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Pre-Order I Dream of Jeannie: The Complete Series (Blu-ray) Available for Preorder (1 Viewer)

BobO'Link

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IMHO that BR release isn't worth the box in which it's packaged. Outside that it's not in true HD there are just too many issues to make it a viable purchase. You're better off with MC's DVD release, which isn't that good either. If you're a fan you want one of the Sony releases (either as individual seasons or their complete series set). This is one release where MC went back to their practices of when they did those huge PD releases with questionable PQ.
 

brynmill

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Still nothing on Barbara Eden's official FB page which has been promoting the Blu set (with optional signed copies) about the quality of the product
 

Randy Korstick

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The PQ is what it is, but I would at least appreciate a fix for the awful sound issue on "Help! Help! A Shark!"
Agreed while its disappointing that Mill Creek was not given new HD masters and we got 1080i they are still improvements over the DVD sets. The Mill Creek DVD set like nearly all their DVD sets were pretty horrible with compression issues. I have found the majority of Mill Creeks Blu Ray sets to be either good or acceptable. I have done side by side comparisons with the Sony DVD's and the black and white season offers about a 15% improvement but the color seasons offer about a 25% improvement. The DVD's have slightly dull colors in comparison to the blu rays. The sound issue on Help Help A Shark is bad but I will just keep my Season 5 DVD for that episode so its not that big of a deal to me. The picture quality improvement while not as good as it could have been is still worth it to me. I have also compared the DVD's to the new Blu Rays for Andy Griffith Show and they are only about 10% more improvement than Jeannie since they used old HD masters. That set lacks subtitles after Season 1 and costs nearly twice as much. But if you like the shows I feel both are worth it.
 

Tony Bensley

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Agreed while its disappointing that Mill Creek was not given new HD masters and we got 1080i they are still improvements over the DVD sets. The Mill Creek DVD set like nearly all their DVD sets were pretty horrible with compression issues. I have found the majority of Mill Creeks Blu Ray sets to be either good or acceptable. I have done side by side comparisons with the Sony DVD's and the black and white season offers about a 15% improvement but the color seasons offer about a 25% improvement. The DVD's have slightly dull colors in comparison to the blu rays. The sound issue on Help Help A Shark is bad but I will just keep my Season 5 DVD for that episode so its not that big of a deal to me. The picture quality improvement while not as good as it could have been is still worth it to me. I have also compared the DVD's to the new Blu Rays for Andy Griffith Show and they are only about 10% more improvement than Jeannie since they used old HD masters. That set lacks subtitles after Season 1 and costs nearly twice as much. But if you like the shows I feel both are worth it.
Going off topic a bit Randy, but did you happen to check whether "The Darlings Are Coming" Season 3 episode on the new TAGS Complete Series Blu-ray is the same edited version that's minus "Salty Dog" and the tag ending, as is on the old TAGS Season 3 DVDs? That you say the old HD masters were used tends to make me suspect that is the unfortunate case!

CHEERS! :)
 

Randy Korstick

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Going off topic a bit Randy, but did you happen to check whether "The Darlings Are Coming" Season 3 episode on the new TAGS Complete Series Blu-ray is the same edited version that's minus "Salty Dog" and the tag ending, as is on the old TAGS Season 3 DVDs? That you say the old HD masters were used tends to make me suspect that is the unfortunate case!

CHEERS! :)
Its the same version as before. Its still missing that ending. I was rewatching the show when the blu rays came out and after upgrading I am continuing where I was which was season 3 so I just recently watched that episode. Its also how I noticed that they are older masters with only a small improvement as I was watching the DVD's and then switched mid season. But bottom line is if you are a big fan or fan of these two shows they are worth upgrading. If you are only a casual fan then they are probably not worth upgrading.
 

Tony Bensley

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Its the same version as before. Its still missing that ending. I was rewatching the show when the blu rays came out and after upgrading I am continuing where I was which was season 3 so I just recently watched that episode. Its also how I noticed that they are older masters with only a small improvement as I was watching the DVD's and then switched mid season. But bottom line is if you are a big fan or fan of these two shows they are worth upgrading. If you are only a casual fan then they are probably not worth upgrading.
Thanks, Randy!

