MASH and HD (5 Viewers)

[Robbie^Blackmon]

What did they edit from that episode? New footage, or flashback? Because if flashback is missing, I don't really care. Hell, if I ever feel like watching the entirety of MASH again instead of just random episodes, I might edit the episode down into new footage only, because binge watching doesn't need a clip show.

Just some flashback stuff. It is about 2-3 minutes total. I like that the Columbia House version is the complete show, but there's no advantage as far as better image, that's for sure!

 

[The Obsolete Man]

Just some flashback stuff. It is about 2-3 minutes total. I like that the Columbia House version is the complete show, but there's no advantage as far as better image, that's for sure!

It must've been the original material that was lost or damaged with that episode, because the flashbacks could be pulled from the original episodes and placed back in.

 

[Ron1973]

I'm giving my stance on this issue a new look. I watched Charlie's Angels yesterday on Vudu. It's the proper 4x3 aspect ratio, of course. If they were to crop ANY of the top at all, it would absolutely destroy the show in my personal opinion. There are way too many closeup shots of faces for it to ever work. You would be losing half of people's heads if you cropped any of the top. Now if you could extend the sides out WITHOUT cropping anything, that would be acceptable.

 

[The Obsolete Man]

I'm giving my stance on this issue a new look. I watched Charlie's Angels yesterday on Vudu. It's the proper 4x3 aspect ratio, of course. If they were to crop ANY of the top at all, it would absolutely destroy the show in my personal opinion. There are way too many closeup shots of faces for it to ever work. You would be losing half of people's heads if you cropped any of the top. Now if you could extend the sides out WITHOUT cropping anything, that would be acceptable.

Speaking of good old Spelling jiggle TV, CBS is converting Charmed to widescreen HD, and some early footage of that has been compared to the old SD versions and shows that what you mentioned, opening up the sides without eradicating the top and bottom of the original frame, is what's happening with that.

 

[Ron1973]

Speaking of good old Spelling jiggle TV, CBS is converting Charmed to widescreen HD, and some early footage of that has been compared to the old SD versions and shows that what you mentioned, opening up the sides without eradicating the top and bottom of the original frame, is what's happening with that.

That wouldn't cause me an issue. I started looking really close and realized how much info would be lost by cropping.

 

[Brian Himes]

Just some flashback stuff. It is about 2-3 minutes total. I like that the Columbia House version is the complete show, but there's no advantage as far as better image, that's for sure!

Which Columbia House volume is it on? I'd really like to have a complete unedited copy of Our Finest Hour. Even though it is only flashback stuff that is edited on the DVD, I'd still like to have a complete copy of the original.

The Columbia House Krofft set has an episode of Sigmund & The Sea Monsters that is unedited but got edited on the DVD sets (here and overseas). A couple of episodes of Soap are also unedited on the Columbia House set but wound up edited on the DVDs. Strange how that happens. Those Columbia House sets were a pain to collect but they did end up preserving complete unedited episodes of many shows.

 

[Robbie^Blackmon]

Which Columbia House volume is it on? I'd really like to have a complete unedited copy of Our Finest Hour. Even though it is only flashback stuff that is edited on the DVD, I'd still like to have a complete copy of the original.

The Columbia House Krofft set has an episode of Sigmund & The Sea Monsters that is unedited but got edited on the DVD sets (here and overseas). A couple of episodes of Soap are also unedited on the Columbia House set but wound up edited on the DVDs. Strange how that happens. Those Columbia House sets were a pain to collect but they did end up preserving complete unedited episodes of many shows.

It is called "A Different View", and features the episodes "Our Finest Hour" and "Point of View".

Seems like CH had an unedited Sanford and Son episode that was cut on dvd, but it wasn't the infamous "Blood is Thicker Than Junk", which was edited even on the vhs.

 

[Ron1973]

Which Columbia House volume is it on? I'd really like to have a complete unedited copy of Our Finest Hour. Even though it is only flashback stuff that is edited on the DVD, I'd still like to have a complete copy of the original.

The Columbia House Krofft set has an episode of Sigmund & The Sea Monsters that is unedited but got edited on the DVD sets (here and overseas). A couple of episodes of Soap are also unedited on the Columbia House set but wound up edited on the DVDs. Strange how that happens. Those Columbia House sets were a pain to collect but they did end up preserving complete unedited episodes of many shows.

