Veronica Mars Gets A Clue On DVD!!! (1 Viewer)

[David Rosen]

blind buy? absolutely. The actors are great (in character and in person), the dialogue is witty and fresh, and the stories are layered and interesting.

I just came back from the release party which, surprisingly, was held at my college (UCSD- which usually has absolutely nothing fun going on), and everyone that you could think of was there, except Enrico Colantoni. They were all friendly and willing to talk about anything and were super psyched when I told then that I was getting people to watch the show. For the people who were dragged there by their friends, the actors explained their characters and why they should watch. In fact, when Jason Dohring and Teddy Dunn had to leave for a bit to do an interview in the back, security didn't let the people who missed them to get their autographs and the person who plays Sheriff Lamb and the person who plays the vice-principal told the security that they should stop doing that and ended up taking each DVD set to the actors for them to sign before giving them back to the owner until security gave up and let the people who were missed to form a special line to get autographs and pictures. The only problem is that now I can't see the characters that they play as the jerks their characters are!

Anyways, that is a first hand account about why the actors deserve some fan support, and if that isn't enough, read the comments on this board and others. It is an excellent show.

 

[Jason Seaver]

Do so.

 

[Robert Ringwald]

Okay, here's the packaging style.

It's housed in the "LOST" style digipack with the overlapping discs. This makes for a small compact case on the shelf, but also a little annoying to get at the bottom disc. It's alot more sturdy than the LOST set though because it has a cardboard slipcover that is nice and snug. When you flip open the case it contains a background consisting of Neptune High's Campus. The back of the case features pictures from the episodes along with various quotes from critics praising the series. These are places within small Post-It's and Polaroid pictures on a tac board.

The booklet looks like one of those black and white notebooks, the pages inside resemble notebook paper pages. Pictures from various episodes are presented, along with the titles and airdates. One tip, Episode 11 should be viewed before episode 10. The episodes are presented by Airdate order, but this episode was produced to air first. The pencil drawings from the opening credits (as well as some original ones) appear throughout the pages. Very very stylish.

The original unedited Pilot is included, but it's only a few minutes longer than the aired version. Still, it's nice to have. I haven't seen anything else yet, just wanted to let everyone know about the packaging. It looks AMAZING.

 

[Rob Willey]

Got mine on Saturday and have watched the first two discs which just about catches me up since I only saw the episodes that UPN deigned to re-air during the summer.

The release is very barebones, but well worth having IMO.

Rob

 

[Robert Ringwald]

Besides, I have a feeling Season 2 will be a lot more feature-packed. They kind of got screwed regarding the bonus features. Thankfully there's stuff online you can download, etc, etc.

 

[seanOhara]

The overlapping disc thing really annoys me -- I'd rather have one of those twenty foot long digipaks that Fox uses than have to juggle discs. Why can't studios use the two-disc slim-cases like Paramount did with I Love Lucy? I'd buy some myself to replace the digipak, but the slip cover is too short to hold them.

 

[Kevin Grey]

Anyone else think the video quality looks subpar? Image is very drab and muddy and looks like the show was filmed on 16mm. The picture reminds me of Buffy Season 1.

 

[Matt Stone]

Hmmm, I don't think it looks nearly as bad as Buffy season 1, and certainly not like 16mm. Maybe I'll take a closer look. Do you have any scenes in particular that look bad?

 

[Robert Ringwald]

I'm so used to my HDTV versions that it DOES seem like a step down. It's not horrible, but it does look like a little more care could have been used. They're kind of grainy. The visual flair of the show still comes across very nicely though.

 

[Kevin Grey]

Pretty much the whole thing to be honest. It's really bizarre.

I'm pretty sure there are some encoding errors wrt to flags on the disk too- I'm also getting a lot of combing errors during shot transitions and this may play an issue on why the quality looks so poor on my setup.

In contrast I'm currently working my way through the Smallville DVD sets and I find them (through Season 2 at this point) to look very nice by and large.

 

[Derek_J]

How? I'm having no luck with FF 1.07

 

[Citizen87645]

The browser should ask you what you want to do with the file - save it or run it. You might need to change a setting in your preferences under "Downloads" to "Ask me to save every file."

 

[Kevin Grey]

When FF opens up the browser window with the media player embedded just go to File, and Save As and you can save the mp3 file to your harddrive.

 

[Robert Ringwald]

It's also the lowest budgeted show on network television (at least of the hourlong shows).

But like I said, the HDTV versions I've seen look beautiful...

 

[Tony Kwong]

I havent recieved my set, I know I'll prob be disappointed on the PQ, as I taped every episode in HD on D-VHS. BTW, the show is shot in 16mm. Because of that the low res DVDs may not look too good. But the original 16mm HD transfers that were broadcast were some of the best I've seen. for 16mm that is, sometimes even better than some 35mm productions.

Some of the bright sunny outdoor scenes I can barely tell it's 16mm. But the flashbacks are much more obvious and supposed to look grainy.

 

[seanOhara]

I've noticed a slight 16mmish look to the DVD, but it's not as off-putting as season 1 of Buffy. What did catch me off guard is in the fifth or sixth episode, there was a scene between Veronica and Keith in which there was a hair in the lower left corner of the screen.

Looking at the box, I noticed that the technical specs say this is matted wide-screen. Is that right? The broadcast versions certainly don't look open-matte. The box also says this is the OAR of the original broadcast, which I know is incorrect (except maybe for the handful of episodes that aired on CBS HD).

 

[Adam_ME]

A lot of Warner DVDs say "matted widescreen" when it's 1.78:1 or 1.85:1 even if that's not the case. I'm pretty sure it's the correct aspect ratio.

 

[Kevin Grey]

Really? So the show is shot on film and a High Def master is made just like with theatrical films shot on film? Wow, I thought that most HD shows were filmed using HD cameras. Very interesting.

 

[Citizen87645]

I think there are actually very few shows being shot with HD cameras, though I may be mistaken. It just seems like when a show is shot with HD cams a special point is made about it. I'm sure there are other shows, but the two I can think of offhand that are shot in HD are Arrested Development and Battlestar Galactica.

 

[Citizen87645]

Here's an article I found:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr..._id=1000945764

It would be nice to see a comprehensive list of which shows are doing what.