- Joined
- Jun 10, 2003
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- Real Name
- Josh Steinberg
FWIW, I’ve watched the first four episodes of season 1 on the DVD set and I’ve also purchased the HD digital from Vudu (thanks, unused coupons!) and spot checked the first four episodes.
I should state something up front: if I choose to be, I can be enormously picky about technical quality. It’s a combination of being in this hobby since I was two years old and having worked professionally in DVD production, digital distribution and archival research. I don’t mean that in a boastful way or a “I know more than you do” kind of way. Just that, if I want to put my critical viewing hat on, I can choose to find issues or spot compromises made during production/mastering.
I’m not going to attempt doing that here. These are 70 year old episodes from film elements that have had difficult lives, and bringing 39 of them to disc at a price point under $30 is a heroic endeavor as far as I’m concerned. There’s no upside to pointing out some nitpick that the overwhelming majority of the audience will never notice and wouldn’t care about if they did.
The best quality classic TV release from that era I’ve seen in recent years is the season one set of Abbott & Costello Show from ClassicFlix and 3D Film Archive. This isn’t quite as good as that, but those guys had presumably a higher budget and more time with about a year to do 26 episodes, rather than a couple years to do 435 episodes.
You could almost call O&H a victim of its own success - had it only run for a year or two, there would have been far fewer episodes which would have made this a much easier project.
So with all of that said, I’m really liking what I’m seeing.
There isn’t a drastic difference between the DVD and HD versions, particularly from a normal seating distance. There were a couple minor things on the DVD I spotted that I wondered at first if I was seeing compression artifacts or HD to NTSC conversion issues, but when I looked at the HD version, the same minor things were there - in other words, they’re either present on the film elements or are evidence of digital tinkering to remove far worse problems, but not signs of poor DVD authoring. There are a number of tiny things that maybe could have been done differently for slightly higher quality, but we’re talking the kind of things that would maybe make it look 10% better and push the cost up to $100 a set. I can’t imagine that was even part of the discussion - there’s no way for MPI or anyone else to sell enough copies at $100 a season with over a dozen seasons.
Even without considering all of the obstacles that go into making a set like this, I can easily recommend this set. Grade it on a curve, and it’s even more of a no-brainer to recommend.
There is a real night and day difference here from the PD copies everyone has been used to for decades. There’s even noticeable (if not nearly as dramatic) improvement over the officially released episodes from the older Shout Factory sets.
Now if you’re someone who bought the DVD and are on the fence about buying an HD digital version to - YMMV, but speaking for myself, I probably will not be double dipping on the whole series. The HD versions do soar slightly higher at their best, but also show a little more at their worst than is noticeable on the DVD. The DVDs still look better than the show would have over rabbit ears in 1952 anyway.
Overall purchase and value for money is an A+ in my book. Technical grade on the DVD is probably an A- all things considered, but like I said, I’m a tough grader.
Hope this was in some way helpful to anyone with questions here
I should state something up front: if I choose to be, I can be enormously picky about technical quality. It’s a combination of being in this hobby since I was two years old and having worked professionally in DVD production, digital distribution and archival research. I don’t mean that in a boastful way or a “I know more than you do” kind of way. Just that, if I want to put my critical viewing hat on, I can choose to find issues or spot compromises made during production/mastering.
I’m not going to attempt doing that here. These are 70 year old episodes from film elements that have had difficult lives, and bringing 39 of them to disc at a price point under $30 is a heroic endeavor as far as I’m concerned. There’s no upside to pointing out some nitpick that the overwhelming majority of the audience will never notice and wouldn’t care about if they did.
The best quality classic TV release from that era I’ve seen in recent years is the season one set of Abbott & Costello Show from ClassicFlix and 3D Film Archive. This isn’t quite as good as that, but those guys had presumably a higher budget and more time with about a year to do 26 episodes, rather than a couple years to do 435 episodes.
You could almost call O&H a victim of its own success - had it only run for a year or two, there would have been far fewer episodes which would have made this a much easier project.
So with all of that said, I’m really liking what I’m seeing.
There isn’t a drastic difference between the DVD and HD versions, particularly from a normal seating distance. There were a couple minor things on the DVD I spotted that I wondered at first if I was seeing compression artifacts or HD to NTSC conversion issues, but when I looked at the HD version, the same minor things were there - in other words, they’re either present on the film elements or are evidence of digital tinkering to remove far worse problems, but not signs of poor DVD authoring. There are a number of tiny things that maybe could have been done differently for slightly higher quality, but we’re talking the kind of things that would maybe make it look 10% better and push the cost up to $100 a set. I can’t imagine that was even part of the discussion - there’s no way for MPI or anyone else to sell enough copies at $100 a season with over a dozen seasons.
Even without considering all of the obstacles that go into making a set like this, I can easily recommend this set. Grade it on a curve, and it’s even more of a no-brainer to recommend.
There is a real night and day difference here from the PD copies everyone has been used to for decades. There’s even noticeable (if not nearly as dramatic) improvement over the officially released episodes from the older Shout Factory sets.
Now if you’re someone who bought the DVD and are on the fence about buying an HD digital version to - YMMV, but speaking for myself, I probably will not be double dipping on the whole series. The HD versions do soar slightly higher at their best, but also show a little more at their worst than is noticeable on the DVD. The DVDs still look better than the show would have over rabbit ears in 1952 anyway.
Overall purchase and value for money is an A+ in my book. Technical grade on the DVD is probably an A- all things considered, but like I said, I’m a tough grader.
Hope this was in some way helpful to anyone with questions here