The same way (in a sense) with "Jethro Goes to College." CBS has replaced music on the DVD's with some generic crapola. The Columbia House version keeps the original music intact.

 

[AndyMcKinney]

I think part of the reason some of the Columbia House stuff is unedited where later DVDs are cut has to do with major changes in music copyright law that started happening in the late '90s (I seem to recall). Most of this Columbia House stuff was probably released before then.

 

[MatthewA]

And also quite likely because the DVD era is when studios and music licensees started noticing how much money could be made on licensing fees now that there was a viable home video format for complete runs of TV shows.

Family Ties and Soap also had songs on their respective Columbia House VHS releases that didn't make it to DVD.

 

[Brian Himes]

It is called "A Different View", and features the episodes "Our Finest Hour" and "Point of View".

Thanks. I looked on eBay and the only one I could find for sale was with a set of 68 or so tapes. I'm not going to spend money on a large group of tapes just to get one. I'll keep checking. Maybe I'll get lucky and someone will have it for sale with only a few (10 or less) tapes. Doubtful since it looks like this volume was one of the later ones. So any that I do come across will only be in a large lot of tapes. Anyway, thanks again for the information.

 

[Brian Himes]

Family Ties and Soap also had songs on their respective Columbia House VHS releases that didn't make it to DVD.

Were there more than one music edits on the Soap DVDs? I was only aware of the edit to the 2nd episode where Jody is singing 'There's Nothing Like A Dame.' I thought I went through the Soap DVDs with a fine tooth comb looking for missing stuff. I thought I had accounted for everything that was missing on the DVDs. Did I miss something else? Between the DVDs, Columbia House tapes, the two released VHS tapes (of two of the three recap shows), off the air recordings and the 2nd recap show from the trading circuit I managed to piece together a 100% complete run of the series as it was intended to be seen (most if not all of the 1hr shows were a product of ABC editing and not as they shows were written nor intended to be seen. This does not count the three recap shows). I'm pretty picky about Soap since it is my all time favorite show.

 

[MatthewA]

I thought the DVDs cut the scene of him in a pink dress and blonde wig looking at himself in the mirror singing "There Is Nothin' Like A Dame." This was the same mentality that gave us an "alternate" theme to Married with Children.

 

[AndyMcKinney]

This was the same mentality that gave us an "alternate" theme to Married with Children.

I thought the reason for that was that after the season 2 DVDs were released, the music publisher for "Love And Marriage" (or the record label for that particular recording of the song) decided to jack the price sky high, so rather than pay the sky-high price increase, Columbia substituted the theme tune.

 

[Brian Himes]

I thought the DVDs cut the scene of him in a pink dress and blonde wig looking at himself in the mirror singing "There Is Nothin' Like A Dame." This was the same mentality that gave us an "alternate" theme to Married with Children.

Yes, the DVD did cut the very beginning of that scene of Jody singing 'There's Nothing Like A Dame.' That was the only music edit that I could find in the entire 4 seasons on DVD. However, there were other edits to the series on DVD. There are two episodes in the first season that use syndicated versions of the episodes and all of the 'In the last episode of Soap' intros from all of the season 4 episodes are missing. There is also a small edit in a season 4 episode where Jessica and Mary mention Cosmopolitan Magazine. Any mention of Cosmo is edited out. This footage does appear on the Columbia House tapes but the word 'Cosmopolitan' is dubbed over backwards. I seem to recall another small edited somewhere else in the series, but I can't recall specifically what that edit is or where. I would need to go back and rewatch the DVDs to find it. As far as I can remember, these were the only edits that I was able to find on the DVDs. I could be wrong since I haven't watched the DVDs in a very long time. When I watch the series, I only watch my complete versions.

 

[The Obsolete Man]

I thought the reason for that was that after the season 2 DVDs were released, the music publisher for "Love And Marriage" (or the record label for that particular recording of the song) decided to jack the price sky high, so rather than pay the sky-high price increase, Columbia substituted the theme tune.

That's the story I'd always heard. May have even been on TvshowsonDVD, but there's no way to go back and check now.

And I don't blame Sony for doing that.

I do blame them for half-assing the masters they gave to Mill Creek, but that's another story entirely.

 

[Harry-N]

A "Get Off My Lawn" post: I love M*A*S*H. It's a longtime favorite and remains so to this day. I have the individual season DVDs and the extra release of the finale that had the MARTINIS AND MEDICINE extras added to it so those of us who had been loyal buyers through the years could have those extras.

