Honey West (1 Viewer)

This 1960's series starring Anne Francis is being released on DVD *in the UK* on 13th November. I believe that the release will be of the complete series.

Interesting! I hope we get this one in R1.

Really? I love that show. I have them all except for 3 from off 16mm prints that I got many years ago but this should be higher quality. This is very much a cult show that is perfect for the DVD format. Anne Francis never looked better than when she did this series. I wonder if they will include the pilot from Burke's Law as a bonus. It's funny but when Bob Costas had Aaron Spelling on Later he asked him about that and he didn't remember it being a spinoff. I spoke with Costas about that and we were laughing at how we as viewers remembered that and the producer himself didn't.

Here's the link to amazon uk:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Honey-West/d...?ie=UTF8&s=dvd

Delta Music Group? They do a lot of PD releases. They do some quality work - they released Lovejoy in tolerable form and that cheesy German series Star Maidens. Much depends where they got their masters from, so it's not impossible these discs were mastered from 16mm prints. Hope not.

According to the illustration on Sendit, there are alll 30 episodes plus the pilot from the Burke's Law series. Woo-hoo.

Best price £15.99 at HMV currently. Four discs. Burke's Law Series 1 will be out the same day.

Honey West AND Burke's Law Season One released on the same day! Two good reasons to set your DVD-ROM to Region 2. Amazon.UK is showing Burke's Law 3 discs apparently 32 episodes. Hope Delta Music Group does these right.

Fox owns the show here in the US, and you know how bad they are in releasing stuff from their back catalog- like once in a blue moon!

HMV has the Burke's Law listed as 8 discs which seems right, 32 episodes. I don't know anything about Delta other than that I saw on the site they are selling the same 1st season of Big Valley that came out here. All 3 of these shows are former Four Star shows that are controlled by Fox so I would think they are legit. I would doubt that they would try to bootleg a show from a major company like that.

HMV lists "Honey West" as a October 16 release--I wonder if that's accurate. This is great news and I think I will be purchasing this because I doubt Fox will ever release this. But what to do about the R2 issue? Purchase a multi-region player? Someone once posted info on how any R1 DVD player could be converted to "0", i.e multi-region by using the manufacturer remote--is that accurate?

Mike, it's possible to convert a player to region-free but the player would also need to be equiped with a PAL/NTSC Converter. That's where it gets a little more of an issue. I have a region-free player with a 16Mb Converter. This way, I can view PAL widescreen anamorphic movies with no signal loss or stretching during the conversion process. I only have 2 TV/DVD sets that are PAL as I desire to purchase R1's whenever possible. Honey West may be the 3rd set

The Oppo model 970 & 971 have built in Pal / NTSC converters and are virtually region free out of the box with a very simple hack using the remote. This information is available anywhere on the web. As a side benefit it also upconverts to 1080i via DVI and comes with the all necessary cables in the box. I have ordered region 2 and region 4 television season sets, and they are indistinguishable from region 1 releases.

Jeff, Doug--

Thanks for the information. I'll get more serious over the issue with PAL/NTSC and my current TV and DVD player set up once I'm assured that the "Honey West" release is of reasonably high quality and not mastered from 16mm prints.

Wasn't there some scuttlebutt a few months back about a new "Honey West" theatrical film in the works? I recall at the time thinking this might propel an eventual dvd-set of the old series. The series always seemed a tad silly to me, but Anne Francis was so incredibly fetching in the title role. I'd certainly pick up a dvd-set for that simple reason. It's a perfect series for a done-in-one set.

Very curious release this.

Honey West played in here in the UK in the 60's but was never very high profile. Also played on a couple of obscure satellite channels in the 90's.
I doubt you would find anyone in the UK who remembers it even if (like me ) they are old enough.

I find it odd that this series & Burkes Law should have found an outlet in the UK which has a poor track record of releasing vintage US material.

