Casper the Friendly Ghost: The Complete Collection (1945-1963) - Blu-ray Release? (1 Viewer)

[Joey Gunz]

With Christmas coming up soon I was thinking about adding this DVD to my collection. I remember as a kid I would come home from school and watch the classic Casper toons on TV. Happy memories. I would much prefer to have this on blu-ray so I was wondering what are the chances that it will be released on that format in the near future? I'm guessing it's slim to none but maybe someone with more knowledge about it has some information on that?
And if anyone has this? How does the DVD picture quality look on an HDTV set? Thanks for any information.

 

They look ok. Certainly better than they were when I watched them around 1979-81 on a local channel. The ones produced for television don't fare as well, but they are all more than watchable, with great colors. I loved this set.

 

[Joey Gunz]

Thanks Eric.

 

[Mark Y]

With Christmas coming up soon I was thinking about adding this DVD to my collection. I remember as a kid I would come home from school and watch the classic Casper toons on TV. Happy memories. I would much prefer to have this on blu-ray so I was wondering what are the chances that it will be released on that format in the near future? I'm guessing it's slim to none but maybe someone with more knowledge about it has some information on that?
And if anyone has this? How does the DVD picture quality look on an HDTV set? Thanks for any information.

I don't have a HD TV set, so I don't know if I can definitively answer your question, but best I can tell, all but one of the "Harvey-owned" theatrical Casper cartoons on the set (and at least a good chunk of the made-for-TV ones) were sourced from re-edited 1998 video masters for The Harveytoon Show, which initially ran on the Fox Family Channel. This means the main titles were replaced with a shortened intro created for the 1998 series with a more modern Harveytoons logo and a freeze frame of the cartoon's title accompanied by a clip of the intro music. Additionally, many of the cartoons appear to be either time-compressed or have some other speed issue such as possibly a PAL to NTSC conversion. I also seem to recall that there were some minor edits here and there. So I imagine these would not translate well to High Definition. "Casper's Spree Under The Sea" has full main and end titles, but it's the Harvey version. It's possible that this specific cartoon and maybe some of the made-for-TV ones might have actually had new film transfers done (if that's the case, then HD theoretically could be possible), but who knows. The early (pre-Harvey) shorts "The Friendly Ghost," "There's Good Boos To-Night" and "A Haunting We Will Go" were lifted from previously released public domain DVDs.
So I guess the short answer is, based on the source material, there'd be no benefit to getting this on Blu-Ray unless they did a major upgrade and remaster from film elements. So you might as well grab the DVD while it's available.
Hope that helps!

 

[Ruz-El]

If this is the set you're talking about, well, it's not pretty. I bought it for the early theatrical shorts and they look horrendous on my modest HDTV. I don't think these were restored at all. Full of scratches, hiss, pops, hairs, it's the polar opposite to what Warners have done with the Loony Toons, or TCM with the Jolly Frolics. So piss poor was the early stuff that I bailed on the set. I never did watch past the first disc.

So be warned.

 

[DeWilson]

The Harvey Libary has been so mishandled in the last two decades it's unbelievable.
But then most of the animated series controled by Classic Media are a mess,or have been tampered with.

 

[Joey Gunz]

If this is the set you're talking about, well, it's not pretty. I bought it for the early theatrical shorts and they look horrendous on my modest HDTV. I don't think these were restored at all. Full of scratches, hiss, pops, hairs, it's the polar opposite to what Warners have done with the Loony Toons, or TCM with the Jolly Frolics. So piss poor was the early stuff that I bailed on the set. I never did watch past the first disc.

So be warned.

Yep, that's the one. I may have no choice but to buy it on DVD anyway since it may be the only way to see the entire classic Casper collection. But I'm not willing to pay $22 (AMAZON's price) for something that is going to look pretty poor on my HDTV. If it goes down a little more (and it will), then I may pick it up - warts and all. Thanks for the heads up on the condition.

 

I'm pretty picky about picture quality. If you go into it just wanting to re-experience a childhood favorite, you will love this. Trust me. I'm the biggest Casper fan and while I would love to own the shorts as originally presented in theaters, I can live with how they were presented when I was growing up in the early 1980s. They look acceptable. And the fellow who helped with this project did his best..they worked with the elments they had.

 

[Ron1973]

Yep, that's the one. I may have no choice but to buy it on DVD anyway since it may be the only way to see the entire classic Casper collection. But I'm not willing to pay $22 (AMAZON's price) for something that is going to look pretty poor on my HDTV. If it goes down a little more (and it will), then I may pick it up - warts and all. Thanks for the heads up on the condition.

Joey, I don't really know what type of picture quality you're looking at on the Casper sets but my experience has been that generally an HDTV will improve the picture somewhat. I have a 55" LED LG and I've watched some stuff with some crappy quality and it does seem to improve it.

 

[Joey Gunz]

Joey, I don't really know what type of picture quality you're looking at on the Casper sets but my experience has been that generally an HDTV will improve the picture somewhat. I have a 55" LED LG and I've watched some stuff with some crappy quality and it does seem to improve it.

The picture quality of a DVD film (or TV show) seem to vary on HDTV sets. For instance, The old STAR TREK films looked terrible on my 52" Sony BRAVIA HDTV. But the CLOVERFIELD dvd looked pretty darn good. It wasn't HD quality but it was very acceptable.
I'm going to take a chance on CASPER and buy it. I don't think I really have a choice in that matter if I want to own all of the classic episodes now. A blu ray release is looking extremely unlikely. However, I'm going to wait just a little bit longer before I purchase it. I know the price will come down because I saw AMAZON selling it for $17 (very briefly) a few weeks ago. Believe me, I'm kicking myself for not buying it then. With Christmas right around the corner, the price may briefly drop again. Or perhaps I'll receive it as a Christmas present. I'll hint it at a certain someone.
I appreciate the responses. My sincere thanks to everyone in this thread for helping me out.

 

[Ruz-El]

Just want to point out that my problem with this set isn't with the transfers. As far as I watched it (2/3rds of disc one), it had none of the typical problems of video noise or DVR. It's the source material itself that makes it unwatchable. If this is the best it gets, then most of that first disc must be in the "lost films" category based on how people are talking about that Man Who Knew Too Much bluray in the Hitchcock threads..

I don't ever remember the early Casper's looking all that great, but they have never looked this terrible. I had a PD VHS with a bunch of them on it, definitely the first three cartoons, that I picked up for $5 for 3 hours of cartoons, and none of them looked this bad. It was a real surprise. As I said, scratches, muddy faded colour, hiss-y sound tracks, hairs, jump splices, just a complete check-list of what a damaged print will look like.

So that's the catch-22. It's the only set available to have an variation of a complete set of cartoons, and it sucks. It's the best they could with the budget and circumstances sure, but it still sadly sucks.


EDIT:
I forgot to mention, I watched the disc up-converted from my PS3 on a 28" HD LCD with full 1080 resolution. If your sets are bigger, well, good luck. :S