International A Boy Named Charlie Brown and Snoopy Come Home are coming home to Blu-ray in Australia (1 Viewer)

To anyone upset by the absence of Peanuts theatrical features on Blu-ray: the wait is half-over.

First the good news: The first two are coming this Wednesday from a company in Australia called Based on the running time, I can assume that A Boy Named Charlie Brown is the longer theatrical cut.


Now the bad news for American consumers without region-free players: they're region B releases. Good grief!

Auuuugh!!!!

MatthewA said:

Now the bad news for American consumers without region-free players: they're region B releases. Good grief!

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They're not necessarily going to be region locked. Some previous Umbrella Entertainment releases, such as Buckaroo Banzai, have been region free despite showing the Region B logo on the case.


If I grab a copy I'll confirm the region status.

Wish they were coming out in North America. I would definitely upgrade to these.

Hoping these are region free and nice transfers.

Persianimmortal said:

They're not necessarily going to be region locked. Some previous Umbrella Entertainment releases, such as Buckaroo Banzai, have been region free despite showing the Region B logo on the case.


If I grab a copy I'll confirm the region status.

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Any word on the release? What about runtimes? Are the movies complete? TIA

I should think these won't be long in getting a North American Region A release! In time for Christmas, perhaps?


CHEERS!

Tony Bensley said:

I should think these won't be long in getting a North American Region A release! In time for Christmas, perhaps?


CHEERS!

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I wouldn't count on it. Anything in time for Christmas would probably have a press release with release date known about now. In addition, next week sees a Peanuts compilation being released that was remastered in 4K, but has only a DVD release... No Blu.

Frankly, I'm surprised this didn't get a U.S. release first! I mean, it's the ever popular Peanuts Gang, not some little known obscurity, with all due respect!


CHEERS!

Has anyone gotten this yet? [Persianimmortal hasn't] I'd like to hear from those that have. TIA

Yes sorry, I went into my local JB Hifi a few days ago and couldn't find a copy on the shelves, and the clueless staff had no idea when/if/why/how a copy would ever be in stock. The moral, as always, is avoid bricks and mortar stores and shop online.

The good news is that they've discussed this release on that wretched hive of scum and villainy otherwise known as the Blu-ray.com forums, and this post provides the details.

In short, it is confirmed as being region free, reasonably good quality HD source, A Boy Named Charlie Brown is 4:3 and appears to be the longer version, while Snoopy Come Home is 16:9.

Persianimmortal said:

Yes sorry, I went into my local JB Hifi a few days ago and couldn't find a copy on the shelves, and the clueless staff had no idea when/if/why/how a copy would ever be in stock. The moral, as always, is avoid bricks and mortar stores and shop online.

The good news is that they've discussed this release on that wretched hive of scum and villainy otherwise known as the Blu-ray.com forums, and this post provides the details.

In short, it is confirmed as being region free, reasonably good quality HD source, A Boy Named Charlie Brown is 4:3 and appears to be the longer version, while Snoopy Come Home is 16:9.

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Hi Koroush!


It appears to me that both of these titles would be worth further discussion in the Aspect Ratio Documentation topic:

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/topic/313215-aspect-ratio-documentation/page-302


CHEERS!


Tony

MatthewA said:

To anyone upset by the absence of Peanuts theatrical features on Blu-ray: the wait is half-over.

First the good news: The first two are coming this Wednesday from a company in Australia called Based on the running time, I can assume that A Boy Named Charlie Brown is the longer theatrical cut.


Now the bad news for American consumers without region-free players: they're region B releases. Good grief!

Click to expand...

Amazon is selling it on September 15th so it appears to be all Regions.


http://www.amazon.com/Peanuts-Classics-Charlie-Snoopy-Blu-ray/dp/B013Y6L5RI/ref=sr_1_48_twi_blu_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1441937817&sr=1-48&refinements=p_69%3A4y-10y%2Cp_n_format_browse-bin%3A2650305011

Not to sound like I'm complaining since I'm thrilled with this development. But before we all rush out and buy the final Peanuts movie on DVD next month, it sure would be nice to know if there are similar plans in the near future for a Blu-Ray double pack of the recently released 3rd movie and the upcoming 4th movie...


Like many of you, I'd just as assume skip buying the DVD version of Bon Voyage if it's just destined to soon be made obsolete.


At least the price is right with these even if I end up double dipping. I think Race For Your Life only cost me $10 at Wal-Mart a few months back.

