Buffy Season 3 problems ? (1 Viewer)

[Grant H]

My disc 2 was loose too. I think it was only half snapped in and had just come loose. It did not appear scratched, but I'll examine it more carefully under a lamp soon.
These were the same kind of digipacks my Babylon 5 had. That had like 2 loose discs with minor scratches, and even some broken spindles.
My Buffy Season 2 on the other hand, have totally different spindles that make getting the discs out nearly impossible.
Can't win for losing I guess.
Any more word on if there's any truth of the sets being defective and some stores recalling them? Maybe just because of all the exchange issues due to the loose discs? I can imagine the stores would complain about that pretty quickly.

 

[Bleddyn Williams]

I had Angel floating in my set. The disc has surface scuffs.

I went region-free so I could start collecting the R2 Hong Kong Legends discs here in the US. Those of you familiar with HKL will know that they have quite a rep for floaters!

As these discs were sent from the UK, I was loath to return them unless they didn't play. So far, I don't think I've ever had one with a playback problem.

Basically, I no longer care about surface marks on discs unless they actually affect playback. I just don't think its worth returning a set for the surface appearance of a disc alone.

 

[Adam Tyner]

My disc two was fine, but disc one was floating around. A couple of small, nasty scratches, but I haven't noticed any glitches in playback so far...

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

No floaters, but the plastic holder for disc six was already starting to detach from the cardboard backing when I first opened it.
Regards,

 

[Lyle_JP]

Discs one and two were loose in mine. Disc one had major scuffing, but I haven't watched it all the way through and don't know when I will since it has two of the worst episodes of the season. I'll probably just replace it.
As for whether or not Season 4 should be in 16:9 or not, let me add a few more gallons of gas to the fire.
Many of us 16:9 set owners have sets which simply have NO GOOD WAY of attractively presenting 4:3 material. Generally, I'm an OAR kind of guy, and letterboxing has never looked bad to me, but 4:3 looks so bad on my set (in all modes) that I am positively salivating over the idea of Season 4 in 16:9, even if the extra picture is dead space, simply to avoid the ugly distortions that I must otherwise endure.
So I have two ideas that Fox Home Video could do which would satisfy everyone, and give everyone the option of both 16:9 and 4:3 presentations on the same disc with virtually no more overhead in space.
Solution 1 (for 4:3 set owners): Use the Pan and Scan on the fly option. Since the 4:3 presentation is always the dead center of the 16:9 frame, Buffy is an ideal candidate for this solution. This has already been done (accidentally) on the Criterion Collection disc of The Last Temptation of Christ, so we all know it works.
Solution 2 (for 16:9 set owners): Use a subtitle track to create asthetically pleasing black matte side bars for those who wish to see the 4:3 presentation on their widescreen sets. This has already been done for vertical matting on the "The Bride of Re-Animator" DVD, so again, we know it works.
The best thing about both solutions is that it they both can be done on the same disc with virtually no extra space being taken (the P&S on the fly option is just an on/off flag, and the matte bars are a never-changing small subtitle stream).
If Fox made Buffy Season 4 16:9 with the above two options it would make absolutely everybody happy. I hope Fox is still a studio that likes to use every technology that DVD has to offer to create a superior product.
-Lyle J.P.

 

[Mark_Wilson]

Its just wrong to watch 4:3 stretched to 16:9. You need to get a DVD player that does aspect ratio control (JVC, or Panasonic RP91) or get yourself an iScan Pro for 4:3 material. The iScan will even give you motion adaptive de-interlacing...but this is a topic for another thread.

 

[Joseph Young]

Disc 1 was floating around in my set when I opened it, but other than that everything was a-ok.

The video detail & black level is markedly better than Season 2, the sound is leagues ahead of either season 1 or 2 (the pro logic is really immersive). I noticed also that the opening music for Episodes 1 and 2 was for previous seasons and not synched to the video, but it caused me no worry. Not something I will fuss over.

~j

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

I just came from Best Buy and picked up my season 3, and aside from a loose disc 2 mine's 5x5 (sorry, couldn't resist).
Lyle,
I have a 48" 16x9 and the way I watch 4x3 material is simple, I watch them at night with the lights off and mattes that I made for the sides to cover the grey areas. At night in the dark you can't even tell it's a widescreen tv, it looks like a big 4x3 set.
Agreed though, their is no really good way to display 4x3 on a 16x9. However, OAR must prevail over my own petty desire to have it fill my screen.
Jeff, did ya miss me the whole few hours I was gone?

 

[Andrew_Gordy]

Oh man I have a huge problem! All my discs are unblemished, no scratches or fingerprints, but I can't seem to play disc 5 episode 16 Dopplegangland!! Arghh thats my favourite episode. I tried watching it on my Xbox and it would freeze about a couple of minutes into the show. On my sony 550 it plays well enough until it hits chapter stop 5,6,and 7 during those scenes it just starts to freeze. Anybody else have this problem??

 

[Bleddyn Williams]

Many of us 16:9 set owners have sets which simply have NO GOOD WAY of attractively presenting 4:3 material. Generally, I'm an OAR kind of guy, and letterboxing has never looked bad to me, but 4:3 looks so bad on my set (in all modes) that I am positively salivating over the idea of Season 4 in 16:9...

Lyle, my 16:9 set has light grey bars on the side for 4:3 material. I use the stretch modes to avoid them, like many do.

However, when watching 4:3 DVDs, the player puts black bars on the sides, which I find fine for that material - no more distracting than letterboxing.

Do you have different colored side bars when you watch DVD? Or do you find even black side bars displeasing?

