JayArgonaut

Three minutes is quite a difference. It would probably be worthwhile to upload this so that fans of the film can make a comparison and note the differences. 😃

EyeShotFirst said:

I don’t know what the interest in such a thing would be, as there are better releases available and I don’t know if it’s 100% the theatrical cut. It runs 158 minutes where the theatrical is 161 minutes.

Is it a PAL tape? That could be the explanation, the speed up issue would cause the film to have a shorter running time.

Firecracker00 said:

I’ve just checked out the Open All Hours ep mentioned where its said a scene of Granville dancing to Singing in the Rain has been removed. The one on Youtube I found shows this very scene (title “The New Suit”). Why they would leave this scene intact on early DVD releases, but cut it on later versions I don’t know. It’s a very memorable scene so it’s a ridiculous they cut this because of a bit of music. This rights issues stuff is becoming a joke. If you think the BBC are bad then try YouTube for their censorship.

I doubt that it’s censorship by the BBC. This is very likely a case of a licence expiring and they were unable to reach a financially viable agreement with the copyright holders for it to remain on subsequent releases.

Firecracker00 said:

Glad you mentioned Heartbeat. Used to be glued to that show. My dad and I used to be big fans of it, so we had recorded a lot of early (mostly original) showings of it on ITV. I’d say I have about 90% of the episodes on tape, the majority of them when they were originally aired, though there are some from the first and second series that are second showings, but thankfully they are uncut for content and no music has been changed. There are also one or two separate recordings from these series that were recording from UKGold, but i think they cut the violent bits out due to being shown in the afternoon. From series 3 onwards almost every episode I have was taped when first aired (adverts not recorded apart from the odd one), with the original music (Beatles originals incl). Speaking of Beatles music, but I wondered if music rights was the reason why the used Joe Cocker’s version of “Let it Be” at the end of the do were Dr Ferrenby dies?. Btw, this was used in the original broadcast, so mayve just been down to suitability rather than rights issues.

Shame the DVD versions have had their music altered. Not sure if this is correct, but I think they changed the music in the series 5 ep where the two girls crash their MG and Nick and Maggie rush over to see the BeRo Man. The music they used was “Like a Rolling Stone” by Bob Dylan, and I thought that song really suited the scene perfectly. When I came across a clip of it online the music was completely different.

This is why these days, my philosophy is to record anything of interest during the first run - because that might be the only run! Or subsequent airings could fall afoul of music rights licencing or other issues. A classic example is Coast to Coast: a 1987 BBC film that has never been repeated and has never received any kind of home video release and according to the production company and co-star Lenny Henry, it never will because the cost of negotiating a licence with Motown for the soundtrack would be prohibitive.

On subject of UKGold, its sister channel Drama now airs early Eastenders episodes but often cut for language - which is strange because it was acceptable to broadcast those same episodes on Sunday afternoons for the omnibus slot during the 80s! Regarding Heartbeat, it’s now airing daily on ITV3 and from what I can gather, with the original soundtrack. I’d love to block record and preserve the entire lot but it would involve a phenomenal amount of work due to the volume of episodes!

Terminator Genisys: I’d read the bad reviews and seen the Honest Trailer but it came on TV last night and I decided to see for myself how bad it was and if anything, the reviews were far too generous.

It recycles the best moments from the first two films but with third rate execution. At one stage, I found myself thinking, “Familiar. Don’t you have anything new?” and there was very little of merit that was new. Every action film cliche was thrown into a storyline and script that should never have seen the light of day: along with T3 and Salvation for that matter. Schwarzenegger seemed to be in it for the money and nothing else. Jai Courtney was dreadful but the material he had to work with didn’t help.

1.5 out of 10.

I foresee that this will become an extensive thread. 😃

Judging Amy: of the DVDs that have been released, numerous alterations have been made to the soundtrack.

Heartbeat: the soundtrack which includes songs by the Beatles and countless other artists who had 60s hits has been altered for the DVD releases.

The UK R2 DVD for season two of Frasier completely removes the scene where Great Balls of Fire is played on the piano. It is uncut on the US R1.