Odd also US home bred shows fail to appear in their country of origin yet get released elsewhere. Some examples are Wanted Dead or Alive all 3 seasons on release in France & Japan yet only S1 in the US, Wild Wild West again all seasons available in France, Adventures of Rin-Tin-Tin, seasons 1 & 2 in France ,and most curious of all Bonanza, S1 2 3 & continuing yet nothing in the US.Surely the American market sales must have greater potential than France, Germany & the UK.

It actually doesn't surprise me at all. I collect music from the same era and I can't tell you how many CDs have been released of American artists in Japan, Germany and England that never have and never will come out in the U.S. Why? Well, I don't know for sure but if I took a guess I would say that it has to do with, A) Licensing and rights being much cheaper to obtain overseas than here and B) Smaller companies having different sales expectations. Where a company like Paramount, Warner or Universal can't be bothered with something that sells 10,000 copies, I'm sure smaller companies and companies overseas would be thrilled to sell that amount.

As for these 2 shows, I'll going to wait and see reviews to make sure this is a legit release and not something gray market.

Well, judging by its ranking on Amazon-UK, it appears there aren't many. Just released two days ago and yet ranked at #13,283. I'm certain if it had been an R1 release instead, we'd see it crack at least the top 400 at this point. Also, no reviews about the quality of the release...frustrating.

Another odd thing--Caiman USA, based in FL (I've purchased from them before on Amazon.com) has it in stock! Their comments section states that it "Ships from U.S.A., to anywhere in the United Kingdom!" (slap to forehead)

Honey West hasn't been released yet in the U.K. Its date has been pushed back to the 20th instead of the 13th. Amazon UK hasn't reflected the date change yet, but HMV UK has.

OK, I stand corrected on that one.

Received my copy of Honey here in the UK yesterday, so it is definitely now released.

Obviously not had time to watch it yet but did a spot check and it appears to be quite favourable.

All 30 episodes are present in original running order & appear to be uncut , I would need to double check them against my old VHS copies from Superchannel to confirm this but the BBFC has listed the running times which indicates they are complete.The old 4Star logo at the end is included.

The prints look to be fine, not remastered but pretty clear & sharp for a 40 year old series. Honey had a rather 'film noir' quality with a lot of nightime scenes & my spot check revealed these as quite clear.Odd speckles & maybe slightly soft but overall I don't think anyone will be disappointed in the pic quality.The sound I thought was actually very good.

There are 4 single sided discs. There is a play all, episode selection & 4 scene selections for each segment.The 'Burke's Law' episode which first introduced Honey is on disc 1 as a bonus.

The real letdown is the cheap packaging, cardboard sleeve with a close up pic of Anne Francis peering over a pair of shades on the cover doesn't really give the flavour of the series for me. The discs are housed in a tacky plastic Amray fold out case.The reverse of the outer sleeve lists the episodes, main guest stars , two line plot description & oddly ,original US air-date . To read any of this ,you of course, have to remove the discs.

This has to qualify as the most surprising UK release this year, as the series has not played on any national channel since the first run in the 60's & even then it was not particularly high profile.A couple of the more obscure cable/satellite channels did run it in the early 90's but usually in a teatime or late night slot.Not sure which market Delta hope to attract but nevertheless it is very welcome.

Incidentally it is designated PAL REGION 0 Hopefully this may trigger a few US exports.

Hope this is helpful to any prospective US buyers.

I don't know if any PAL DVDs are compatible to Region 1 DVD players here in the States, SK. Besides, American TVs are in the NTSC system, whereas PAL is used in Europe. Someone's gotta make things universal. This region zone nonsense is ridiculous- was it done for business reasons?

It was an attempt by content owners to have the ability to control the world market, especially in the area of rights clearances (e.g. rights cleared for sales to Region 2 only). Of course this "control" vanished once you could walk into Walmart and buy one of their "made in China" junkers that not only played any region, but also handled NTSC and PAL....all for $29 (or less).