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As great as it's been for old films on Bluray, that's how poor it's been for old television shows.

domino harvey wrote:Freaks and Geeks will be presented in both original full frame and new widescreen transfers in same set

Blu-ray.com review - it appears that the widescreen is an opening of the matte, not a crop - it looks fantastic.

I'm a little confused. Based on having just a glance at it, how is it 9 discs if it appears there's just four and one bonus disc according to the review?

flyonthewall2983 wrote:I'm a little confused. Based on having just a glance at it, how is it 9 discs if it appears there's just four and one bonus disc according to the review?

Four discs for each aspect ratio.

mfunk9786 wrote:

domino harvey wrote:Freaks and Geeks will be presented in both original full frame and new widescreen transfers in same set

Blu-ray.com review - it appears that the widescreen is an opening of the matte, not a crop - it looks fantastic.

Did they shoot three perf 35mm with a center cut? Glad to see that the future proofing is starting to pay dividends on single camera shows.


part of the problem for all the multicam sitcoms that shot this way (Friends, 70s show etc) is that they edited only from the 4x3 center cut telecine and in cutting from one angle to another if they needed to cheat or tighten an edit, such as a person walking left off screen from camera A only to walk onscreen on the right of Camera B, the edits were all made based on the centercut.

Since multicams were having negative cut as well during the final deliverables of the show, the negative cutters, looking at the widescreen image for the first time, would find that the edits such as above that were perfectly smooth and continuous in center cut were now jumpy and discontinuous in widescreen because the edit was timed based on when they entered and exited the center cut of the image not when they entered and exited the widescreen part of the frame. To fix this, negative cutters would print the 4x3 image to film and cut the negative of the two shots of that edit into the negative--at least according to post-supervisors I've talked to about how they dealt with early widescreen brought up this practice when I asked them how they delivered final negative for the shows. But this didn't go on for very long, because international wanted widescreen masters a lot sooner than widescreen masters were wanted in the states. As soon as they started having to deliver widescreen broadcast masters, whether domestically or internationally, these sorts of edit problems started phasing out, as the editors would fix them as they were now looking at the widescreen images

But there are a lot of funky negatives out there for 90s era multicam, which is part of why it's so hard to even prep them for syndication (which requires widescreen masters) as it's not simply a matter of scanning the negative, since they printed so much centercut into the cut negatives.

Mill Creek is releasing the complete Miami Vice and Knight Rider on blu-ray in October.

Fuck. Yes. A million kudos to Network for rescuing this essential series after the American version ruthlessly slaughtered it

Even more kudos in light of the fact the series has already seen a Blu-ray release in the UK (16:9 butchered), meaning sales for this are probably going to be quite underwhelming (the current release can easily be picked up for £30).

Many, many years ago I chatted to one of the restorers, who confirmed that the 16:9 cropping was carried out at the end of the process, so a 4:3 revamp would notionally be very straightforward indeed.

Weirdly, the 1996 Doctor Who TV Movie is being released on Blu-ray in six weeks in the UK. While conceivably there are film elements they may be rescanning, they're believed to be locked away somewhere in Universal's care with no realistic chance of being reused. It's almost definitely an upscale, then, but there seems to be absolutely no reason or clear prompting for this to come about other than they just decided why not.

I mean, my guess would be that they released the SD-only seasons of the new series upscaled on blu, and those sold well, so why not do it some more.

Fabulous Films UK Blu-ray releases for October 2016:

- The A-Team: The Complete Series
- Knight Rider: The Complete Series
- Miami Vice: The Complete Series
- Magnum P.I.: The Complete Series
- The Incredible Hulk: The Complete Series

Is there any reason to hope these will be anything other than upscales? Was there any difference between Mill Creek's and Fabulous Film's Airwolf releases? Will these be equally mediocre then?

Now if we ever get Murder She Wrote...

Well one difference being discussed on blu-ray forums thread is the absence of the subtitles that were included on the Miami Vice DVDs.

The complete series of Nash Bridges is coming to Blu-Ray next month for some reason

Mill Creek is releasing the complete Quantum Leap in February.

Can't see mentioned before, but Network is releasing the rather wonderful original Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) on Blu. From their trailer it looks very nice.

On 31st January MVM are going to release the 25 episode anime series from 1997, Berserk, on Blu-ray in the UK.

The Untouchables (1993 version-- never even heard of it, I presume it was syndicated)

I saw it on television but can't remember a thing about it other than an episode showing Capone's childhood days against Ness'. Or something.

Complete Series of the Rockford Files is coming to Blu from Mill Creek in June

Of all the shows to get released on bluray.

I'm excited, and it will probably be cheaper than my $300 Japanese blu ray set of Columbo. Dom, where was that announced?

The preorder is up on Amazon