tomswift2002
Well-Known Member
I know one thing that I hate with the DVD authoring is, and this is mostly with 3rd party releases, where a show is owned by one company, like Universal, but is then licensed by another company like Shout, and the first company will only license the syndication masters. I have “The Hardy Boys” Season 3 that Shout released a few years ago after Universal only released Seasons 1 & 2 and stopped. Now then Universal’s own sets contained 2 different transfers from the 35mm masters, one that was made in 1985 when some episodes were released on VHS/Betamax (and one episode that wasn’t released then seems to have had a transfer in 85), while the other episodes received new transfers for the DVD’s in 2005/07. But Season 3, Universal has never released by themselves and the only transfers they give to other companies are off-screen 16mm syndication prints made in 1979 (by off-screen, I mean the episodes were projected on a wall and recorded by a video camera) and have terrible colours and in some cases poor audio. Sure Shout put a warning title screen up claiming these were the “best” masters, however these are the same masters that Universal was using in the 80’s when Goodtimes liceNsed one episode in the late-80’s for VHS release. Now then before the DVD was released, someone had shown me digitized versions of off-sir recordings that they had made on VHS in the late-90’s/early-2000’s when a Disney channel was rerunning the series, and Disney had been using the original network masters!
And even with other Universal show that Shout has licensed, Shout seems to get lower quality masters, so I think Universal asks a certain amount of money for certain quality masters. Or any studio.
And even with other Universal show that Shout has licensed, Shout seems to get lower quality masters, so I think Universal asks a certain amount of money for certain quality masters. Or any studio.