Married… With Children: Sinatra’s “Love and Marriage” was replaced with an instrumental track on the season three but it has been restored on the Mill Creek DVDs. h/t: crissrudd4554

Quantum Leap: the DVDs contain numerous replacements to the soundtrack. However… h/t: SpacemanDoug

The blu-ray releases restore the music in both the US Mill Creek release and the UK Fabulous Films release, however both releases are not 100% the same

On the US Mill Creek release, the episodes Genesis, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Trilogy Parts 2 and 3 (originally parts 2 and 3 were edited together into one movie) are presented in their syndicated two part versions, as the original NBC versions were movie versions. On the UK Fabulous Films release, Genesis and Lee Harvey Oswald are both restored to their original movie versions, however parts 2 and 3 of Trilogy still remain in their split form.

From what I know, the original movie version of Trilogy Parts 2 and 3 have never been seen outside of the original NBC broadcast, and even the original Universal DVD releases had it split into the two part version (though the same DVD release presented Genesis and Lee Harvey Oswald in their movie versions).

American Dreams: according to the executive producer, 20% of the original soundtrack has been replaced for the DVD with songs that were cheaper to licence.

Top Gear: numerous replacements with library music.

The Take: as above.

Life on Mars (UK): substitutions of songs.

New Tricks: the song Mellow Yellow was removed from a scene in the first series.

Catherine Tate: a sketch in series one no longer works due to a soundtrack substitution.

Super Mario Brothers Super Show: substitutions of the original music for the DVD release.

Here’s ROTJ and if anyone wants the stats and caps for TFA when ITV HD next airs it, you’ll have to let me know. 😃

Interesting that the font for the translations is different from that used for ANH and appears to be identical to that of the 1983 theatrical.

(On a side note, looking at some of the images, it’s amazing the amount of problems that Lucas failed to fix - or to fix properly, in favour of focusing on indulging himself in other areas.)

Audio: English, 48.0 khz, 2 channels, AAC LC (LATM)
Audio #2: English, 48.0 khz, 1 channel, AAC LC SBR - visual impaired commentary
Compression mode: Lossy
Bit rate mode: variable
DVB Subtitles: English
Overall bit rate mode: Varible
Overall bit rate: 4,693 kbs
File size: 5.02 GB

Funnily enough, I used to know a former Philips engineer who definitely could service a V2000 but I’ve lost contact with them.

SilverWook said:

Would the masters used be different that what appeared on other formats at the time? The first full frame Laserdisc and CED releases all used the same masters, presumably VHD did the same.

That’s a good question. I’m inclined towards the likelihood that they were also produced from the same source, as a matter of corporate cost-saving. It would be nice to confirm for certain but I anticipate an arduous (and expensive) quest to track down the cassettes.

Nathan Butler responded to my query:

I’ve never really delved into Video8, mainly because, to my knowledge, didn’t have Star Wars releases in the U.S. The only ones I’ve ever seen (ROTJ is the only one I’ve seen, I believe) have been from markets like the UK. I’m only now dabbling at all in pre-DVD releases from the UK. I will probably look into it at some point. You might ask on the Star Wars Home Video Facebook group. I’m sure someone there is more versed in UK releases and would be able to say for sure.

Thanks! 😃

An even more awesome find would be a working V2000 deck and the trilogy cassettes (apparently all three films were released on the format) with which we could then undertake a preservation.

Here’s the V2000 of Star Wars, taken from this amazing site that I’m shocked that I didn’t know about much sooner: http://www.starwarshomevideo.com/

SilverWook said:

I know someone who swears The Shining came out on Video 2000. They have found it on Video 8 from Germany though.

From what I can see, it seems that Video 8 was quite well supported by Warner Bros. It received every James Bond title from Dr No to Licence to Kill. Going beyond WB, I was surprised to discover that MGM released Goldeneye in widescreen for Video 8.

oojason said:

It may be worth asking this guy to see if he knows anything about it…

Nathan Butler does some pretty insightful youtube videos on Star Wars; From the Star Wars Home Video Library Timeline 3.2: Star Wars Films & TV Series on Home Video - among them.

^ Though he seems to mainly focus on US and Japan… he may well have some knowledge on European / UK releases too?
 

He also does some fairly thorough reviews on all things Star Wars too - https://www.youtube.com/user/ChronoRadio/videos
 

I’ve posed the question to Nathan via YouTube. Let’s see what information he has about it. 😃

I noticed that too and there’s nothing on the Philips/Grundig Video 2000 either but I suppose it’s a case of what they’re able to track down and obtain.

Mods please move this post to the preservation section if you think this is the wrong place. 😃
 

Fast Fwd to 22:27 if you want to skip the historical discussion of Video8 and view the ROTJ segments.

