Land of the Giants - bare bones (1 Viewer)

[Carabimero]

I was very happy to get the COMPLETE series for under $100. I just can't complain because the transfers were so good.

 

[Radioman970]

That's good to know. I recorded some off sci-fi Channel and they seemed a bit muddy.

 

[Joe Kelly]

I had a Best Buy gift card so I paid $180 for the Land Of The Giants set. I'm not getting any younger and I wanted to make sure I get to enjoy one of my all-time favorite shows before I kick off someday.
The Time Tunnel and Voyage DVDs look great, but does anyone know if there are any plans to remaster the Lost In Space DVDs? The first season looks OK, but the 2nd & 3rd seasons are kind of shabby, especially the 3rd.

Thanks,
Joe Kelly

 

[Harry-N]

The first season of LOST IN SPACE is not without its problems. There are horizontal lines visible in many spots - episode 2 is poorly transferred with a line down the right side - and I believe there's an edit in the episode where Will Robinson transfers himself back to Earth.

The fact that it's black & white conceals a multitiude of sins, but truly, season 3 is one (2) of the most dismal DVD transfers I've seen. But hey, they're all on single sided discs! (for what that's worth!)

The LAND OF THE GIANTS set has none of these problems, with pristing prints transferred with utmost care. The worst offense with LAND OF THE GIANTS is that somehow, the first few episodes of the second season have the first season theme music playing while the second season opening credits are rolling. Someone goofed in the mastering of those episodes, perhaps not initially realizing that the theme had changed.

Harry

 

[Carabimero]

The first season of LOST IN SPACE was not digitally remastered. LOST IN SPACE was originally shot and edited on 35mm negative film. Fox printed fine grain 35mm master positives for each black and white episode and color reversal intermediates for each color episode. That way they never have to touch their masters and risk damaging them. The 35mm positives were used to make the 16mm internegatives from which copies for the syndication episodes were originally struck. Fox stopped making and distributing these 16mm prints in 1992. But in the late 1980s Fox remastered all LIS episodes to one-inch videotape. These tapes served as the basis for virtually all LIS episodes seen since. They were used by the Sci-Fi Channel and also by Columbia House when they distributed the series on VHS in the mid 1990s. The Japanese laser discs were also made from these one-inch master tapes. When improvements in film-to-tape transfer technology were developed in recent years, a few episodes, around 8 or 9 I think, were remastered and released by Fox in the late 1990s on VHS. Sadly, however, these "DigiBeta" transfers were not used in preparing the FIRST DVD set. The DVDs were mastered from the one-inch transfers made in the late 1980s. They certainly look better than the laserdiscs, but the source is the same--one-inch videotape.

 

[MBrousseau]

I am sad that Lost in Space was the very first Irwin Allen series to get a DVD treatment. At first, I considered myself lucky to get my favorite Allen's show on DVD before all the rest of his work but I realized that Time Tunnel, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Land of the Giants got a real digital film to DVD transfer. Lost in Space must be released again with an honorable transfer.