Getting seriously sub standard DVD boxsets of TV series from companies like Warner

A

Askia V

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I thought I would continue my one man campaign of justifiable anger with Warner Home Video for producing a VERY cheaply made boxset of the old hit TV series from the late 1970s - 1991, Dallas.

So to any Dallas fans (indeed, if there are any still left around these days!), please take my warning of seriously substandard DVDs here. I also sent this to Warner UK directly.

The following review is a bit lengthy & will only be of interest to anyone wanting to purchase any of the recent boxsets of Dallas available at major retailers. Anyone else should probably go to another thread of interest, my review starts after the dotted lines and is in quotes.........

" I was glad to see Dallas released on DVDs after so many years. I was quite a big fan as a teenager during the 1980s.

I have bought all the seasons of this boxset, not all at once but over the last year or 2.

I want to warn fellow Dallas fans of these astoundingly cheaply made/produced DVD boxsets.There are many seriously bad picture quality issues during several seasons (mainly from about season 5 onwards).

I guess you can tell that looking from season 1&2 thru to season 8 the boxsets contain slim seperate boxes for the discs, where as from season 8 to 13 the obvious cost cutting can be seen by virtue of the fact that the discs are squashed into single DVD cases with those plastic seperators that hold the discs one on top of the other making it very difficult to get each disc out without bending or damaging them, except the 3rd disc which is on the inside of the back cover by itself.

Combine the above with how 'Warner Home Video' start to seriously 'squash' more and more episodes onto each single disc.The early seasons only have 4 episodes on them (if I remember correctly), then from around season 8 to 13 there are 5 or 6 episodes on each side. I mention this because I have authored a couple of hundred DVDs myself, mainly movies of various lengths and whilst I am NOT a professional at this, I have learnt very quickly that the more you put on a DVD the overall video bitrate (in kbps) goes down very noticeably. There is a huge difference between a one & a half hour movie and a 2 hour+ movie, let alone slapping on loads more than that.

Anyway, there are many episodes with seriously bad juddery/jittery jerky type movement (I'm guessing that this is 'framedropping') appearing whenever someone is walking across a room or a car is moving in the background or any other action type scene with some movement, even characters speaking often have faults. There is also some strange but quite serious colour distortions and other hard to describe errors or faults. I dont know what this is, but suspect it is something to do with the process of transferring the original analogue pictures to digital, then combine this with really terrible cost cutting by Warner.

I should mention that I have a 2 month old good quality 40" Toshiba lcd tv and a 6 month old decent Sony DVD player, there are NO faults with my equipment as I started to think there might be after watching this Dallas set, but as soon as I put in a movie or other boxset TV series, I get a perfect picture everytime.

Also, in my particular purchase, I think it was season 4 or 5 that contained one whole disc of 'ER' the medical TV soap, i.e. a completely different series in there by mistake!!!, so that was 10 episodes missing from one box.

I also want to warn of 3 other faulty discs in seasons 7, 8 and 9, on one side of these discs were 3 or 4 episodes that simply wouldn't show, they wouldn't even start from the main disc begining menu where the episode numbers are displayed. Yes I did also try on two other standalone players and also on 2 different computers, same result.

So, basically, its nice to see some Dallas and I don't think there is any other choice of DVD boxsets made by anyone else, so this is what you get.

I want to make an important point here, I simply cannot be bothered contacting the scummy company that has produced these so very cheaply because I will only end up using ugly angry language etc.. but the following should be noted.....
I have several old 1970s TV series on DVD boxsets, all are in the old format of 4:3 all are in mono sound like this Dallas one, and every single one of these other series were made using FAR LOWER BUDGET PHOTOGRAPHY AND FAR LOWER BUDGET EVERYTHING ELSE THAN DALLAS, in fact as everyone knows, Dallas was VERY HIGH budget at its time, I mention this because on all of my other boxsets the picture is faultless, totally smooth, totally ok. So it has to be down to the sheer cost cutting here.

A great shame, and is it any wonder why so many folks choose to download torrents of these boxsets when the companies that produce the so called 'professional' DVDs rip you off so very badly indeed, I am prepared to pay through the teeth for an old favourite TV series but expect it to be of basic & decent quality.