 

[Lyle_JP]

The problems with 4:3 mode on my set are this:
* The grey bars are obscenely bright.
* The image is usually not centered, often it is grossly to one side or the other.
* The grey bars do some horrible overscan to the 4:3 image, and uneven overscan at that (it's about 9% on one side and about 12% on the other).
* My set over-squeezes the image so that it's not close to 4:3, much more like 1:1.
* The set also introduces some noticeable Y/C delay issue in the 4:3 mode not present in the standard modes.
* The only other usefull setting for 4:3 material besides Narrow is a mode called Stretched, which looks okay but won't work with a progressive scan signal.
I don't own a player with scaling capabilities. If everyone here would like to chip in and buy me an RP-91 I'll gladly shut up.
I still stick by my solutions listed above. They would give everyone the choice of a 16:9 or 4:3 image distortion free no matter which type of set they own.
-Lyle J.P.
P.S. For all who are wondering, I own a Mitsubishi WS-65907. The Mits may seem like a bargain to many but you get what you pay for. The 4:3 solutions all suck and the red push is atrocious.

 

[Mark_Wilson]

Lyle, I've got two Mits, a 65905 and a 55807. My 807 had all those problems and I got them all ISF'd out, except for the y/c delay from the built in ntsc tuner. Beautiful picture and geometry now. Highly recommended.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

Lyle,
i'm of the opinion that with enough patience and obsessive calibration, one can get any monitor to look great.

I wouldn't be so hard on your Mits, you can easily clear up that red push problem with an inexpensive device from Radio Shack called an 'Attenuator'. If you have questions feel free to pm me and i'll explain how it works.

 

[MikeAlletto]

Did ANYONE get an untouched Season 3?

All of mine where firmly stuck in their hubs when I opened it.

 

[James Reader]

Lyle
I'm strongly of the opinion that Buffy season 4 should never had been released in widescreen in the UK. The 'dead space' is a minor issue. Erroneous visuals creeping into the frame are not.
It was only released in widescreen in the first place because uneducated 16:9 owners over here, who knew nothing about the production of the series, kicked up a fuss (and of course it was shown that way on the BBC who themselves go out of their way to show material in widescreen now - even cropping their own 4:3 shows).
The P&S on the fly could work. As I stated earlier the Stargate SG-1 releases in the UK are encoded this way (and possibly in the US too - does anyone want to give it a try) but subtitle matting would obviously not work at all, resulting in a windowbox on 4:3 screens.
Your insistence that the series be released in widescreen, just to satisfy your equipment's demands is no better than the so-called 'Joe Sixpack' mentality this board looks down upon.

 

[Blu]

Well I took my Buffy set back yet again to WalMart. They had 3 sets in the back that they brought to the dept to check out.
I asked the manager if I could open one up first and see if it was ok. He said sure, so I did and it was bad, the first disc was floating and scratched like my set was.
So on to the second set, same, third? Same.
He apologized and I said it wasn't his fault of Walmart's for that matter but the company that produced the sets in the first place. At least those sets are going back to the manufacturer.
I want my Buffy S3!!!!

 

[Grant H]

I sympahtize with those of you who have 4:3 issues on your HDTV.
I strictly conform to OAR, but for me to do so I have to drop out of progressive scan on my 38" HDTV.
Had I realized how important the scaling feature would be for me (watching a lot of Buffy and X-Files, and some day my replaced Due South set) I'd have opted for the RP-91 too. Though I've read it's not very good with video-based material. Then again, if Buffy is flagged wrong, this may be a null issue with Buffy (just have to be subjected to combing effects from what I understand)
I may wait around and some-day add on the much-hyped, much-less-proven Philips DVD963SA which supposedly boasts scaling and a Faroudja chip. Right now it's a pre-order item at Onecall for $499.00. Not all that cheap to me when it's a third the price of my HDTV. And could I ever spend that much on a "Philips"? Even Panny's have never been heralded as the greatest of DVD players I didn't think. Some JVC's scale, but I always see JVC in "glitch" threads, Panasonics too.
I really wish the new Philips was a changer. That's what I really wanted and why I didn't get the RP-91 over the new Sony Progressive model I did get (that and it cost less than half as much.)
Why the companies can't pack the best features in a changer I don't know. Changers are great for watching series on DVD since you can keep an X-Files, a Buffy, a Bablon 5 or whatever in at all times and still pop in a movie or 2, yet no changer seems to deliver a scaling feature, a must for all of us with "stupid" HDTV'S that lock into Full, or whatever each company calls it, and stretches the image width whether it's anamorphic or not forcing us to cut our resolution in half and watch crappy interlaced images to preserve the aspect ratio. Someone suggested an iScan. (Seriour or not, I checked it out) and the best one to tack onto your existing Progessive scan player can be found for $1000 on eBay. HAHAHAHA. Even the cheaper models would run you about the same as another DVD player, and do we really want another box?
It's F***ed up stuff like this that makes me envy Joe Six Packs with $50 DVD players and TV's that are lucky to have RCA A/V inputs.:b
Sorry for the rant, especially since it doesn't have all that much to do with Buffy after all that. I hope I don't run into a problem with "Doppleganger" after reading the above.

 

[Robert Ringwald]

What are some of the mistakes in the 16:9 version of THE BODY?
I'd like to see pictures.

 

[Mark_Wilson]

You must be looking at the iScan Ultra, its $1k. You can get an iScan V2 new for $400 on ebay and an iScan Pro for $500.

 

[Joel C]

I'm still waiting on mine, but I thought everyone said the previouslies WERE included, at least on some of the episodes?