My Three Sons Australian Release-Did Anyone Buy It? (1 Viewer)

[Mike Frezon]

Thanks, Jeff. Excellent and thorough report.

Since Amazon.com is currently listing a collection of seasons 1-5 for $399.99, I think I may give this a shot.

It is up to $90AU right now at JB Hi-Fi. Maybe I should wait for a pricedrop?

 

[Jeff Flugel]

Thanks, Jeff. Excellent and thorough report.

Since Amazon.com is currently listing a collection of seasons 1-5 for $399.99, I think I may give this a shot.

It is up to $90AU right now at JB Hi-Fi. Maybe I should wait for a pricedrop?

Thanks, Mike! Yeah, I'd definitely wait for a better price. It seems to fluctuate on that site. I got mine for $62.99 AUD (excluding shipping)...it should drop back down at some point. I recommend just checking the JB Hi-Fi site once or twice a week...that's what I did.

 

[Flashgear]

So the bottom line is, no changes or improvements, just exactly what you would get in R1 as far as I can tell (with the possible exception of the R4 using pressed discs for S3 and 4, which again I have yet to corroborate). I'm still quite happy with this set, as it was much cheaper than getting the individual volumes (particularly S3 and 4) in N. America. And for those like Mike who don't yet have any of the DVD sets for this series in their collection, this is the most affordable way to pick them up. For $75 US shipped, I'm happy. Looking forward to working my way through all four seasons.

Thanks Jeff, for your detailed perusal of this Aussie set! I knew in my head that the dreaded Hayes over-dubs would contaminate these Australian sets, but the heart hoped otherwise. Now I just have to see at what price, and where, to get this S1-4 import. Like yourself, I already have season one of My Three Sons, but with the CBS MOD volumes being insanely priced, especially here in Canada, it will make supreme sense to get the Shock R4 set anyways. And then buy the two CBS MOD volumes of season five separately. And hope that CBS digs out more season sets to come, and license them to Shock for another hoped-for volume at some time in the future.

I have a multi-region player, but some of the Aussie sets are region free, of course...the last one I got was for The Virginian season 7...from ViaVision/Madman, and it's NTSC region free...for some reason, the TMG/Shout release of season 7 has been out of print for some years now...to complete my The Virginian series, I needed to get this one ViaVision/Madman release...as with my TMG seasons 1 to 6 and 8 sets of The Virginian that I already have, they are brilliantly remastered and complete...the Madman double bill of the McHale's Navy theatrical films on Blu-ray that I have are also region free...I intend to pick up ViaVision's Blu-ray releases of 1958's I Married a Monster from Outer Space and 1970's Waterloo at the first possible opportunity, I wonder if they're region free as well?

 

[LeoA]

Is this set region free?

 

[Jeff Flugel]

Is this set region free?

It's Region 4, Leo.

 

[LeoA]

Thanks. I was hoping it just might be region free.

I suppose I'll bite the bullet and buy the domestic releases for season 3 and 4 then. I wish I had a region free player, but owning both a Japanese Playstation 2 and a European Playstation 2 for import gaming has given me limited reason to seek out that capability for DVD's (Although there are some other Australian releases I would like to get).

 

[dawnshadow]

Thanks, Mike! Yeah, I'd definitely wait for a better price. It seems to fluctuate on that site. I got mine for $62.99 AUD (excluding shipping)...it should drop back down at some point. I recommend just checking the JB Hi-Fi site once or twice a week...that's what I did.

There's no need to check the site that often. The reason you got it for $62.99 is that they were having a sitewide 30% off sale. They have these sales once every couple of months (sometimes a bit more often) and they always last at least five days. The only time the price will ever change is when one of the 20% or 30% off sales is occuring.

 

[David Norman]

As an option before you order -- at least check Sanity.com.au before placing an order.

The series is not a good price right now (110AUD), but their shipping to the US is only $15 and is often much faster if the item isn't on backorder (my last order from JB took a month to the US, Sanity less than 10 days). They also have sales though rarely as deep and frequently as JB. They also often have 10% off codes though the most common is a 10% off $150 purchase (current SC2IB7830 ) -- obviously nice if you're ordering multiple items. Occasionally a code for 75 or $100 order pops up

They also remove the 10% GST/VAT at time of order instead of having to email JB to request a refund after the payment processes and item ships -- a suggestion to Jeff since he already ordered and hasn't requested the correction.

