Banacek - The first season (1 Viewer)

[Brent Avery]

I was trying to find a copy and just found one this week - its not easy to find locally. I had read on Amazon in the reviews that the image was not that great but so far from what I saw of the first episode it looks very decent, certainly better than what I expected. Is there anyone else looking forward to buying this dvd?

 

[Jeff#]

What did you expect, Brent? When I watched Banacek in late 1980s syndicated reruns it looked as great as COLUMBO and McCloud --- no remastering required. Mystery Movie shows and other Universal series always do.

 

[Katherine_K]

I saw it this morning at a BJ's in North Carolina.

 

[mark-edk]

I believe the episodes are complete, but most of them have had additional fades for commercial breaks inserted into them, often at inopportune points.

 

[John Stell]

I've viewed the whole set and am pretty happy with it. The picture quality isn't as good as the Columbos were, but the episodes are still very watchable. And I got it for about $18 so that's a great deal. Bring on season 2 (and put the dang pilot on there too!)

 

[Corey3rd]

You're talking analog masters of a show that you saw on TV nearly 25 years ago. Things age. If they can go back to the source negative to strike HD masters, they should - just for the sake of being able to use them on the TV of tomorrow.

Also there is a space issue since they are putting nearly 5 hours of video on the DVD. I just rented them from Blockbuster online.

 

[Blimpboy]

Does anyone else think these are edited? There are a lot of early fades and some music doesn't match up between scenes sometimes.

 

[jamoon2006]

There's a nice article from Sunday's New York Times on-line about the release.

I can't post the link, but if you go to their Arts - Television section you can find it..."A Slick Sleuth From the '70s Is Back...on a Budget" by Frank DeCaro.

 

[RickardL]

Any news on the pilot or the second season?

 

[jamoon2006]

TVShowsonDVD.com reported a while back that Season 2 (with the pilot) would be out January 22.

 

[Stan]

Anybody having problems with Season One?

I recently purchased it from Amazon, Disc One would never load, tried three different players. Disc Two was just fine.

Amazon sent a replacement, same problem.

After two failures, they're refunding what I paid, so looks like I'm out of luck.

This was there response...................


Thank you for writing to us at Amazon.com.

I'm sorry to hear that you experienced the same problem with your
replacement shipment.

As it seems that the problem with this item is more widespread than
we originally thought, we are not able to send another replacement.

We will gladly refund you in full for the return of this item. If
the item was part of a set, please return the entire set.

 

[Mary_P]

Huh. I watched part of disc 1 this weekend. I didn't have any problems playing it, and that was on a player that's been a little persnickety in the past few weeks.

My only complaints are that the transfers don't look great, and appear to have been made from syndication prints, with fadeouts for commercial breaks coming, in some cases, mid-act. It does look to me like there's been some editing done, but I don't know these shows well enough to point to anything specific.