Supposedly these shorts are in the public domain so WB hasn’t been interested in releasing them in HD, until the forthcoming Blu-ray next month. But there are many gray market releases of these cartoons on DVD, from who knows what sources. These versions are freely available on YouTube etc. WB themselves put out SD versions as bonus features on the Superman The Movie bluray.
Are there any unofficial HD scans from film prints or just weird DVDs?
There is going to be an official Blu-Ray release from Warner Archive that has new 4K transfers of the shorts sometime this year. Most prints of the Superman shorts are really bad duped 16mm prints or 8mm home movies
until the blu-ray releases, currently the best available versions are the “Mild-Mannered Editions” on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLydQRjWSfL5cXxt6hgOvUyxLvWn5R3fNx
Just repeat to yourself “It’s just a film, I should really just relax”
Good, now we just need the George Reeves tv show and Superman and the Mole Men.
superman and mole men is released on blu already as extras on the Superman blu ray box set.
Hoping the new 4k transfers of the shorts are all fixed.
superman and mole men is released on blu already as extras on the Superman blu ray box set.
Hoping the new 4k transfers of the shorts are all fixed.
I see, I though it was slated to be released a few years ago, but when I went to try to find it all I could locate were dvds, not being much of a fan of the later versions I never looked into the box set.
Nope. Both the shorts and the George Reeves movie are SD bonuses on the 4k release. Also, the new standalone bluray release with the shorts is plaged with problems, including those from the 2006 dvd that still hasn’t been corrected. So… I’m down to help with a good scan of film elements of those COMPLETE shorts if someone can find them in good quality.
From what I gathered elsewhere, the WB scans used for the DVD appeared in HD on the now-defunct DC Universe service. They are presumably available somewhere out there, and I saw at least one unofficial Blu-ray for sale.
Supposedly clips from these are shown in the Blu Ray documentary rather than the newer scans.
Don’t worry about it; I am almost certain that the “HD” copies on the old DC service were upscales from the DVD. And the audio was worse than the DVD copy.
The series finale of Riders of the Silver Screen last weekend on my PBS station showed a restored print of The Mechanical Monsters before the feature (which, incidentally, was a Republic oater with Wild Bill Elliott called Bordertown Gun Fighters). I could tell immediately that it was an older WB restoration and not the Mild-Mannered Edition, because while Lois’s outfit as she’s starting to fall out of one of the robots is brown (like it’s supposed to be) and not pink like in the recent restoration covered by Damn Fool Idealistic Crusader, it still uses the closing audio error endemic to the WB restorations on most of the shorts.