I've ordered a fair amt from JB and a couple times from Sanity -- both are very good. JB is frequently cheaper with their frequent sales even Buy One Get One Free rarely, Sanity is often easier. I haven't looked too much at JB prices since it appears their shipping cost has increased so much at least on boxsets. The last time I ordered, a boxset like MTS would have been $12-15AUD to ship. it does appear just a Single BD is still 8.50AUD

 

[Jeff Flugel]

They also remove the 10% GST/VAT at time of order instead of having to email JB to request a refund after the payment processes and item ships -- a suggestion to Jeff since he already ordered and hasn't requested the correction.

Thanks a bunch for the tip about requesting a GST/VAT refund from JB Hi-Fi via email, David...very helpful!

 

[David Norman]

Thanks a bunch for the tip about requesting a GST/VAT refund from JB Hi-Fi via email, David...very helpful!

Hope it works -- it isn't always the clearest how to request the GST Refund from their website. I keep expecting them to stop refunding the amt, but so far so good. Most of the time it's been pretty easy though a couple time I had to send a followup email when the refund didn't show up in a few days. Once they were in the middle of a Huge Sale so it just go lost and they apologized profusely, the other time their side showed they sent a Refund but somehow the bank didn't process it correctly so they just had to re-do it.

You can use Order Questions, General Questions, and probably just about any other dropdown menu in the CONTACT US section and they'll eventually get it to the right person or I think the direct email I've used in the past [email protected]

I also realized I left out the important "IF" you hadn't requested the refund since I wasn't sure. JB also adds GST to the shipping so the refund was always more than the 10% and it took me the longest time to figure out why sometimes I got back between 11-14% of the item price

 

[Jeff Flugel]

Excellent information - thank you, David! I have sent JB HI-Fi a request for a GST/VAT refund to the email you provided. We'll see what happens. Appreciate the help.

BTW, am loving having these early seasons of My Three Sons...it's such a good show. Just watched another great episode today, S2's "Chip's Composition."

*Edited to add* - Heard back from JB Hi-Fi within a few hours. They are crediting me for the VAT, no problems.

 

[dawnshadow]

If two Americans want to do a group buy, this set is currently part of the 20% off sale at JB AND the Buy one get one 50% off boxsets promotion. So you can buy two and save more money.

There is also an extra 10% off coupon that expires in about 9 hours:
92JDKC9N91K74I

 

[David Norman]

2 copies = $60AUD shipping. Ouch.
$157 - $15-16 GST refund == Net $70AUD per set around $56USD per set.

Still not a bad price overall, but last summer/fall this would have been around $20AUD shipping. I hate the phrase 'shipping kills the deal,' but that's a major blow.

 

[midvalleyguy]

I was in my local JB HiFi store a few days ago. The box set then was $89.98 AUD.

Today (Saturday morning 12 noon) it's $18 less = $71.98 AUD.

Pity the cost of shipping to the USA appears to be so expensive.

 

[Jeff Flugel]

I was in my local JB HiFi store a few days ago. The box set then was $89.98 AUD.

Today (Saturday morning 12 noon) it's $18 less = $71.98 AUD.

Pity the cost of shipping to the USA appears to be so expensive.

Thanks for posting the above info and photos, Robert! Did you happen to buy a copy of this set? Be nice to hear from an Aussie fan of this, or other, vintage shows.

 

[midvalleyguy]

Hi Jeff - no, I didn't buy a copy of this set. I fondly remember seeing the show way back when, but it's not a set I would seriously consider buying.

I have 2 vintage TV shows on DVD. One is probably my absolute favourite vintage TV show - The Phil Silvers Show (Sgt Bilko). My set has only 18 episodes, but I get it out If I ever want a good laugh. Full series sets are available, but I would end up with duplicates.

I also have Seasons 1-3 of the Golden Girls - another favourite for a good laugh. JB HiFi were throwing them out super cheap, so couldn't resist.

My last vintage favourite I'd love to have on DVD is Our Miss Brooks. There are sets available here, but they're rather expensive. There are third party sellers in the USA offering full sets, but I'm a bit wary buying online from "strange" websites offering DVD's of doubtful quality and origin. I purchased a TV documentary from the USA a while back, but after I paid up it never arrived, and I had no response from the seller about the shipping details. A lesson learned.

I pop into my local JB HiFi on a fairly regular basis - there's often a table full of TV and movie box sets going fairly cheap, plus other bargains. Will get some photos next time I'm there.

I have some box sets of vintage movies, but that's another story.

