Antone received South Park commentary cd's yet? (1 Viewer)

[Thomas H G]

Check cashed on 1-6. I don't expect them till like Feb.

 

[JustinCleveland]

Anyone get them yet? Anyone? Bueller?

I'm planning on calling on thursday... at that point it'll have been a month since they cashed my check, long enough that the discs should have been here.

 

[GuruAskew]

According to another post on the southparkstudios.com BBS, Comedy Central is no longer answering the given phone number. It's starting to look like a fiasco is brewing.

 

[Adam_WM]

I just called the # (1-800-441-5449). THey are closed for the evening. I'll call tomorrow and we'll see what goes down!

 

[Jeff Krispow]

According to another post on the southparkstudios.com BBS, Comedy Central is no longer answering the given phone number. It's starting to look like a fiasco is brewing.

Yeah, right... folks, don't believe this statement at all. It's 100% incorrect. It's unconfirmed statements like these that will start getting people angry and up-in-arms over nothing at all. (Not your fault, Bill... I know you were just reporting what was posted elsewhere.)

Just like most of you, I mailed out my CD form + check waaay back on the DVD's release date, 11.12.2002. Tick tock tick tock... my check got cashed on 12.20.2002. Tick tock tick tock tick tock... a month later and I still haven't received my CDs.

Well, I just gave the (800) number a call to find out what was up, and they answered on the second ring. I told the Customer Service rep what I was calling about, and she immediately looked me up in their computer to make sure I was in there and to verify my shipping address (yup, I was in there and all info was correct). She then checked to see when my discs would ship, and it turned out they just went out a couple days ago. She said that since I was in California, I should allow them 5 or so days to arrive, which means I might finally see them, err... hear them..., by this weekend.

Apparently they HAVE been getting a lot of calls about the status of the CDs. First off, unlike what many of us have been assuming, their statement of "allow 6 weeks for delivery" does NOT start from the time you send your check — the clock starts ticking at the time Comedy Central cashes your check. But at least the discs ARE now shipping out (obviously, the earlier you sent in your checks, the earlier you'll receive your CDs). The rep said that the response has been overwhelming, and it was her understanding that the entire initial batch of CDs was reserved for those folks who ordered the South Park DVD Set directly from Comedy Central.

While I'm sure this many not sound quite kosher to some of you, this makes perfect sense to me from a business standpoint — the folks who order the set directly from CC have priority, because they MUST receive their CD set along with their DVDs. Since their DVDs ship out also immediately, that means they must keep a separate supply of CD sets accessible only for those orders. That's why those of us who bought our DVDs elsewhere were given a six-week delivery time. Before they could even fulfill our orders, they needed to make sure they had another large separate stock of CD sets on hand solely for use with our CD-set-only premium form orders. They need to get these CD sets pressed, packaged, and shipped to them, and that obviously takes a little time.

But the good news is that they have received their new supply of CD sets, and have just started shipping them out to all of us. So, from the time they cashed my check to the time I'll be receiving it, it will have been about "5 weeks" for delivery.

Again... contrary to Bill's message a couple posts earlier, Comedy Central IS answering the phone... IS talking to people... and IS fulfilling everyone's order for the CD Commentary Set. I don't know who started that rumor, but Comedy Central isn't stupid... they certainly are not going to risk a class action consumer fraud lawsuit by cashing thousands of checks and failing to deliver the product.

Well, there are your answers... and that should hopefully clear up everything. It's certainly a relief for me. If any of you have any questions about your order — to see if your check arrived, when your discs will ships, or just to confirm your shipping address, then just call them at (800) 441-5449. They were more than happy to help me out with my questions, and I'm sure they will extend that courtesy to everyone else as well. Just make sure you call them during their normal business hours (they are in a different time zone).

Regards,

Jeff

 

[GuruAskew]

Here's the post from the southparkstudios.com BBS I imagine the guy who posted this just had bad luck and continuously got a busy signal. In any case, I'll be happy if people start recieving their CD's.

 

[Tom Ryan]

Well, for those of you who are still waiting for your cds, the episodes have been released in the Divx format with optional commentary tracks on the internet. Since we own both the DVDs and the commentary cds (even if they haven't been delivered) it's nice for us as consumers to be able to obtain these since the commentary track runs right with the episode, and if you want to skip around in the episode you don't go out of sync with the show and the commentary. If anyone wants to know where I found them, PM me. Hopefully this post doesn't step on any toes; it seems totally fair for people who've actually paid for this stuff to be able to get copies that have the commentaries synced up like they should've been with the original DVDs.