Yes, I do very much love THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW, and have been a fan since childhood, BUT I'm also extremely limited financially, these days. Thus for me, any possible upgrades from the DVD format really have to be more than of the marginal variety, which this clearly is by your description. "The Darlings Are Coming" episode also sadly seems forever doomed to it's perpetually edited status, with even the already expensive 2018 Time Life THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW DVD set release, which includes a rare non edited full episode version, slipping into OOP status ridiculously fast! THE ABBOTT AND COSTELLO SHOW Season 1 upgrade by ClassicFlix, on the other hand, is absolutely stunning, and an absolute no-brainer upgrade even for casual fans of Bud & Lou! The beautiful visual and audio restoration by Bob Furmanek and the 3-D film Archive cannot be recommended highly enough!

As for I DREAM OF JEANNIE, for me the Sony Complete Series DVD set is good enough, despite having to turn off the color for the Season 1 Episodes.

CHEERS! :)
 
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Randy Korstick

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Thanks, Randy!

Yes, I do very much love THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW, and have been a fan since childhood, BUT I'm also extremely limited financially, these days. Thus for me, any possible upgrades from the DVD format really have to be more than of the marginal variety, which this clearly is by your description. "The Darlings Are Coming" episode also sadly seems forever doomed to it's perpetually edited status, with even the already expensive 2018 Time Life THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW DVD set release, which includes a rare non edited full episode version, slipping into OOP status ridiculously fast! THE ABBOTT AND COSTELLO SHOW Season 1 upgrade by ClassicFlix, on the other hand, is absolutely stunning, and an absolute no-brainer upgrade even for casual fans of Bud & Lou! The beautiful visual and audio restoration by Bob Furmanek and the 3-D film Archive cannot be recommended highly enough!

As for I DREAM OF JEANNIE, for me the Sony Complete Series DVD set is good enough, despite having to turn off the color for the Season 1 Episodes.

CHEERS! :)
Agreed on Abbott and Costello Season 1 and neither of these sets look as good as that.
 

ramicio

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I just got this set. There are more issues than just a simple upscale. Some episodes are interlaced, some are progressive. Even the progressive ones are 29.970 FPS instead of 23.976 FPS. The ones that are interlaced were encoded as progressive, so they have to be re-encoded. In that process you have to tell the encoder that they are actually interlaced. But the problem is that it's interlaced encoded as progressive. You lose tons of quality from that and still have horrible stair-step artifacts all over. Even thought I encoded them at 720p, I can still see the stair steps. I'm going to have to re-rip and encode at 480p.

Now Mill Creek as a company. They don't stand behind their products. I have THREE sets of the Knight Rider Blu-ray release. That's what it took to be able to rip them (which is legal to do for personal use). I e-mailed them about the first 2 sets and didn't even make any mention of ripping them, but said that I was using a piece of Blu-ray playback software. Their reply was that they basically consider that to be "illegal" (anything besides a player that hooks to a TV that you'd buy at a store in their A/V department) and they blocked my e-mail address. So with this IDOJ set, I have zero avenues of recourse.

It would at least be bearable if they would have authored it properly. No one is sending them interlaced files encoded as progressive. Even if they were done in 1080p24 and had none of the interlacing issues, and still upscaled from 480, I;d be happier. They must have some real hacks working there who are probably too old to fully understand even DVD technology. I'd like to know what they're paying them.

And then there is the issue of audio. I can't fault just Mill Creek. The whole industry does it. 2.0 DTS-HD Master audio for a mono audio track. Pointless and waste of disc space (there is a 768 kbps DTS lossy core, plus the subtractive bit rate for the lossless "Master" portion. In the case of this set, the 2.0 is captured that way via analog, so there is a slight difference in the two channels, which adds encoding complexity, raising the bit rate for noise. It isn't just a simple copy of the left channel into the right channel when encoding the DTS files. A 16-bit mono PCM track would only take 768 kbps. The first 2 seasons are 16 bits, and the last 3 seasons are 24 bits. 16 bits isn't even needed for this old audio, but that's just the minimum, so 24 bits is a total waste, just encoding noise. Plus the cost of royalties to pay DTS cuts into the budget, and you have one reason why they would skimp on the disc count.
 

