About Warner "Archive DVDs"

There seems to be some mistakes by journalists about the Warners Archive DVD project. They are DVD-Rs, they say "Download" on the DVD-R itself, and the hype, of course, is all about downloading, exclusiveness of the website, etc. Not true. The DVD-Rs seem to be showing up directly at amazon.com/dvd after a few months or so, though I've seen no reports about this anywhere. Does anyone know if there is an explicit policy to release *all* the Warner Archive DVD-Rs to Amazon, and how long it is scheduled to take? I'm talking about fulfillment directly by amazon, and not by third parties. For instance, the Warners Archive DVD-R Who's Killing The Great Chefs Of Europe (1978) and The Sea Hawk (1924) can be bought direct from amazon.com/dvd, which wasn't true just a few months ago. Amazon is more reliable (for titles they stock) than ordering directly from Warners, which is slower and doesn't do returns in a jiffy. This is all vital information for our sweet, sweet friends from Britain, Germany, and all the other non-american countries because Warner Archive refuses to ship outside of the USA.

Haven't watched the Sea Hawk (1924) yet, but have seen the chefs movie, which is a funny "foodie" movie, and I don't recall problems with the video quality, despite what some of the amazon reviewers say. (related subject matter, The Simpsons season 11 episode where Homer becomes a fat food critic.)

The Four's a Crowd (1938) Warners Archive DVD has transfer errors in it, starting about half way through the movie (i forget the exact timings) and shows itself as movement showing itself as if there were frames dropped and the previous frame repeated, "robot movement", I don't know what the exact technical term for this sort of distortion, but there is a mild case of it here; it is exclusively a transfer fault, not a source fault, and is super retarded. The movie itself is of interest, for instance, with the character who is sort of the "Mr. Burns type" and his favorite statement is "release the hounds" and then the snapping hounds chase away the rascally errol flynn.

By the way, an inferiority of the amazon.com/dvd website compared to the amazon.co.uk/dvd website is the "advanced search" on the UK website allows search by Studio, while the domestic amazon forbids searches by studio.

In article , weary flake wrote:

Amazon is apparently selling "burn on demand" movies from various studios. I bought the TV series 'The Maxx' from them which apparently uses that, so it's at least WB and MTV/Viacom that are doing it now. I didn't see a way to search Amazon for just burn on demand disks though...

On Jan 10, 12:06 pm, weary flake wrote:

I got "Who's Killing the Great Chefs of Europe" for Christmas (from deepdiscountdvd, not Amazon) and the print this was made from was pretty nice. When I saw the movie on cable back in the early 90s, it was a much more washed-out print shown. And pan 'n' scan too, if I recall. The Amazon reviewers are probably spoiled. But there are reports that some of the films are poor digital copies, so the quality overall for all the titles isn't what it should be.

Stacia

Having bought the 1924 version of The Sea Hawk and also several other movies from the WBShop, the quality of all the movies I got was subpar compared to a conventionally mastered DVD. The DVD-Rs sold under the Warner Archives name are in some ways comparable to some A&E DVDs sold under the History Channel label, except that the History Channel DVDs I bought have a more consistent and higher video quality. The Quentin Durward DVD I bought from the WBShop had pretty good video quality and was anamorphic. But no closed captioning, which the Warner Archive mastering process stripped from the digital print used by TCM when it broadcasts the movie.

As a side note, I did not think The Sea Hawk was a good movie, even for 1924. Wallace Beery steal the show. Frank Lloyd's ponderous direction and a slow moving script did not help matters. For comparison, see the great job Allan Dwan did directing the 1917 Douglas Fairbanks film A Modern Musketeer. The older film looked more modern. Well, it did have that title to live up to.

Quentin Durward, even with only 10 minute chapters and a print that could have used some image fixing up on the day for night scenes, was great as usual.

Having bought the 1924 version of The Sea Hawk and also several other movies from the WBShop, the quality of all the movies I got was subpar compared to a conventionally mastered DVD. The DVD-Rs sold under the Warner Archives name are in some ways comparable to some A&E DVD-Rs sold under the History Channel label, except that the History Channel DVDs I bought have a more consistent and higher video quality. The Quentin Durward DVD I bought from the WBShop had pretty good video quality and was anamorphic. But no closed captioning, which the Warner Archive mastering process stripped from the digital print used by TCM when it broadcasts the movie.

As a side note, I did not think The Sea Hawk was a good movie, even for 1924. Wallace Beery steals the show. Frank Lloyd's ponderous direction and a slow moving script did not help matters. For comparison, see the great job Allan Dwan did directing the 1917 Douglas Fairbanks film A Modern Musketeer. The older film looked more modern. Well, it did have that title to live up to.

Quentin Durward, even with only 10 minute chapters and a print that could have used some image fixing up on the day for night scenes, was great as usual.