What's the last TV DVD/Blu-ray you bought? (1 Viewer)

[Doug Wallen]

Daniel Boone - Season 2
Daniel Boone - Season 5

Once again from Wal-Mart, found extras of both seasons on their bargain $5.00 display. Over 40+ hours of viewing for $10 bucks. I call that a great bargain.

 

[Darby67]

Daniel Boone - Season 2
Daniel Boone - Season 5

Once again from Wal-Mart, found extras of both seasons on their bargain $5.00 display. Over 40+ hours of viewing for $10 bucks. I call that a great bargain.

One of my all-time favorite tv shows; enjoy them, Doug!

 

[The Obsolete Man]

Cannon complete (the one with more discs, not the crammed rerelease), Jake and the Fatman complete, and LA Law S1 (Shout).

So overall, it was a William Conrad kinda spree.

Oh, and Gunsmoke S18 and 19 came in. I'm not too optimistic on 20 at this point, but hey, at least we made it to 19!

 

[Jeff Flugel]

Received my Time Tunnel Blu-Ray set from the UK...fabulous picture quality on this fun show.

Ordered The Sentimental Agent from a new-to-me vendor in the UK called Classic Movie Store. They had a copy of the out-of-print Network DVD set of this short-run ITC series for less than 12 pounds. So far, their service seems very good.

 

[Peter M Fitzgerald]

Ordered The Sentimental Agent from a new-to-me vendor in the UK called Classic Movie Store. They had a copy of the out-of-print Network DVD set of this short-run ITC series for less than 12 pounds. So far, their service seems very good.

Damn, I checked that site and the set is now sold out. Since it's been a bunch of years since the DVD releases, I wonder if perhaps Network could be persuaded to release a Blu-ray sets of Man of the World and The Sentimental Agent (or a combo set)?

 

[JohnHopper]

Cannon complete (the one with more discs, not the crammed rerelease), Jake and the Fatman complete, and LA Law S1 (Shout).

So overall, it was a William Conrad kinda spree.

Oh, and Gunsmoke S18 and 19 came in. I'm not too optimistic on 20 at this point, but hey, at least we made it to 19!

2020 isn't finished yet. Wait for next Christmas.​

 

[rjd0309]

Received my Time Tunnel Blu-Ray set from the UK...fabulous picture quality on this fun show.

Recently received my own Time Tunnel set and immediately watched my favorite episode,One Way to the Moon. I noticed a couple of odd things.

First, it seems that everyone sweats profusely! The makeup man must have sprayed the actors' faces with a water bottle before each and every take, because nearly everyone except for John Zaremba is absolutely dripping with sweat. The outstanding picture quality shows every drop of sweat, every skin pore.

Second, the timing of the subtitles is really annoying. You would normally expect to see a subtitle appear at the same moment that a character speaks. But in the case of this blu-ray release, they have monkeyed with the timing of the subtitles.

When two characters are conversing, the subtitle graphic appears after the first character speaks, but before the second character speaks. This permits both characters' lines of dialogue to be displayed at the same time, within the same subtitle graphic. One subtitle graphic instead of two -- a cost-saving measure.

The downside is that the timing matches neither character's voice. The upside is that the blu-ray authors have managed to save money by combining two neighboring subtitles into one! They've taken an episode with 500 original subtitles and managed to reduce that number to 350, thus saving a grand total of 27 cents! It is really annoying that they went to the trouble of releasing the series in HD quality, but cut corners on the subtitles.

So, I replaced the subs with the ones from the official dvd release. Much better now.

 

[BobO'Link]

The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew Mysteries - S1

 

[bmasters9]

So, I replaced the subs with the ones from the official dvd release. Much better now.

How did you do that?

 

[rjd0309]

So, I replaced the subs with the ones from the official dvd release. Much better now.

How did you do that?

I don't actually own a blu-ray player. My HDTV can display video files that are stored on a memory device, the preferred format being Matroska MKV files. I read both the blu-ray and dvd discs with my computer's blu-ray drive, using the MakeMKV software tool to rip the episodes and save them as MKV files onto my hard drive.

Using the MKVmerge tool (part of the MKVTooNix tool set), I can input both the blu and dvd MKV files at the same time, and pick & choose the blu video stream, the blu audio stream, and the dvd subtitle stream to merge (multiplex) into a new MKV file (though I had to add an initial delay of 800ms to the subtitle stream in order to synchronize with the audio).

 

[bmasters9]

I don't actually own a blu-ray player. My HDTV can display video files that are stored on a memory device, the preferred format being Matroska MKV files. I read both the blu-ray and dvd discs with my computer's blu-ray drive, using the MakeMKV software tool to rip the episodes and save them as MKV files onto my hard drive.

Using the MKVmerge tool (part of the MKVTooNix tool set), I can input both the blu and dvd MKV files at the same time, and pick & choose the blu video stream, the blu audio stream, and the dvd subtitle stream to merge (multiplex) into a new MKV file (though I had to add an initial delay of 800ms to the subtitle stream in order to synchronize with the audio).

Did not know that could be done (nor do I blame you for doing it, as bad as the subtitles are on that one Time Tunnel Blu)!

 

[Jeff Flugel]

Damn, I checked that site and the set is now sold out. Since it's been a bunch of years since the DVD releases, I wonder if perhaps Network could be persuaded to release a Blu-ray sets of Man of the World and The Sentimental Agent (or a combo set)?