 

[GuruAskew]

There's a new development in the South Park commentary CD fiasco. According to this post, two people have recieved their original envelopes back with "P.O. Box closed" stamped on them. I'm inclined to believe that the seemingly acceptable customer service that Jeff Krispow got was either a fluke or some sort of deception made to appease the consumers. Let's look at the facts: the CD's haven't arrived an entire month after the maximum amount they should have taken, (according to the call, Comedy Central claimed they were going by the period from when your check or money order was cashed but the standard time period is judged by when you send away. Trust me, I'm an action figure collector and have ordered my fair share of mailaway offers) you have people claiming to not be able to get through on the phone for large periods of time (see the link in my earlier post) and you have people getting their envelopes back. This is unacceptable, pure and simple. Quite frankly, I'll be surprised if I even get my CD's.

 

[Adam_WM]

Well what about those of us who's checks have been cashed already? HMMM?!?!?!?!?

UPDATE: I just called customer service. My order will be shipped out next week... We'll see....

 

[Haden]

I also just received my envelope back a few days ago with the "Post Office Closed" stamp on it! I thought maybe I had miswritten the address on the envelope and just haven't bothered to open it up yet and check the one on the form. But now I know it wasn't a mistake on MY part. This really sucks. I'm not going to bother mailing it again... I'll just try and download the MP3s for FREE now. I'm glad they didn't get the chance to cash my measly $3.50 check.

 

[Juan C Toro]

I spoke with Antone, and he hasn't received the CD yet!

 

[Tom Ryan]

Well, for anyone who has newgroups access, all 13 episodes are available with commentary on alt.binaries.southpark

 

[CraigF]

Excuse me for being an idiot, but...

How the heck am I supposed to use this commentary CD if I ever get it? How will I reasonably be able to use it while viewing the episodes on DVD? How can I listen to a CD (in a separate CD player) on the same system at the same time? Listening to the commentaries on their own is a little too dumb for even an SP fan IMO, sure isn't the purpose of a commentary.

I couldn't figure this out, so I never sent away...I hope they give a credit to those who bought the original package when they upgrade it??? Considering the unfixed audio problems, "missing" commentaries, and now this, what a fiasco.

 

[Tom Ryan]

Craig: Well, if you have a DVD-ROM drive and another drive of some kind that at least plays cds, you can play them both together. The commentaries start right when the actual episode does (immediately after the credits finish). Or, you can rip the commentaries to mp3 and then play them on your computer.

If you're trying to listen to them with your home theater setup, I guess it would get more complicated since you'd have to have both a DVD and a cd playing through your system. For my money, the best bet is just to try to download those DIVX copies that have the commentaries built in. They're really nice, I've listened to three or four commentaries so far...Matt and Trey are really informative, funny guys.

 

[CraigF]

Thanks Tom. Yeah, it would be on my HT system, there's not really any way to do it without an audio mixer...
I think the intros by Matt and Trey are at least as funny as the episodes, for some reason they really get me.
Edit: Just thought of a hack: could feed the CD player output into the TV's own speakers, which are normally unused, and then have a remote in each hand...

 

[Tom Foley]