Now M*A*S*H is appearing in Hi-Def and in a widescreen format. I don't subscribe to Hulu, and I find it hard to believe that these cropped widescreen episodes are somehow magically OK. So this thread has been important. I'd love to see more screencaps.

My grouchiness comes from an unfortunate trend in Internet message boards - thread drift. Up-thread, someone mentioned SOAP and then all of the posts since then have related to that series. Every time someone posts to this thread, because I am subscribed, I get an email telling me of the new post added. And then I dutifully, eagerly open the post - and it's about SOAP. Now I'm all for everyone having their own tastes - as it turns out, SOAP is one of my most hated shows. I didn't like it then, and I don't like it now. So the inconvenience of opening a thread called MASH and HD and finding that it's a post about SOAP and its VHS issues is making me a little crazy.

I an a moderator on a board that uses this same Xenforo format and I know that posts that drift from the main topic can be split off into their own threads. I am not suggesting that anyone do that, but merely mentioning that it is relatively easy to do.

Meantime, I would love for the SOAP posters to find their own thread, but that's just me in my grumpy mood. Pardon my grumpiness.

 

[Blimpoy06]

I know that posts that drift from the main topic can be split off into their own threads. I am not suggesting that anyone do that, but merely mentioning that it is relatively easy to do.

It appears that this thread has become about all older shows that are no longer available as their original network versions. Should we change the name of the thread or create a new one and keep the topic here strictly to M*A*S*H? I wonder if the topic drifted because there was so little that could be said about M*A*S*H in HD and widescreen other than "Yeah" or "Nay".

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I can say -- about M*A*S*H itself - that I picked up on DVD from where I left off in college. I had watched until about midway through Season 7 as the original DVDs were being released, and then I think I just got ahead of the releases and never went back. Or maybe I had gotten tired of it after watching all of those early seasons very close together.

So far, I rewatched Season 7 (I wasn't sure where I left off, so I thought it was best to just start it from the beginning), finished Season 8, and am now on the last disc of Season 9. I am really enjoying these episodes. Not every one is a masterpiece, of course, and when you watch a bunch in quick succession it's easy to see which plots get recycled more frequently than others. So after a brief period of binging, I'm back down to watching just one a night on most nights. It's almost always a great way to end the day. It's funny how the show reflects back so many things - as a look at the Korean War, as a metaphor for the Vietnam War, and then it also works as a way to examine the past few decades since the show went off the air. It's amazing how relevant a lot of the material still feels. There are plots and conflicts that seem as if they could be commenting on more recent history, and I think that's a credit to both the people that made the show and a reflection of how little some things change even with the passage of time.

These later episodes are, as we've discussed here, more dramatic than the earlier seasons, but I think it works. I remember the earliest, most humorous seasons fondly. But I think the transition to more dramatic material worked really well. It almost serves as another level of commentary on the show and the war (or at least, the idea of war), the way that everyone was clowning around at the beginning and just trying to do whatever they could to joke their way through difficult situations with the hope that the war would end sooner than later. The more dramatic episodes make sense both for the quality of the show itself (if you're going to spend years with characters, eventually you want to know more about them and want to experience other feelings with them besides silliness), and I think it also works as a reflection of how difficult it would be to be fighting a war with no clear objective and no end in sight and how that would eventually wear everyone down.

To that last point, I recently saw an episode where Hawkeye was tasked with not making any jokes for a 24 hour period, and they treated his joking the way another show might treat alcoholism. Hawkeye maintained "I can stop anytime I want to" the way an alcoholic might, and he did indeed manage to not crack any jokes for that prescribed period. But he lost his coping mechanism in giving it up, and I think it was a little eye opening for him to realize that he had to stay a little crazy at all times to keep the rest of his sanity intact. I don't think an earlier season episode would have tried to tackle that, nor do I think it would have been necessary to do so early on. But I think it was a great thing to center an episode around after we've spent so much time with his character.

 

[Mark-P]

I did a quick search of this thread, and if there was definitive answer, I didn't see it. Are the HD versions on Hulu laugh track free? Having now seen the show on DVD without the godawful laugh track, I can never go back to watching them with the laugh track. So the beautiful widescreen HD masters would all be for naught, if the network imposed laugh track is back.