‘Video8 - Sony’s forgotten ambitions & the crazy Walkman Compo’:-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdObeF9VHiA - a 28 minute video from the Techmoan youtube channel
 

Does anyone own this release or know if the other two films also received Video8 releases?

Currently working through a marathon of Peaky Blinders on BBC Four (9.5 out of 10).

This week, I finished watching the Clooney helmed adaptation of Catch-22. I haven’t read the novel but I’m aware that the series has come under fire for significant deviations and omissions from Heller’s work. Six episodes really wasn’t enough to do the characters and the extremely rich storyline justice but personally, I enjoyed it nonetheless and thought that the symbolism of the closing scene during the final episode was the perfect ending.

6.5 out of 10.

4throck said:

One interesting aspect of old NTSC sources is the wider colorspace. This was only changed in the 1990s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTSC#Colorimetry

For example the first seasons of Star Trek DS 9 use the old colorspace. This was not corrected for DVD release, even on the PAL versions. That why the colors look so unsaturated and off. We are viewing them on sRGB / EBU displays with a smaller color space!
https://color.viewsonic.com/asset-files/images/what-is-color-gamut-3.jpg

Very interesting and that explains observations I’ve made whilst watching the current DS9 airings on the Horror Channel. 😃

digitalfreaknyc said:

Well, of course things in the UK aren’t affected by it because they’re natively at that speed. So they’re out of the equation.

Much but not all.

unmuscular_michael said:

OK, since this thread is revived again:

A rip of all the 4:3 episodes from Vudu has recently showed up on the internetz.
Can’t really post any links here but it does exist.

Wow! Can you PM me the information please?

I couldn’t access that one - probably a geo-restriction.

Here’s an alternate link that should be viewable internationally.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhBBXHwEsIo

“Whoa!” indeed. 😃

digitalfreaknyc said:

Every DVD I bought back in the day did. I would say that the ones that compensated were far in the minority. Of course, now it’s extremely easy to work around. Then? Not so much.

There is a wealth of material, produced in the UK alone, that is not affected by this issue, hence me pointing out that not all PAL content suffers from this drawback.

Here’s a good post on the subject.

https://forum.dvdtalk.com/international-dvd-talk/550776-does-pal-speedup-bother-anyone-around-here-2.html#post9530425

Again, I would rather not deal with the problems of either TV standard. 😃

Perhaps further discussion of PAL vs NTSC would be better suited to a separate thread. None of this really helps SF01 with their project. Though of course, they can decide this. 😉

digitalfreaknyc said:

I’d rather deal with whatever problems NTSC has than ever listen to the pitchy sped-up mess of PAL.

Not all PAL material is affected by the speed up issue and with those that are, it can be easily worked around. I live in a formerly PAL broadcasting nation, my parents are from an NTSC region - I’d rather deal with neither of the problems with both standards.

As a matter of completion, here’s ANH, which was broadcast again by ITV HD over the weekend.

The specs are the same as for the other films:

Audio: English, 48.0 khz, 2 channels, AAC LC (LATM)
Audio #2: English, 48.0 khz, 1 channel, AAC LC SBR - visual impaired commentary
Compression mode: Lossy
Bit rate mode: variable
DVB Subtitles: English
Overall bit rate mode: Varible
Overall bit rate: 4,178 kbs
File size: 4.49 GB

When ITV HD airs ROTJ, I’ll provide info and caps for that too.

For the benefit of those, such as myself who are unaware of problems with the mono tracks on DVD and Blu-ray, can you elaborate please?

The Laserdisc releases would almost certainly contain the original 1983 mix. However, according to DVDCompare, you can find the original mix on the 2-disc SE/AE releases.

http://www.dvdcompare.net/comparisons/film.php?fid=199#overall

It’s also supposed to present on the Blu-ray, going by IMDB - yes, I know, not always a reliable source:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086250/alternateversions?ref_=tt_ql_trv_5

The 20th anniversary DVD, released shortly after, only has a Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS track of the original mix, but the 2006 Platinum Edition DVD re-release and the Blu-ray edition included the audio remix in both DD 5.1 and DTS formats. Though the original mix is also available on the Blu-ray release.

SilverWook said:

Who bumps a five month old thread just to troll? Honestly!

Someone with way too much time on their hands but I’m honoured that they felt so incensed that they created an account, just for little me. 😄