So thanks Warner for making something so incredibly cheaply, you are doing a fantastic job of pushing people into checking out DVD Rips online and if they are smart enough to use an encrypted VPN that does not keep logs, you will never ever be able to get their IPs will you??! "..........
 
I think you are getting upset over nothing.

Dallas , like most US series changed the format of final editing towards the end of the 80's and while the show was still shot on 35mm it was then transferred to analogue NTSC video for editing which results in a very poor quality picture.
When these seasons of Dallas were first aired on BBC1 there were many complaints as the broadcast tapes used by the BBC were dreadful but this was not confined to Dallas -check out Star Trek TNG and other US shows of the same era.
This practice continued until the end of Dallas and beyond into the noughties.
It's something US tv companies are stuck with unless they spend an awful lot of money re-editing those seasons from scratch.

With reference to the additional episodes per disc .
Warner are well known for using not only double sided discs but they also use discs that can be double sided and dual layered , although they usually go for dual layer on one side only.

This means they can put more episodes onto each disc without cutting the bitrates and can fit far more material on than any of your home recorded discs which will be dual layer at best.

Take one of your Dallas discs and put it in your PC and you should find that 5 episode sides would be 8.5Gb or thereabouts.

6 seems a lot for just one side of a disc - are you sure these 6 episode discs do not have them split over 2 sides?

And your rant over quality simply shows your lack of knowledge over such things.

Up to the mid 80's most US shows were shot on 35mm from start to finish so the picture quality on those shows will be as good as any cinema film.
But the change in practice to editing on tape affected virtually all US shows and not only those made by Warner.

For this reason you will find the picture quality on the 1966 Star Trek series far superior than anything produced for TNG,DS9 or Voyager.

It's always best to be armed with the facts before ranting although chances are , anyone you spoke to at Warner would be equally uninformed about it aswell.
 
I can't comment on Dallas but the releases of Prisoner Cell Block H in Britain, America and Australia have had similar problems.

The front covers of the Australian (full series) release has abysmal artwork that would put off any potential buyer who hasn't seen the series. And might even put of some fans. The front covers really are that bad!

Stills used on the packaging are from different episodes than the package contains.

The DVD releases where advertised as uncut but some of the content was cut.

The theme tune "On The Inside" being used on the DVD menu on every single disc. It's the closing theme. We don't want to hear it before every single episode!

All the cringworthy content has been left in. They could have easily snipped that out! (and in doing so brought it more up to date)

Some of the photos used on the DVD releases are from cringe worthy scenes.

And quite a lot of technical problems meant people having to be sent replacement discs.
 
This old chestnut reminds me of when "Aliens" was first released as a special edition VHS.

A reviewer in a video trade mag noted the picture quality looked as though it had been transferred at the bottom of a lake. Much PAL/NTSC debacle followed.
He had a point at the time though!
 
It was rumoured at the time that the additional footage only existed on a tape source which was why the video was so poor.

However we soon learned all about the laziness of video companies and the dreadful NTSC to PAL transfers that kept appearing on video and tv for a very long time , especially on the often hilarious TV Versions of movies that the BBC and ITV were scared to show uncut and could not be bothered to edit themselves
 
I would hardly call it abysmal cover art? Only a few covers are pictures from the wrong era, why would you want scenes you dont like cut from the episodes..other people may want to see them..If you find the show that cringeworthy would you even want the dvds in the first place?
But it is fair to say some of the quality of the episodes are awful and are almost vhs standard and the discs are rather dodgy and thats when it cost about
 
The OP is right...The Dynasty releases have been cleaned up and remastered and look pretty fantastic...
Warners are just issuing cheap and cheerful Dallas sets,and the fact that they are squeezing more episodes onto less discs as the season sets get towards the end proves it
 
Maybe the reason they are doing that is because the box sets aren't selling as well as expected. Logic says if that is the case you either stop before all the series have been released or you look at how to release them cheaper because you won't see the return if you continue spending out at the level you was.
 
