What shows or movies do you wish would get either DVD or Instant Viewing releases

[sabrinathecat]

You know how sometimes you want to watch a show again, but find out is has never been released on DVD, and the rats have eaten those VHS tapes you had in storage out in the garage, next to the VHS player you were going to recycle? Imagine if you will, someone who distributes and/or controls the rights to your TV shows reads this thread. What shows would you like to see made available?

Blake's 7 (UK and Australian releases only so far)
Hot Metal (UK only)
Whoops, Apocalypse (UK only)
BattleTech
ExoSquad season 2
Fantasy Island (1998)
Macross (almost nothing after Plus seems to have been released for US)
original theatrical release of the original Star Wars trilogy (un-buggered, non-special edition, just what was on the screen the first time, George)
Harrison Begeron
The Unnamable (sequel was released, but not the first movie)

 

[Dioltach]

What's wrong with ordering the DVDs from abroad? I generally order them from Amazon UK, but if they're only available in the US, or vastly cheaper, I'll order them from there. Sometimes the shipping takes longer, or I have to pay import duties, but generally it's still worthwhile.

 

[Deset Gled]

-The Real Adventures of Johnny Quest. There's a couple of episodes available, but not the complete series.

-Mysterious Cities of Gold. Apparently its available abroad, got a ridiculously limited DVD release in the US, and was briefly available for streaming. I have no idea why the rights for this show keep getting changed so much.

-Liquid Television and Cartoon Sushi. The MTV shows. I imagine the problem is that both of these were really just collections of shorts rather than a real show, and tracking down the rights to everything would be darn near impossible.

-Special Delivery. The anthology show in the early days of Nickelodeon. Like the previous item, this is really a collection of shorts and small series rather than a complete show. You can find some of the stuff individually (like the Chuck Jones stuff), but there's really no good reason why Grimms Fairy Tales Classics and others aren't available.

-Toonami. I would love to have a collection of all the animated shorts, montages, music, and re-done intros from this block of Cartoon Network.

 

[Deset Gled]

What's wrong with ordering the DVDs from abroad? I generally order them from Amazon UK, but if they're only available in the US, or vastly cheaper, I'll order them from there. Sometimes the shipping takes longer, or I have to pay import duties, but generally it's still worthwhile.

1. It's a pain to deal with out of region DVDs (not to mention Blu Rays). You have to get a player dedicated to it, and even that doesn't work with 100% certainty. You can use a computer, but then you can't watch on your TV unless you have an HTPC (and even then it's not completely trivial). And you can't just do a simple video conversion because the frame rate differences between PAL and NTSC will cause artifacts.

2. Languages. Particularly on animated stuff, the foreign stuff sometimes doesn't have the right dubbing or subbing to make it useable. And sometimes even if the main show is available with the right language, the special features won't be.

3. It's shady from a legal standpoint. I believe it's technically illegal to intentionally subvert region codings. Or maybe it's illegal to sell outside of region. I don't know the exact details, but I know there are laws about it.

Edit: I just noticed you're in Holland. Please note that you are in same DVD region as the rest of Europe, so it's more or less trivial for you to get stuff from the UK or other close countries. But here in the US we're Region 1 and aren't compatible with stuff that come from across the pond.

 

[Dioltach]

3. It's shady from a legal standpoint. I believe it's technically illegal to intentionally subvert region codings. Or maybe it's illegal to sell outside of region. I don't know the exact details, but I know there are laws about it.

Edit: I just noticed you're in Holland. Please note that you are in same DVD region as the rest of Europe, so it's more or less trivial for you to get stuff from the UK or other close countries. But here in the US we're Region 1 and aren't compatible with stuff that come from across the pond.

A large proportion of my DVD collection are Region 1. It can't be illegal to sell out of region, because otherwise Amazon wouldn't allow me to order from the US. I'd never heard of any legal complications with making DVD players all-regions-accessible. I did a quick search, and from what I found it *is* illegal in the States, but not in the Netherlands. In fact, my first DVD player actually gave the option of choosing Region 1 or 2, and allowed switching back and forth up to five times.

 

[delericho]

I would like "Justice League Unlimited", which IIRC never got a Region 2 DVD release. Oh, and "Reboot", although I have series 3 and 4 of that on Region 1 DVD (which isn't ideal, but is better than nothing).

original theatrical release of the original Star Wars trilogy (un-buggered, non-special edition, just what was on the screen the first time, George)

Over here, at least, there was a release of the DVDs that included the original versions amongst the special features, which is quite nice. But they genuinely are the original versions, not even the remastered or LaserDisc versions - so "Star Wars" doesn't have "Episode 4: A New Hope" in the title crawl, the sound is in stereo (I think) rather than 5.1, and so on. They're nice to have, certainly, but probably not quite what I would have chosen to have.

(http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Original_unaltered_trilogy_(DVD))

 

[sabrinathecat]

I would like "Justice League Unlimited", which IIRC never got a Region 2 DVD release. Oh, and "Reboot", although I have series 3 and 4 of that on Region 1 DVD (which isn't ideal, but is better than nothing).



Over here, at least, there was a release of the DVDs that included the original versions amongst the special features, which is quite nice. But they genuinely are the original versions, not even the remastered or LaserDisc versions - so "Star Wars" doesn't have "Episode 4: A New Hope" in the title crawl, the sound is in stereo (I think) rather than 5.1, and so on. They're nice to have, certainly, but probably not quite what I would have chosen to have.

(http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Original_unaltered_trilogy_(DVD))

JLU and ReBoot are both available on Netflix Instant Viewing. Doesn't help if you don't have a NF account. Strange that they weren't released in UK, especially since Reboot was a Canadian product.

Thank you for the SW info. I looked at DVDs several times, but the packaging never made it clear which version was in the box.

I did have a region-free player for a long time before it wore out (which is why I have Blake's 7 series 1 and Kleines Arschloch), but it was always a pain. The player would read the disk, and then change the signal format to the TV. I had to memorize what the order of buttons to press was, and hope I got the signal through correctly the first time, or start over. Very annoying. DVD players have gone down in price a lot, even region free, but I haven't looked into getting another one in 5 years. Maybe if the promised/threatened reboot of Blake's7 gets made, they'll release the original for the US.

 

[delericho]

I did have a region-free player for a long time before it wore out (which is why I have Blake's 7 series 1 and Kleines Arschloch), but it was always a pain. The player would read the disk, and then change the signal format to the TV.

I've been very lucky with my DVD player - I got it pretty early, and it automatically handles almost all discs transparently (no setting region, no key combinations, nothing). However, these days we use our Playstation 3 for almost all playback, and of course it's not region-free.

So having all those old R1 discs has become something of a pain - if we didn't have them I'd probably just get rid of the DVD player, but we need it occasionally to play back a disc. If and when the DVD player does eventually give up, I'll probably get rid of our R1 discs as well, maybe rebuying a handful of those movies in R2 (and probably on shiny new blu-rays at the same time). Of course, that assumes movies-on-a-disc is still a thing when that happens...

 

[Mallus]

I wish Babylon 5 would return to Netflix streaming, or wind up on Hulu.

Of course, I'd probably just add it to my queue and neglect to watch it. DS9 is available and I *intend* to watch the Dominion war arc is all its glory, but I never seem to find the time.

 

[sabrinathecat]

I wish Babylon 5 would return to Netflix streaming, or wind up on Hulu.

Of course, I'd probably just add it to my queue and neglect to watch it. DS9 is available and I *intend* to watch the Dominion war arc is all its glory, but I never seem to find the time.

working... hard... to restrain... self... from... obnoxious... comment... Sorry...