harry-N]

If memory serves, while both the original TWILIGHT ZONE and OUTER LIMITS series had boxed releases on LaserDisc, they were incomplete. Sets with favored episodes on maybe a dozen or so discs were released, but in neither case, the complete series.

The original STAR TREK and STAR TREK: TNG had all episodes released on individual discs, one to each side of a disc.

I'd begun the collection of TNG on LaserDisc since it had (gasp!) STEREO soundtracks - unavailable here in the Philly market for all of TNG's broadcast run. I managed to amass the first two seasons and greatly welcomed the nice, compact season 3 on DVD.

TOS, I still have on the really outdated VHS single-episode releases. So I'll be looking forward to those season sets in 2004.

Harry

 

[David Lambert]

Moe mentioned the *1* LaserDisc of a TV show that I really, truly regret not having on DVD right now.

One which the studio's rep who sometimes hangs out here at HTF has said "won't happen". Though in all honestly I believe that this position could change given the right conditions...and eventually will given the franchise that it represents.


One which, if it doesn't ever hit on DVD, will tempt me to buy a laserdisc player or something. Just for one thing:


[c] [/c]

 

[Bob Graham]

One other TV series that recieved a laserdisc release was the Boris Karloff anthology series, THRILLER. While I agree in principle that the DVD box sets are compact and handy, there was just something about those old laserdisc box sets: huge, majestic, impressive-packed with extras like books, cds, and in the case of GETTYSBURG, an "authentic civil war bullet". THey don't make 'em like that no more and I can't help but feel that something has been lost.

 

[Kipp Teague]

Other TV series which were released in limited, selected fashion on LD were Mission Impossible (5 volumes), Northern Exposure (at least five), The Fugitive and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

 

[PhilipG]

I have quite a few PAL LDs of TV shows (Fawlty Towers, some Doctor Who, X-Files & B5).

But my most treasured LD is my NTSC boxset of the mini-series Wild Palms.