Buck Rogers in the 25th Century: The Complete Series (Blu Ray) to be released down under. (1 Viewer)

[Scott511]

I'd really love to see them tackle Cliff-Hangers,

Count me in for Cliff-Hangers.

I wouldn't mind Johnson's Shadow Chasers either. I recorded all that aired on ABC, but never came across the unaired episodes.

 

[Worth]

I remember Cliff-Hangers as a kid. They never did air the final episode.

 

[AndyMcKinney]

I remember Cliff-Hangers as a kid. They never did air the final episode.

At least not in the USA. I have a VHS copy of the February, 1980 airing in Australia (the TV station's announcer made a brief announcement about David Janssen's death during the end credits), so I finally got to see how it ended for the other two serials (since Dracula had already wound up, they presented two installments of Secret Empire with the final Susan Williams chapter in-between.

Anyway, sorry to drag this thread off-topic for so long!

 

[Darby67]

Just wanted to add my voice to the chorus calling for a Cliffhangers! complete series Region 1 release of all 11 episodes!

And now back to Buck Rogers

 

[Scott511]

My Buck Rogers set arrived yesterday. Only made it through disc one so far, looks fantastic to me. It appears it's they are the prints used for the original DVD sets transferred to HD. It IS true HD, not an upscale.

 

[Bryan^H]

I want the Buck Rogers Blu Ray set badly. It is too bad it is region locked

 

[David Norman]

I want the Buck Rogers Blu Ray set badly. It is too bad it is region locked

Well, it's easy enough to fix and pretty cheap right now even if you just want a very occasional player.

Monoprice has the Seiki All Region play for about $40-50. It the same one Sears clearance last year for about the same price.
Not fancy, I wouldn't expect to last forever, but it a nice little option

 

[Scott511]

I want the Buck Rogers Blu Ray set badly. It is too bad it is region locked

Actually, it's not. I originally started watching in my all region player, but decided to test it in my Sony Region A player. Everything plays fine in the A machine, except of course the SD content.

 

[David Norman]

Definitely some confusion on the issue. Madman Ent even in pre-release even posted it would be Region B locked, but you're the second person to say it's at least A/B for the BD material.

Around $65 at Deep Discount though they have release date listed as 8/26
I think a hair over $61 direct from Madman Entertainment.
$61-62 from JBHIFI if you can get them to remove GST which I've found difficult at best
Fishpond.com $70
Fishpond,com.au - around $64
ezydvd -- $66

I think the next time Deep Discount has a 15% code I may try them. They seem to have a decent supply of imports sometimes quite a bit less than ordering direct though the backorder/cancellation rates are higher than normal

 

[Scott511]

This is the first time I've ordered directly from Madman (I'm tired fighting JB over the GST) and my set arrived 8 days after it shipped. That was amazing considering how long some orders take to arrive when shipping to the states.

 

[David Norman]

And just for fun
tcm.com $61.95+shipping add promocode SAVETEN for 10off50 so net price is around $58.

There release date like a lot of the US sites is listed at 8/26 since I think they're all serviced by the same Warehouse Wholesaler (AES/SuperD)

 

[AndyMcKinney]

Well, I went ahead and bit with eBay's $10.00-off coupon (which is suposed to only good through 6PM Pacific today, or 9PM Eastern). The code is CFEBFLASH10OFF.

I just placed my order with a New Zealand seller which gets me the set tax-free for just over US$50.00!

 

[mark-edk]

A review in The Digital Bits says despite being listed as Region B it's All Region.

 

[AndyMcKinney]

yes, that is true. The only thing that some US buyers should know, though, is that some of the items on the set which are in standard definition will be PAL/50hz instead of the US standard NTSC/60hz. Things like the theatrical version of the pilot, and the feature-length version of Flight of the War Witch. Not a concern to me as I have a fully multi-system TV and player, but something that people buying from US sellers like Deep Discount and Amazon should know before they buy. Of course, if they have the previous DVD set (like I do), then they have all the SD stuff in NTSC anyway, so no compatibility or PAL-speedup issues on those.

 

[Craig Beam]

Scott, are the pre-title previews/clips intact?

 

[Scott511]

Scott, are the pre-title previews/clips intact?

Yes, if I remember correctly every episode has it's teaser.

 

[AndyMcKinney]

I don't have this set yet, but I suspect the teasers are the same as on the DVD, meaning the 'syndication' version (where "Tonight on Buck Rogers" is either shortened to "...on Buck Rogers" or deleted altogether from William Conrad's narration).

If no one else confirms this before my set arrives, I'll check back in and let you know which version is on there.

 

[AndyMcKinney]

Well, I've had a look.

As I suspected, all of the episode teasers (at least on the first season) have had the shortened syndication version of William Conrad's narration. It's pretty obvious, as there's only music/FX (no dialogue) for the time it took him to say "Tonight on Buck Rogers" in the original.

Also, annoyingly, it looks like they only remastered a single title sequence and used it on the whole season. The earliest episodes have a slightly different title sequence (a shot or two of Buck near the end are different in the early version) and for anyone who owns the soundtrack, those early episode should have also had a different arrangement of the opening theme music. Both the sequence and theme music are replaced with the normal first season version.

Sadly, this isn't unusual for TV show remastering these days (even Star Trek).

I'm sure this wasn't anything to do with Madman, though. Probably just cost-cutting at Universal.

 

[Bryan^H]

A few nit picks aside the picture quality is so much better though.

I compared DVD to BD 'Time of the Hawk'. The BD is so much better. I actually thought the SD DVD looked great until I saw the difference.