An interesting observation... might be nothing...

D

Dman176

Guest
I thought I might share something I noticed as I walked around in the DVD section of the Virgin Megastore yesterday. Universal just released the 2nd seasons of Magnum, P.I., The A-Team, and Knight Rider and ALL of them have been repackaged with those slim digipack things (which are roughly the same size anyway). And the design specs for QL Season 3 leads us to believe they will be doing the same thing for that too. So, at first, I kind of rolled my eyes saying to myself, "Yup, Universal is trying to be as cheap as they possibly can get." Which then suddenly got me thinking: maybe the cheaper packaging is a GOOD thing. Perhaps, they ARE trying to cut down on production costs so that they'll have more money to secure music rights. Out of all those sets, I only noticed a "Some music may differ" disclaimer on one of them (and no, I don't remember which one, sorry).

Guess we'll have to wait until May before we know for sure, but perhaps that's why the design specs have changed. If it's a choice between changing the designs of the DVD set or replacing most of the music, I'll definitely take the design changes any day. The only thing I really care about is having the episodes intact. Extras and photos are simply a bonus that I, personally, do not need.

One other thing I noticed though in the extras department, which seems kind of odd to me: an episode of Knight Rider called "Brother's Keeper" is featured as a "bonus feature" on both Magnum and The A-Team, and an episode from The A-Team is also featured on Magnum as well. I can't imagine any of these shows ever crossed over with one another, so I can only assume that Universal did this because they thought they were being clever (so that they could say they include extras, and try to get people to "sample" the other shows). Can anyone say "lame"? I REALLY hope they don't start doing this with Quantum Leap. :rolleyes
 
$2.50 per package instead of $3.50? That's not enough $ to pay for music royalties.

To pay for all the music and extras we want, they'll probably have to approach the price of top tier season packs from other studios -- $80-110 per season. $45 is not enough to do QL justice.
 
I have the first season of Andy Griffith in the slim pack DVD inserts. Don't mind it much at all. It's actually kind of nice to only take out the one package instead of a whole huge flipout thing when I want one specific disc.
 
I agree... I've grown to like the slim cases, such as the ones they use for "Family Guy" and "Futurama". They're nice and compact, and like Jennie said, no flipping out. :nut

As for "lame": yes, it is lame to advertise other series/movies on DVDs, especially by including an entire FREAKING episode. :rolleyes

... Mike. *_*
 
I pointed out the episode swapping between these series a few months ago, and I agree: it's as lame as they can get. Knight Rider is the set which says, "Music may differ from televised version." Fortunately, KR fans got lucky with the music changes for this series (this time) because the show frequently used music from cover artists. In this case, Season 2's music was almost entirely done by cover artists.

There are a few instances where a song by the original artist is used, but fortunately, only one song had been removed from the entire season. Prince's "Little Red Corvette" had been removed from the episode "White-Line Warriors." In all fairness, though, I've heard that Prince is usually uncooperative when it comes to his music, so maybe that had something to do with it? Now, I'm not happy about the music change of course, but ONE song that was not a significant part of the story being removed I can tolerate. (Actually, it's been so long since I've seen some of the episodes that I would have never noticed this change had I not looked it up.)

Season 3, on the other hand, is the most dependent on music out of all the seasons. The original artists are used more often, but there are also still many cover versions used. (Billy Idol's "Rebel Yell" is an example of one of the songs originally used as a cover I can remember off-hand.) I predict that we won't be so lucky when Season 3 rolls around, but you never know. It would certainly suck if they removed some songs by the original artists such as: "Cruel Summer" by Bananarama, "Self Control" by Laura Branigan, and "Talking In Your Sleep" by The Romantics. Season 2 evidently wasn't much of a problem for Universal as it no doubt must have been much cheaper to acquire rights to songs originally done by cover artists.

As we all know, Universal has learned how to cover their asses from now on by placing the disclaimer on their sets. So the disclaimer doesn't surprise me at all. It's kind of funny that they actually use it when they only removed one song (as I think it makes the problem sound worse than it is), but they can completely butcher Quantum Leap and don't say a word. I don't know what the deal is for Magnum P.I. and The A-Team though. Anyway, it's funny that you happened to be in Virgin Megastore, Damon, as I was walking through Times Square on my lunch hour the past few days. (At least I'm assuming that's the one you were at.)
 
Re: Re: An interesting observation... might be nothing...

I like the new cases a lot because, as Jennie said, they are a lot easier to deal with than the more elaborate cases. They also potentially take up a lot less space.

I don't agree about the bonus episodes, though. I never watched Knight Rider, so I was glad to have a free sample of it on a set I was going to buy anyway. I ended up liking the show enough that I may consider buying it.
 
> Re: Re: An interesting observation... might be nothing

In a case such as yours, it's a good thing. But if you look at it in terms of Universal's effort to provide bonus features, it didn't require a lot of effort on their part. So in that sense I think it's lame. Depends on your point of view I guess.
 
Re: > Re: Re: An interesting observation... might be not

Yeah, from the standpoint of extras, it's not a great thing. I actually look at these particular sets as not having any extras, and the episodes from other shows are just extended advertising like the trailers before the first disc. And, since I bought both the A-Team S2 and Magnum S2 on the same day, I actually got bonus episodes I don't need (including the same KR episode twice).
 
Re: > Re: Re: An interesting observation... might be not

How's the quality of your DVD sets by the way, Rasdock? I find the second season of Knight Rider rather dark looking. I suspect that Universal purposely did this as an attempt to camouflage the specs of dirt or "snow" rather than properly re-master the footage.

The daytime scenes look decent (the sky looks like a darker, more crisp shade of blue than syndication), but the indoor scenes are annoyingly dark. It's like watching the DVDs with sunglasses on. Still, in comparison with syndication, the quality is clearer and the best available probably for a long time to come. But in terms of standard DVD quality, I think it's sub-par.
 
Re: > Re: Re: An interesting observation... might be not

I've only watched two episodes of Magnum and one of the A-Team, and I'd say they are about the same quality as the previous seasons. Good, but not great. As you say, definitely better than syndication. From watching the Brother's Keeper bonus episode, I would say that the three shows look pretty much the same.
 
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