The Guns of Will Sonnet: Complete Series (CBS MOD) (1 Viewer)

[bmasters9]

It’s an easy item to remove to cut expenses without significantly affecting the overall product - the majority of buyers aren’t going to abstain from purchasing over a lack of chapter stops.

That's very true-- however, there are some who just want to get to a show, because they know what it's about from the titles, and they don't want to have to see them every time (I would imagine that a few would get tired of being told over and over again about how the 3-hr. tour of the Minnow in Gilligan's Island went south).

 

[Josh Steinberg]

In a perfect world, every disc producer would include them for every title, but unfortunately, the reality is that for some companies and for some titles, that extra budget item is the difference between maybe being able to break even and gross a small profit, and losing money on the investment. For all intents and purposes in those cases, the choice isn’t between a disc release with chapters and one without them, but rather a choice between a disc release without chapters or no disc release at all.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of customers aren’t willing to pay extra for those kinds of features so the idea of charging more to make up for reduced sales volume isn’t really viable.

 

[BobO'Link]

And it's the same for SDH. Not so much for CC *if* the source already has that embedded into the vertical interval for broadcast. Most series syndicated on video tape have, especially newer productions where it's mandated. It's generally a "tell" of a video tape master if a release has CC.

 

[Purple Wig]

With the continued popularity of westerns maybe there’s a slight chance of eventual remastering? Better than for obscure sitcoms or dramas anyway.

 

[Harry-N]

I decided to go ahead and order this new CBS/MOD version of THE GUNS OF WILL SONNETT, just out of curiosity. It arrived in yesterday's late mail, so I'm looking at the package and a quick check of episodes. Here's what I've learned so far:

- Instead of the six discs used by TMG, the CBS set uses only five. They are all of course DVD+R according to my player.
- There are ten episodes per disc with no separation by season. Disc three just continues with S2E1's "Reunion" after "A Fool And His Money".
- Episode lengths are right around 22:00 for the episodes I checked.
- Each disc begins with a note about using the best available sources.
- They're still just as ugly as before I believe. I will later do a comparison between some episodes on the CBS and the TMG set.
- The keep case has all five discs in a standard DVD-width case, saving just a tiny bit of shelf space.
- There are no extra features that I can find, so the old DuPont Playhouse/Walter Brennan episodes are gone, as are the little featurettes that Timeless did.
- There are no closed captions.
- There is a Play All option.
- A positive: the episodes are chapter-encoded, with about 4-5 chapters for each episode.
- The episode titles are printed on the face of each disc.
- The 50th episode, which was listed as an extra on TMG is here with all of the other episodes.
- Episodes end with the Thomas/Spelling shield and then a King World logo. Discs start with the CBS logo.

So, in conclusion at this point, there's not a big reason to jump to this release over the TMG set(s) if you have it (them). It saves a little space, but offers little in the way of improvements, other than the chapter encoding which the TMG set sorely missed.

 

[Harry-N]

Here is a screencap comparison, the first I've done on this set. It's a frame from "Find A Sonnett, Kill A Sonnett", chosen at random. The first image is from the Timeless DVD, the second is from the new CBS DVD+R. Both images from the same VLC software.

What I'm observing here is that the Timeless image seems brighter, until you realize that the whiter highlights are a little blown out. The CBS image looks duller, but the highlights in Brennan's upper cheeks aren't blooming. The CBS image is annoyingly tilted up a little bit. There should be more headroom above his hat according to the Timeless capture, and that black bar at the bottom - ??? (That's not that way in all episodes - just checked.)

Meanwhile, in looking at both, I see the same flaws in the film - white spots, scratches, etc. all appearing in the same place on both, so while CBS obviously re-authored their discs, they did so with the same source material.

 

[BobO'Link]

I wouldn't exactly call the highlights in Brennan's upper cheeks "blooming." The color is a bit better on the TMG release with the CBS looking slightly faded. That, alone, is enough for me to not bother with the CBS release. Add the missing bonus stuff and the TMG release wins hands down.