My guess is that they have subbed the release rights to D'Agostini and that sometime in 2011 we will start seeing adverts for "Dallas Complete" - available soon in a newsagent near you. Seriously it is the type of series that would lend itself to the partwork format and I wouldn't be surprised to see it. It would explain Warners rush to get the shoddy last series out while they could still earn a few quid from them.
 
Are Warner trying to shoot themselves in the foot even more?
Backing away from streaming (I hope they don't from We7) even though they're being paid PRS rates..

Crappy encoding...

*headdesk*
 
Thats a good point mickmars, I guess I am comparing my Dallas boxsets to other old series where they have gone to the trouble of "remastering" and making them look really good, and yes indeed, they are squeezing far too many episodes onto each side of each disc.

Only a moron would argue that Warner are doing a good job and try blaming it on the quality of the "final editing" techniques at the time or whatever :rolleyes:

Thats also a good point cunningham, this could well be the case, what is for sure is that they are cutting corners, cutting costs & making as cheaply as humanly possible, in this case anyway.

The very poor quality of the boxsets that I have would be entirely suited to those freebies found on magazines at newsagents.

Agreed
 
You have a point about the Cell Block H covers-it does make it seem like an awful camp pantomime.

Maybe they are aware of the shows Gay following?

RE editing out mistakes/objectionable material-WHO would decide what stays and what goes?

Surely this action would damage the release even more in the eyes of anyone other than the self imposed censor?
 
what a load of garbage :rolleyes: here we go, yet another petty and unpleasant newbie to the forums.

The OP actually makes a very fair and good point, if you buy a fairly expensive boxset of an old TV series you have the right to expect at least some basic decent quality as the OP rightly says. After all, there are plenty of other series from exactly that time from the US that have been transferred perfectly, and of course some remastered perfectly, so why should a great old favourite like Dallas be so badly done?? (according to the OP, I don't have this series boxsets).

escapeintonight, maybe you could try reading properly what the OP and others in this thread are saying before you yap on with rubbish about the 'editing techniques during late 70s and 80s' because there are plenty of other series that have been put on DVD in great quality, like one other poster above mentioned 'Dynasty' as a very good example.
 
Wrong the time period and choice of editing is fundamental. It is why the original series star trek or law and order look pin sharp even on dvd, they were edited on film. On bluray its stunning and looks better than it did on first air, by several fold. The next generation startrek was not, and going off a tape master means it looks as bad as it ever did back in the day. I'm not sure if they will ever restore dallas, I'm not sure how rabid the fanbase is vs say that of star trek. The market demand dictates what the studio will or will not do, digging out and reediting and restoring film is very expensive.
 
I disagree, mainly in view of the fact that there are several other tv series of that exact time and from the USA that have been put onto DVD with decent quality.

Perhaps instead of trying to somehow make yourself look clever (in your own mind) by going on about whatever techniques they used at that time you might also notice some other aspects of my OP that thoroughly confirm my suspicion of serious & blatant cost cutting by Warner Home Video, such as squeezing too many episodes onto each side of each disc (6 episodes in the seasons 8-13 vs, only 4 episodes on the first few seasons), the different and obviously far cheaper packaging in the later seasons compared to the decent packaging in the earlier ones.

Also you havent seen the glaringly obvious & terribly distracting faults/errors/ distortions and other hard to describe picture flaws that I am talking about so what makes you qualified to speak about the appalling picture quality that i am talking about unless of course you have the same boxset of Dallas that i have.

Do you have this boxset????, simple question, do you have this boxset???, eh ????...............

Do you think it is acceptable to release/produce such sub standard quality stuff such as this???, do you???......

A major media company should damn well make a decent quality DVD release or not make one at all, I dont expect or even want PERFECTION just a reasonably clear reasonably decent picture that is steady & consistent, I dont even mind a grainy picture at all, so long as it is steady and basically watchable.........on this note a movie released on DVD comes to mind, the 1960s 'The Great Escape', this is quite grainy throughout, but it is consistent and perfectly watchable because there arent bizarre fluctuations every few mins.
 
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