TV shows on dvds, quality dropping down to tape levels. (you don't always find out till you buy it)

[jmc111]

The main dvds that come to mind are...

Big Bang season (11?) and Lucifer (S4) dropped from years of 3 dvds down to 2 dvds(3Mbps tape quality)

Had to buy the BD disks to get around this...PITA.

 

The absolute worst one that I've ever bought is "Switched At Birth".(love the show!)

There are ONLY the first 10 episodes (out of 103 total) available on optical disk.

As soon as I watched them I went "what the bleep is wrong with this"

 

So looked at the dvd...7 hours and 15 minutes on one single disk, 2.5Mbps garbage tape quality.

Am thankful that the whole complete set was not available because I would have bought it and not been happy at all.

By the way I hate TS files even tho I somehow have 103 of them.

 

Thoughts Welcome!

 

 

 

 

[CerealExperimentsLain]

1) I wouldn't call 3mbps 'Tape Quality', if you think that you've never watched a VHS tape.  I'll take even lower bitrate MPEG-2 over a VHS any day.

 

2) A lot of modern TV series releases are increasingly DVD only (If at all) and often targeting a very specific group: Lives out in the sticks and has internet so bad streaming isn't very good.  They're very utilitarian releases on a very specific market.  The fewer disc per release, the more economical the release is as market demand for physical media continues to collapse.

 

I'm not saying any of this is good or championing it, it's just the way it is in the market today.

[da na]

Yep, as the first comment said, "tape quality" is analogue and cheap, therefore is even worse.

And unfortunately, companies want to make as much money as possible with the least losses possible: they don't care about individual people; that's why they try to cram as many episodes onto one disk as possible. More cost effective to the company. It sucks but it's reality.

[maartendc]

13 hours ago, CerealExperimentsLain said:

2) A lot of modern TV series releases are increasingly DVD only (If at all) and often targeting a very specific group: Lives out in the sticks and has internet so bad streaming isn't very good.  They're very utilitarian releases on a very specific market.  The fewer disc per release, the more economical the release is as market demand for physical media continues to collapse.

 

Interesting, I never thought about that being the market for DVD's at the moment. But you are probably right. Also, Bluray adoption is probably lower, and people still use DVD players. 

 

Whenever we rent a cabin in the woods, there is an old DVD player with some old shows on DVD... very bad internet. Checks out.

[Alan G]

16 hours ago, CerealExperimentsLain said:

2) A lot of modern TV series releases are increasingly DVD only (If at all) and often targeting a very specific group: Lives out in the sticks and has internet so bad streaming isn't very good.  They're very utilitarian releases on a very specific market.  The fewer disc per release, the more economical the release is as market demand for physical media continues to collapse.

There are some series such as Homicide: Life on the Street that are only available via DVD.  I would love for someone to start streaming this.

[LogicalDrm]

-> Moved to Home Theater Equipment

[TargetDron3]

You also have to take into account a lot of TV shows were upscaled to DVD quality on release. Unless the show was captured on digital cameras or happened to be captured on film, they would have been recorded to betamax tapes for release. 

Star Trek The Next Generation was a litmus test to see what people would pay. It cost a lot of money to scan all the film and recreate the special effects. Shows like Stargate and other star trek shows will never get remasters. 

Your best bet is too get shows you like and run them through Topaz AI video upscaler. Fans are using this to try and increase fidelity in available media. 

I ran all of Alien Nation tv series and movies though it. It helps clean up some of the compression artifacts from he original DVD release and sharpened the picture a little. 

But this process takes a good CPU and GPU.  A 45 minute episode took 2hrs to process at 2x resolution.