Josh Steinberg

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That's what it took to be able to rip them (which is legal to do for personal use).

Yes and no, actually.

Full disclosure: I have nothing against ripping for personal use. I don’t believe it to be morally wrong. The Betamax case in the 1980s established a legal right to make backup copies of unencrypted content owned by the user for personal use.

But the DMCA circa 2000 makes it a crime to break encryption on digital media and does not allow for any personal use or backup exemption. By that law, the simple act of defeating encryption on a disc is illegal no matter what the intention, use or context of the act is.

It is extremely unlikely that any individuals would be taken to court for doing so. But that it is unlikely or not regularly enforced doesn’t change that it is technically not permissible.

(As a side note, I once worked for a smaller home video label which produced and released a nature documentary that a congressional committee asked for copies of as part of their work. It just so happened we had run out of DVDs of that title and couldn’t get more manufactured by the time they were needed. The company, which wholly owned the copyright to the content, asked me to burn a bunch of copies instead. Which means that technically, my bosses were asking me to break a law created by Congress in order to fulfill a request made by Congress. Ultimately I said I would be happy to do it but asked my supervisor to put the request in writing with a guarantee that the company would be responsible for any legal issues resulting from following their request. I didn’t think the feds would come for me and they didn’t, but I also wanted it clear who would be responsible for bailing me out if they did. And then I think I found the original test burn of the title done on an unencrypted disc, meaning that I could just copy that and be within the letter of the law since no encryption was being broken.)

For many years, HTF posting guidelines would not allow for discussion of ripping and HTPC setups in deference to this law. In more recent times, those guidelines have been relaxed and there is a small but enthusiastic group of posters here who do run HTPC setups and rip their own content.

And that, ladies and gents, is your DMCA anecdote of the day. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming :)
 

ramicio

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Pretty sure in the US it's been ruled that it's perfectly legal to circumvent DRM on physical media. Different countries are a different story. Regardless, Mill Creek was only informed that I was using a piece of legitimate software to play the discs. Their view of putting the discs in a PC at all being illegitimate just seems like a way for them to get out of admitting their poor craftsmanship. That whoever is pressing their discs isn't doing a good job. And then you have sites like Blu-ray dot com that post screen shots, and in some instances, very specific info like the exact bit rate of the video. Ya can't tell me they aren't circumventing DRM to get that info.
 

morasp

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Just watched the Whatever beacne if babt custer with Billy Mumy and really enjoyed it.
 

ScottRE

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Sony should restore and release this series themselves. Missing scenes, etc. It would be nice. The show deserves it.
I don't have the series memorized, but I don't know of missing scenes. Each episode runs about the same length (around 25 minutes) and the only real edits I've noticed have been in sound effects, the correct opening credits and the subtitles for the non-English dialog in the pilot.

There is one edit that has plagued me since the 70's. During the part 2 recap of "Guess Who's Going to Be a Bride?" the recap seems truncated, skipping to the end and showing a bunch of freeze frames of scenes in boxes. It started fine, with the recapped scene beginning, hitting a freeze and moving to a small box in the corner or side of the screen. About 45 seconds in, they jump to the end with more scenes filled in. The sound is smooth so maybe it was always like this. The episode runs at 25 minutes, so it may have been cut prior to airing to save time. But that's the thing that jumps out at me.

Here's the episode. After you sit through like 2 minutes of ads you can't skip just watch the first minute.

 

BobO'Link

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I don't think it needs a restoration. The HD transfers look great that are available for streaming.
Mill Creek just needs to admit that they royally screwed up the BR physical release, fix it, and re-release it under a new SKU/UPC so you don't have a chance of getting one of the bad copies.
 

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