Sorry to hear that they were sold out of The Sentimental Agent, Peter. Hopefully it's only temporary. In all honesty, I think it's highly unlikely that Network will release either this series or Man of the World on Blu, unfortunately.

 

[Jeff Flugel]

Daniel Boone - Season 2
Daniel Boone - Season 5

Once again from Wal-Mart, found extras of both seasons on their bargain $5.00 display. Over 40+ hours of viewing for $10 bucks. I call that a great bargain.

That's a great deal, Doug - enjoy!

 

[Darby67]

That's a great deal, Doug - enjoy!

A bargain indeed...

 

[bmasters9]

That's a great deal, Doug - enjoy!

Seconded-- would like for Doug to get the rest of that 1964-70 NBC adventure series as well.

 

[Jeff Flugel]

Caught a few episodes of the '70s half-hour ITC adventure series The Protectors on YouTube and really enjoyed them, so ordered VEI's Complete Series set for $12. The cover art on the VEI set I bought isn't nearly as handsome and stylish as Network's, but the VEI is half the price, and likely using the same transfers...so VEI it is.

The ugly VEI cover:

And the very nicely designed Network cover:

To qualify for free shipping, added The Virginian, Season 1 to my order.

 

[BobO'Link]

I've been tempted to pick up VEI's release of The Protectors and The Persuaders (Tony Curtis and Roger Moore) several times. VEI has a set that combines both for just a few $$ more than the separate releases - but they cram *both* series onto 6 discs! My whole reason for the purchase would be to reduce shelf space as I already own the A&E releases of both series:

Those have more discs than the VEI sets (4 discs for each set, 8 for the full series, vs. 6 for VEI's full series) but take up the same space as 16 regular size cases!

 

[bmasters9]

VEI has a set that combines both for just a few $$ more than the separate releases - but they cram *both* series onto 6 discs!

How do they get two whole series onto a 6-disc release?

 

[BobO'Link]

How do they get two whole series onto a 6-disc release?

Lots and lots of compression. I initially thought the listing was a mistake until a couple of reviews on the set commented on the small number of discs and issues with the compression required to put that many episodes on so few discs. It sounds worse than some of those old Mill Creek PD DVD sets.

 

[ClassicTVMan1981X]

How do they get two whole series onto a 6-disc release?

This is why such titles like The Immortal, The Magician, and Petrocelli need more discs, not less, to preserve original picture quality. In the cases of both The Magician and The Powers of Matthew Star, among others, re-arranging the episodes in this fashion might also have helped preserve the opening teasers.

How I look at The Immortal on DVD...

Disc 1:
Pilot (90 minutes) (9/30/69)
1x01 - "Sylvia" (9/24/70)
1x02 - "White Elephants Don't Grow on Trees" (10/1/70)

Disc 2:
1x03 - "Reflections on a Lost Tomorrow" (10/8/70)
1x04 - "The Legacy" (10/15/70)
1x05 - "The Rainbow Butcher" (10/22/70)
1x06 - "Man on a Punched Card" (10/29/70)

Disc 3:
1x07 - "White Horse, Steel Horse" (11/5/70)
1x08 - "The Queen's Gambit" (11/12/70)
1x09 - "By Gift of Chance" (11/19/70)

Disc 4:
1x10 - "Dead Man, Dead Man" (12/3/70)
1x11 - "Paradise Bay" (12/10/70)
1x12 - "The Return" (12/17/70)

Disc 5:
1x13 - "To the Gods Alone" (12/31/70)
1x14 - "Sanctuary" (1/7/71)
1x15 - "My Brother's Keeper" (1/14/71)

Perhaps the biggest offender of this trend of cramming more episodes onto fewer discs, by far, has to be Dan August, especially disc 1. The pilot episode, the nearly two-and-a-half-hour-long TV movie House on Greenapple Road, looks very beautiful, but everything afterward is not. So, here is how I would re-arrange the contents of this DVD set:

Disc 1:
Pilot - "House on Greenapple Road" (135 minutes) (1/11/70)
1x01 - "Murder by Proxy" (9/23/70)

Disc 2:
1x02 - "The Murder of a Small Town" (9/30/70)
1x03 - "Love is a Nickel Bag" (10/7/70)
1x04 - "The King is Dead" (10/14/70)
1x05 - "In the Eyes of God" (10/21/70)

Disc 3:
1x06 - "The Color of Fury" (10/28/70)
1x07 - "Invitation to Murder" (11/4/70)
1x08 - "The Union Forever" (11/11/70)
1x09 - "Epitaph for a Swinger" (11/18/70)

Disc 4:
1x10 - "When the Shouting Dies" (11/25/70)
1x11 - "The Soldier" (12/2/70)
1x12 - "Quadrangle for Death" (12/16/70)
1x13 - "Passing Fair" (12/30/70)

Disc 5:
1x14 - "The Titan" (1/7/71)
1x15 - "Death Chain" (1/21/71)
1x16 - "Dead Witness to a Killing" (1/28/71)
1x17 - "The Law" (2/4/71)

Disc 6:
1x18 - "The Worst Crime" (2/11/71)
1x19 - "Circle of Lies" (2/18/71)
1x20 - "Trackdown" (2/25/71)

Disc 7:
1x21 - "Bullet for a Hero" (3/4/71)
1x22 - "The Manufactured Man" (3/11/71)
1x23 - "The Meal Ticket" (3/18/71)

Disc 8:
1x24 - "Days of Rage" (3/25/71)
1x25 - "Prognosis: Homicide" (4/1/71)
1x26 - "The Assassin" (4/8/71)

~Ben