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I'm in my Andy Rooney Mode.
Ahhh, DVD. The last refuge for a classic TV lover to see their old shows without editing and without the obnoxious video graffiti that TV Land and many other cable channels have taken to because promoting their other shows in the 10 minutes per half hour they have for commercials is not enough.
But there are always a few flies in the ointment (especially for nitpickers like me) and the first is kind of minor but still bugs me.
It seems now, if the transfer technician notices some blooper that is easily correctable digitally, they correct it. This means mistakes I have come to expect in the show I know well are gone. Here is what I am talking about:
The Brady Bunch: "Two Petes In A Pod" Final season. In the first split screen effect where Peter meets his look alike. They both come up into frame and for a brief moment, the nose of the double (the double for Chris Knight that is supposed to be covered by the split screen in the final shot)invades the split screen so for a second you see the tip of a disembodied nose. For the DVD, a digital fix was done and the mistake is no longer there.
I Dream Of Jeannie: "Have You Heard the One About the Used Car Salesman" forth season. Jeannie is mad at the crooked car dealer for trying to cheat her so Jeannie blinks up a mess for his live commercial. When the car dealer tries to show a car by opening the door, it falls off. When the door falls off, you can see a hand and wrist shift in the back seat behind the gap of the front seat and doorway. This is the guy that is supposed to knock out the rest of the car doors when the car dealer walks in front of it. On DVD, they paste over the gap with a freeze frame before the hand starts moving. On this fix, you can notice a slight jiggle in the area as the camera movies due to the lineup not being perfect.
Also in I Dream Of Jeannie
"Jeannie and the Great Bank Robbery". Jeannie naively ends up helping crooks rob a bank at night. The (back lot) exteriors of the scene are in daylight, while the inside of the bank shows night outside. They obviously forgot to time the daylight scenes to look like night. On the DVD, they do correct this mistake as well.
Mind you, I have no problem with a declared separate version of a TV show that fixes mistakes and even makes different effects (like Star Trek remastered) but when they just go in there and erase mistakes I've noticed for years, that sucks.
Also, it sucks when studios insist on putting their modern logo of the studio or whomever owns the show.
On shows like Bewitched and Jeannie, they strike the original Screen Gems logo and use the modern Sony logo (they own most Screen Gems and Columbia Pictures properties). Also, the level on the audio for the logo is higher than the rest of the show and that sucks too.
In the beginning, CBS/Paramount preserved the original logos on their TV releases and releases like Odd Couple Season 1 and Star Trek Animated are shown with their original red background Paramount TV zoom in logo. But come the second season of Odd Couple, they clipped the original logo for the new one. Same with Hawaii Five O, Mission Impossible and more. Besides missing the original logo, It's a buzzkill to have a flashy modern CGI logo end a classic show.
Finally, there are the dastardly problems with music rights that are getting ridiculous. It's either a case of the studio not wanting to pay anything more for music rights in a show or the music maker wanting too much or both.
The result is that in the last few seasons of the Odd Couple, they either have to alter or edit scenes with music, like sometimes when Felix breaks into song, as he often does, they don't show it because of music rights.
And it's gotten so bad, on the second season of The Fugitive, they replace the background music entirely with new material as they have done on My Three Sons(except for the opening credits, not sure if The Fugitive keeps the opening credits music).
So, where it used to be believed (Naively) that on DVD, you got the show, unedited and unaltered and the cases of music having to be changed (like was done for a while on video copies of Star Trek's City On The Edge of Forever) were rare. Now, it's a bit of a different ball game.
Ahhh, DVD. The last refuge for a classic TV lover to see their old shows without editing and without the obnoxious video graffiti that TV Land and many other cable channels have taken to because promoting their other shows in the 10 minutes per half hour they have for commercials is not enough.
But there are always a few flies in the ointment (especially for nitpickers like me) and the first is kind of minor but still bugs me.
It seems now, if the transfer technician notices some blooper that is easily correctable digitally, they correct it. This means mistakes I have come to expect in the show I know well are gone. Here is what I am talking about:
The Brady Bunch: "Two Petes In A Pod" Final season. In the first split screen effect where Peter meets his look alike. They both come up into frame and for a brief moment, the nose of the double (the double for Chris Knight that is supposed to be covered by the split screen in the final shot)invades the split screen so for a second you see the tip of a disembodied nose. For the DVD, a digital fix was done and the mistake is no longer there.
I Dream Of Jeannie: "Have You Heard the One About the Used Car Salesman" forth season. Jeannie is mad at the crooked car dealer for trying to cheat her so Jeannie blinks up a mess for his live commercial. When the car dealer tries to show a car by opening the door, it falls off. When the door falls off, you can see a hand and wrist shift in the back seat behind the gap of the front seat and doorway. This is the guy that is supposed to knock out the rest of the car doors when the car dealer walks in front of it. On DVD, they paste over the gap with a freeze frame before the hand starts moving. On this fix, you can notice a slight jiggle in the area as the camera movies due to the lineup not being perfect.
Also in I Dream Of Jeannie
"Jeannie and the Great Bank Robbery". Jeannie naively ends up helping crooks rob a bank at night. The (back lot) exteriors of the scene are in daylight, while the inside of the bank shows night outside. They obviously forgot to time the daylight scenes to look like night. On the DVD, they do correct this mistake as well.
Mind you, I have no problem with a declared separate version of a TV show that fixes mistakes and even makes different effects (like Star Trek remastered) but when they just go in there and erase mistakes I've noticed for years, that sucks.
Also, it sucks when studios insist on putting their modern logo of the studio or whomever owns the show.
On shows like Bewitched and Jeannie, they strike the original Screen Gems logo and use the modern Sony logo (they own most Screen Gems and Columbia Pictures properties). Also, the level on the audio for the logo is higher than the rest of the show and that sucks too.
In the beginning, CBS/Paramount preserved the original logos on their TV releases and releases like Odd Couple Season 1 and Star Trek Animated are shown with their original red background Paramount TV zoom in logo. But come the second season of Odd Couple, they clipped the original logo for the new one. Same with Hawaii Five O, Mission Impossible and more. Besides missing the original logo, It's a buzzkill to have a flashy modern CGI logo end a classic show.
Finally, there are the dastardly problems with music rights that are getting ridiculous. It's either a case of the studio not wanting to pay anything more for music rights in a show or the music maker wanting too much or both.
The result is that in the last few seasons of the Odd Couple, they either have to alter or edit scenes with music, like sometimes when Felix breaks into song, as he often does, they don't show it because of music rights.
And it's gotten so bad, on the second season of The Fugitive, they replace the background music entirely with new material as they have done on My Three Sons(except for the opening credits, not sure if The Fugitive keeps the opening credits music).
So, where it used to be believed (Naively) that on DVD, you got the show, unedited and unaltered and the cases of music having to be changed (like was done for a while on video copies of Star Trek's City On The Edge of Forever) were rare. Now, it's a bit of a different ball game.
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