How much more of an absolute joke can this become? When a company says, "Allow six weeks for delivery," they're NOT talking about from the time that they processed the check. Six weeks means that about six weeks after you send the check, you're supposed to receive it! Otherwise, how the hell else is the person at home supposed to know when the clock starts ticking? When they receive the check? When they cash the check? Those delivery times have the time for postage to and from built into it.
Comedy Central/Warner just completely messed up on this. Talk about a complete lack of professionalism. I mean, this is their job! This is what they're hired to do! And up and down the line, the legal department, the DVD department, Comedy Central, have managed to give everybody a little bit of insight into just why AOL Time Warner's stock is where it is - in the toilet. No, I'm not saying THIS is why AOL is so undervalued. But perhaps it's a clue as to how things are being run at there.
Let's not forget that the DVD itself is of very poor quality. I've seen South Park episodes in SVCD format that I doubt came from regular cable (if it did, it was the PPV special from last year). South Park can and SHOULD look WAY BETTER than it did on these discs. They just didn't want to go through the expense of remastering. Where are their priorities? Isn't South Park just about the only thing that's keeping CC afloat? Didn't they anticipate a HUGE DVD audience?
And let us also not forget the whole reason for this ridiculous commentary-on-CD fiasco. Matt and Trey said something so upsetting and disturbing on these discs that Warner felt compelled to take them off the DVDs. SO HORRIBLE were these comments that Warner couldn't even risk the idea of the eight-year-olds who only watch South Park ( ) hearing them and warping their fragile little minds! Well, Matt told us what their comments were about - the movie Contact (released by Warner). I listened to the "inappropriate" comments just now (Ep. 111 - Tom's Rhinoplasty) (from the MP3, no, I have yet to receive my CDs, even though the check was cashed more than a month ago)and here is what they said (*potential* spoilers ahead):
At about 7:05 of the track, Trey explains that it was "important" "to get across how bad the movie Contact really is and was." They explain how a bunch of people from the show were "super-excited" to walk down to the theater because they "thought it looked like it could be a really cool movie." But they didn't like it, and were "angry" about it, because "it's so bad, but you wait, even though, through all the suckyness and badness, you wait because you think, well, I gotta see what the aliens look like." But it turned out to be just her dad, and that left them "angry." According to Matt, "that was really when I really stopped liking Robert Zemeckis and Jodie Foster." Trey also thought that Castaway, another Zemeckis movie (released by Fox), and everything he's done since then, was "crap" as well. They both liked Back To The Future , but they thought that since then Zemeckis has "just gone off the f---in' deep end." He said that he got "Spielberg-itis", and warned people "Don't get near Spielberg, or you'll catch it."
What perhaps was more offensive than that (unless you're Robert Zemeckis) was when they later explained that Comedy Central took a joke about yeast infections out of a show(one of the few times, it seems, that Trey and Matt were overruled). They say it was because "most of our executives were women at the time, and they just weren't going to go for that," and that they couldn't get away with anything that had to do with "female hygiene," but that anything similarly related to men was just fine.
They also slightly made fun of David Hasselhoff, saying they were "embarrassed talking to him" when they ran into him, but really, it's David Hasselhoff, wouldn't you be?
So there you have it, folks. All this inconvenience and incompetence over nothing that was any more offensive than any of the subject matter contained in any sixth season episode. I haven't listened to all the commentaries, but of the ones I have, Matt and Trey are so tame you cannot believe something they said caused Warner to take away the commentaries.
If Warner/Comedy Central is serious about doing good DVD business for this show, they damn well better take their time with the second season and do it right: high quality transfers, REAL supplements (like behind the scenes), and, if Matt and Trey are willing to risk it, unedited commentaries that ARE ACTUALLY CONTAINED WITHIN THE FRIGGIN DVD!!
Thanks for reading my looong post.

 

[CraigF]

Actually, I have made disparaging comments about the quality of this release in various forums. There was such a complete lack of consideration in the production, such a total cash grab and product dump, that I had to say something. For now, I am unlikely to purchase any other CC or SP release unless they give some credit to prior purchasers of this disaster. I had the option to return this package, but chose to keep it...it would be nice if CC tried to win back some customer loyalty.

Hard to believe that commentary stuff was cut. After all, the intros make fun of people with certain sexual preferences, and of Native Americans, etc....I guess a yeast infection (which men also regularly get) is more offensive (but more fun to get).

 

[RaulR]

After hearing of the disappointing audio/video quality and the missing commentaries, I lost most of my enthusiasm for the SP season sets. The business about the commentary CDs only being available to U.S. residents was the last straw. I was intending to buy every single season as it was released, but not anymore. I don't want even one of them. I had bought Season 1, but I sold it a few days ago. It might be a pathetic little act of rebellion no one else will know or care about, but I'm doing it anyway. DVDs are supposed to entertain, not aggravate.

*end rant*

 

[Tom Ryan]

Matt and Trey also make some not-so-flattering but oh-so-funny comments about Bob Saget and how they keep running into him after insulting him on the show or in print, but he always says "Hey, I saw that! It was great"...they just think he's a "douche"

 

[Dan Rudolph]

I wouldn't have bought this set if I hadn't seen it on sale for $24.95 and had a 10% coupon. After seeing the video quality, I'm still not sure it was a great deal. I realize South Park is no Ben Hur picture-wise, but the visual noise in the picture was definitely avoidable. I'm dowloading the commentaries. I'll order the actual discs if the look neat and anyone else actually receives them.