Robert Crawford said:

Amazon is selling it on September 15th so it appears to be all Regions.


http://www.amazon.com/Peanuts-Classics-Charlie-Snoopy-Blu-ray/dp/B013Y6L5RI/ref=sr_1_48_twi_blu_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1441937817&sr=1-48&refinements=p_69%3A4y-10y%2Cp_n_format_browse-bin%3A2650305011

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But.... forty bucks? Plus shipping? I'll wait.

Just got back from JB HiFi here in Australia, buying BNCB and SCH along with Warner Bros "Happiness Is A Warm Blanket" -- all 3 for $20 on dvd -- only to read that the first two movies are on bluray on one disc, cost $12.95 -- grrrr....


Folks, if I were you I'd wait less than 100 days for the new "Peanuts 3D" movie to come out -- you can be assured that there will be an avalanche of Peanuts merchandise released, sooner rather than later, to counter what will be pretty much the Star Wars Christmas ahead of us all.


I suspect that whatever Peanuts dvds will be repackaging sets of previously released material, one can always hope some may have been restored for bluray, one can safely assume that at least the first two movies will be among those (with the exchange rate of US$ versus AU$ at the moment, buying anything here in Australia from the US or UK would be a great bargain -- back in 2011 it was the other way around)

Persianimmortal said:

The good news is that they've discussed this release on that wretched hive of scum and villainy otherwise known as the Blu-ray.com forums, and this post provides the details.

In short, it is confirmed as being region free, reasonably good quality HD source, A Boy Named Charlie Brown is 4:3 and appears to be the longer version, while Snoopy Come Home is 16:9.

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Quite frankly, I'm a little disturbed by what I'm reading in that thread. They claim that A Boy Named Charlie Brown is actually stretched to 16X9 on the disc. One guy said he had to change the settings on his TV to watch it properly in 4X3. It doesn't make any sense because there are no 4X3 or 16X9 flags on a 1080p Blu-ray image. The only way to present 4X3 on Blu-ray is with permanent black bars burned into the image. 16X9 and 4X3 only apply to standard definition material. So one of three things is possible here: 1. ABNCB is a stretched 1080p image, 2. It is not even HD but 480i and possibly misflagged, or 3. The people on that forum don't have a clue what they are talking about.

Mark-P said:

3. The people on that forum don't have a clue what they are talking about.

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^ That's not really fair - Blu-ray.com is the go-to place if you want to have detailed discussions about slipcovers, steelbooks, extras and other superfluous nonsense.


Seriously though, it's weird that the same guy who I originally linked to last week has only now worked out that one of the movies is stretched to 16:9 - and quite obviously so from the screenshots. Two other people confirm it, so inaccurate language about "flagged for 16:9" aside, it seems quite certain that A Boy Named Charlie Brown has been incorrectly encoded at the wrong aspect ratio.


As for it being SD, along with the aspect ratio debacle, someone who works for Umbrella Entertainment posted earlier in that thread saying:

CBS supplied the HD masters for A Boy Named Charlie Brown and Snoopy Come Home directly to Umbrella, and we used them as supplied, so any matting/cropping was out of our control. We had originally intended to source film to create our own, but are required to use the material as supplied by the licensor if they have it.

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Hard to believe CBS would be so clueless about this property.

If we have to change our tv settings, that's going to leave many people out.


Because of the nature of HD, most televisions have no aspect ratio controls for HD material like they do with SD. Unlike the variety of options that I have for SD material, I also don't have any way to mess with HD aspect ratios on my tv. I don't even think anything like my PS3 can do it at the player end.


If the only way I can display this properly is via reverting down to 480p, what's the point when the reason I'm buying this for is the HD upgrade? And I love Snoopy Come Home, but I'm not paying $40 for what now amounts to a single Peanuts movie on Blu-Ray.


"CBS supplied the HD masters for A Boy Named Charlie Brown and Snoopy Come Home directly to Umbrella, and we used them as supplied, so any matting/cropping was out of our control. We had originally intended to source film to create our own, but are required to use the material as supplied by the licensor if they have it."


Looks like they've taken some cues from the Shout Factory model of not looking at what they're releasing...


I don't buy for a second that their hands were tied with this. If something was so obviously wrong, it's their obligation to the consumer to resolve this problem with CBS and get a proper 16:9 or open matte HD source for this film.

LeoA said:

If something was so obviously wrong, it's their obligation to the consumer to resolve this problem with CBS and get a proper 16:9 or open matte HD source for this film.

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The latest post in that thread seems to indicate that Umbrella Entertainment is going to do nothing:

I asked Umbrella about the stretched image on "A Boy Named Charlie Brown" on twitter and their response was "This was CBS's choice of HD presentation".

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