 

[the associate]

Posted this elsewhere on this same site. Yeah, late to the party, I know, but oh well. : )

<<If anyone out there is still interested, I bought the Aussie Region 4 Season 1-4 DVD box set of My Three Sons put out by Shock Entertainment, and I can confirm that all seasons are identical in every way to the US releases, the lone difference being that both volumes of Season 1 are PAL. Still, if you use MakeMKV to legally back up your disks to digital files on a flash drive, the set is well worth buying, as it's currently selling for a measly $42.22 (shipped) on Sanity.com (a massive and reputable Aussie on-line entertainment site), which essentially saved me 120.00 over buying used copies of the same seasons separately on Ebay and Amazon in the US. The cool thing about legally ripping the DVDs to digital files with MakeMKV is that A) it renders the region encoding on the disks irrelevant (as well as any PAL/NTSC differences), B) it rips exact copies of the DVD's VOB files, digitally converting them to MKV files (meaning, of course, that there's zero quality loss), and C) once MakeMKV rips your backup digital files, you can stream them (via flash drive or wi-fi) on any Roku, Smart TV, or home server (such as PLEX). Again, I want to emphasize that ripping DVDs that you own to digital files is completely legal, so I'm not condoning piracy here. Anywho. I now have Seasons 1-4 of M3S catalogued and on a flash drive to watch whenever I want. Granted that yes, the music is still altered on Seasons 1&2, and yes a few of the MOD releases still might be truncated, but for the price that the boxed set is going for right now, it's a crazy good deal.>>

BTW: Found a way around the music substitution issue of the Seasons 1&2 CBS/Paramount releases. Experimented with this yesterday to "restore" one of my favorite Season 1 episodes, "Lady Engineer" (S1E07). Basically ripped the audio from the horrific MeTV transfer over on archive.org and used basic NLE editing software to replace the audio on the Season 1 remastered video transfer that I already own. Thing is, while all of the official Paramount releases of Seasons 1-5 in the US (as well as the equivalent Shock versions of those same Seasons in Australia, which I own), the video quality may be an improvement over any YouTube uploads, but sadly, the audio isn't. In multiple cases, I've actually found the audio of various Internet uploads to be as good if not better than the official DVD releases. So, I just had some fun playing with one episode as an experiment, and I was very pleased with the results. Now I've got a copy of "Lady Engineer" that looks terrific and contains all the original music. Don't plan on marketing any of these homemade edits or uploading to the Internet (so as not to be guilty of breaking any laws), but anyone with a computer and some basic NLE software can make these edits happen for your personal collection. Just sayin'.

 

[the associate]

Convoluted sentence toward the end of my previous post. Sorry. Meant simply to say that the mono audio transfers on the Paramount disks aren't as big a deal as the video transfers, so you won't notice much of a difference/drop-off by substituting the audio from uncut on-line sources such as archive.org or YouTube. That said, though, I did preserve the Paramount theme song at the beginning and end of the one episode that I edited. Just boosted the db to match the substituted audio track. And woo-lah: "Lady Engineer" is watchable again, original jazz score intact.

BTW: Thanks to Jim B (and others) for alerting folks to the altered music on "Lady Engineer." And thanks to Flugel and Kasey for cataloguing suspected truncated episodes, which has sent me down yet another welcomed M3S rabbit hole.

 

[LeoA]

Any My Three Sons fans around here order Tina Cole's new book? Seems to be getting great reviews on Amazon, so I'll be sure to grab it one of these days.

 

[RMajidi]

Haven't heard anything further about this release myself, Timothy, but am also curious about it. Hopefully someone who has picked this up will chime in at some point.

The best price for the set appear to be at JB Hi-Fi, but no idea what they would charge for shipping:

https://www.jbhifi.com.au/products/my-three-sons-season-1-4-collection-1961-dvd

There's what appears to be a customer review at the above link which states all four seasons are uncut, but I'd like to hear from more sources to confirm. And, of course, uncut doesn't mean without music substitutions. I'd be surprised if the first two seasons are any different from what was released in Region 1.

The set is about $75 US, including shipping from Australia to Japan. As I only have the first season, I will likely pick this up at some point soon. So far, there is no sign of this set being sold on Deep Discount DVD...where the MOD volume sets are still retailing for around $35 each.

Thanks for this link, Jeff.

I’ve not seen My Three Sons in decades, and don’t remember too much about the series, other than I liked it.

Well, that JB Hi-Fi link currently has it listed for $17 AUD, which translates to $12 US at current rates.

I’ve just placed an order.