Smallville Season 2! (1 Viewer)

Gord and David rule! They always bring us the good, good news!

Anyway, there's a news item up at TVShowsOnDVD.com announcing Smallville: Season 2 for the first half of 2004. Let's hope it's early in the half, so there's time for a late summer release of Season 3 to get us caught up to the broadcast of Season 4. Either way, this is news I've been waiting for since I fell in love with the show on DVD.

http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/newsitem.cfm?NewsID=826

I think that regardless of when season 2 comes out in the quarter, you will also likely see season 3 before the start of the new fall season, or shortly after it. I think Warner is adopting a policy to get the previous seasons of a show released before the newest season starts. Meaning they want season 3 to come out around when season 4 starts. I also suspect that all 10 seasons of Friends for example will be released before the new spin off starts in the fall.

Although they haven't come out and told me directly, I think the plan is to catch up with the broadcast seasons. I am so impressed with the products coming out of Warner Bros these days. They are giving consumers excellent shows and a low price thanks to the DVD-18s. I honestly believe that Warner will own 2004 when it comes to TV product.

Gord

Good news! Thanks for letting us know, guys.

I wholly expect that Smallville season 3 will be out by September. Now I just have to decide if it's a show I want to give a try to. With TV on DVD, I've come to watch many more shows than I ever intended.

I do doubt that they'll get the 10th season of Friends by the time Joey comes on. That's just too fast.

I understand rental stores carry TV shows now, so you might want to consider trying it out that way. Be warned that many people believe the show picked up in the second season, when it lost its "monster of the week" obsession. I can't speak to that, though, as I pretty much discovered it on DVD and enjoyed it very much as is.

With TV on DVD, I've come to watch many more shows than I ever intended.

I haven't really gotten to that point yet, but it won't be long. I already know I'll eventually pick up 24, and I'm tempted by other shows I've never watched before. It's just too much fun to watch an episode a night of a show. My DVD player hasn't had a movie in it in a long, long time.

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I'm glad to hear Season 2 will be coming out. Unfortunatly, I have my doubts about what the quality of the transfers will be like.

The video quality of Season One is severely lacking, and extremely inconsistent. Anyone that watches the show in HD knows how good it looks. Given that HD DVD has not arrived yet, I don't expect the show to match the broadcasts, but significant haloing, oversaturation, and softness is completely unacceptable. We deserve to get major improvements for Season 2!

Howie

I agree completely. While the first season on DVD has some positive points, there are quite a number of negatives. For example:

- Why use footage from the original, unaired version of the pilot on the DVD menus if they're not going to include the original, unaired version on a legitimate DVD release to begin with? At least when the first season of The Dead Zone came to DVD, they gave fans the opportunity to get the original pilot on DVD. That was very classy. The WB should give Smallville fans the same opportunity.

- Why port over all of the bonus features from the single-disc Canadian disc onto the set and not include any new, real meat beyond that? Because it's the first season of the series, we should have gotten a documentary on bringing Smallville to the small screen, its importance in the 65-year Superman legacy, etc. Something. But they didn't.

- No Dolby Digital 5.1 sound on this set? They put it on the single-disc release but not on this set? Shame, shame, shame!

- And where were the episode preview trailers for the series?

The WB has another chance to get it right with the second season DVD release. Here's some ideas of what they can do to sweeten the set:

- all 23 episodes remastered in anamorphic widescreen format
- all episodes in Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 sound
- commentaries on each episode from cast members, writers, producers, etc.
- new production featurettes on the making of the series
- a special documentary on the making of the second season classic "Rosetta" as their tribute to Christopher Reeve
- episode trailers to all episodes from the first and second season (at 20 seconds a shot, that's not too much to ask for)
- more deleted scenes from episodes
- the original, unaired pilot! If other people can get it through underground sources, and if the WB has the gall to use more clips from the pilot on the DVD menus, they should have the courtesy to legitimately release it to the fans as a bonus mail-in (no Best Buy bonus disc!).

If they can put a serious emphasis on quality in each episode, then they can put the same emphasis on quality in its DVD presentation.

this is great news

Warner just needs to be careful about putting out so many shows in such a short time span. I can only afford so much and fear they may be shooting themselves in the foot with such an aggressive reelase pattern. I'm not saying I want them to be like 'Simpsons' and come out only once a year. But between this, Gilmore, West Wing, and other studios TV sets, I can't keep up and will stop buying some. They need to pace themselves for our sake.

I'd say that's asking a bit too much. As long as they get all of the episodes out with decent transfers and atleast 2.0 sound, I'll be happy.

Great news! Thanks, Gord!

Pace themselves? Not everyone buys every DVD release.

It's not like you have to buy them when they first come out.

If you want the best deals you do. Not to mention, if they put them out with such rapidity, the sets back up very quickly and you find yourself with several to buy.

Also, if I can't get to buying them within the first few weeks, and if there's any number of people in the same situation as well, then the sale numbers might be weak enough to convince Warner to not release susequent seasons. That's probalby not a problem with 'Smallville", but if i'm buying that, and Buffy, and Angel (priorities) and it takes me a few months to get to 'Gilmore Girls' then I might not get season 2 of that show thanks to soft numbers for it.

The 'Bits rumor mill is reporting that season 2 should be out in September. David or Gord, does this sound right to you? I was thinking it would be much earlier.

I can wait until then, there are other dvds that I want to buy and see as well.

In fact, it doesn't sound right to us, it sounds late. Read posts 1 and 4 of this thread. But we'll check with Warner on Monday.

Keep in mind that according to the Bits, the dates come from a Brazilian source. I wouldn't be surprised if the US release date were a few months earlier.

Chris