Re: Babylon 5 DVDs
- From: "Mac Breck" <macthevorlon@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2009 10:15:55 -0400
Rob Jensen wrote:
On Mon, 1 Jun 2009 12:10:05 -0400, "Mac Breck"
<macthevorlon@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Rob Jensen wrote:
On Mon, 1 Jun 2009 10:07:55 -0400, "Mac Breck"
<macthevorlon@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Rob Jensen wrote:
On Sun, 31 May 2009 19:45:35 -0600, Frank Swarbrick
<fswarbrick@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I don't know if this is the beginning or the end of a "week" at
best Buy, but all five season's DVDs are on sale "this week" for
$19.99 per season. Regular price $49.99 (and I think they used
to be even more), so it's a pretty good deal. I never would have
bought them at the higher price, but I bought all five.
Just thought I'd mention it. (I'm assuming the sale is chain
wide, of course.)
Something to watch this summer.
Frank
These sales are definitely chain-wide -- and yeah, even though
it's not in the Sunday ad (at least around here in Central MO.).
They've been doing a lot of sales that aren't listed in the
Sunday ads lately, and better yet, those unlisted sales are
sometimes (I'd say around 40% of the time) for more than one
week. Are you sure that the sale is only for one week? If the
B5 dvds aren't in the Sunday ad where you are, it may be part of
one of those longer sales.
On second thought, I just went and checked the website -- all of
the seasons are on sale for $19.99. The boxed set of the movies
is still at BB's regular price of $44.99 (as opposed to full
retail of $60).
There's a whole 'nother set of skus for all five of the seasons
with a release date of June 16th, so I'm wondering if Warner is
just blowing out its remaining original stock just in time to
re-release 'em all in slim-packs (the new skus don't indicate that
they're blu-ray).
What, *FINALLY* with good packaging that doesn't cause discs to
come loose and then cause the hard plastic hub to scratch the hell
out of them? Maybe a little softer plastic with a better hub???
Never thought I'd see the day!
It's about freakin' time!
Check all of your discs before you leave the store, or at least
before you leave the parking lot, folks.
SPECIAL NOTE: Scratches on the shiny side of the DVD very rarely
result in the DVD being unplayable.
They did on my B5 DVDs. The scratches were deep and in a long (1 to
2 inch) arc that was a shallower curve than the track it scratched.
Scratches in the direction of disc rotation are the worst kind, and
are how the B5 hubs scratch the DVDs.
In my experience, that amount of damage is incredibly unusual for
those fold-out style boxes.
Happens a lot with the B5 Season and Movie Collection DVD sets.
My Season 3 set as arrived in the mail, with Disc 4 & 5 scratched, both
of which skipped and hung, a lot:
http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/dd61/KoshN/Babylon%205/b5s3discs4and5asarrived.jpg
http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/dd61/KoshN/Babylon%205/b5s3disc4scratches.jpg
http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/dd61/KoshN/Babylon%205/b5s3disc5scratches.jpg
Disc 4 of 6 (details of the problems encountered):
--------------
Episode #14 of 22, Ship of Tears:
DVD hangs, and skips from 00:00:56 to 00:01:36.
DVD hangs at 00:05:39, and either skips from 00:05:39 back to 00:04:52
(over
and over again), or skips ahead to 00:13:51.
DVD hangs at 00:26:00, and skips back to 00:14:36.
Episode #15 of 22, Interludes and Examinations
DVD hangs at 00:35:19, and skips back to 00:04:27, or just stutters
around
for a few seconds and then continues.
DVD hangs at 00:36:34, and skips back to 00:28:54, or just stutters
around
for a few seconds and then continues.
DVD hangs at 00:40:53, and skips to 00:41:34.
Disc 5 of 6 (details of the problems encountered):
--------------
Episode #17 of 22, War Without End, Part 2
DVD hangs at 00:02:15, and skips to 00:02:26.
DVD hangs at 00:04:56, and skips to 00:11:09.
DVD hangs at 00:13:34, stutters around 00:13:34, 00:13:35, 00:13:36,
00:13:37, and 00:13:38, and then skips to 00:13:47.
DVD hangs at 00:13:54, and then skips to 00:14:04.
DVD hangs at 00:14:49, and then skips to 00:14:59.
DVD hangs at 00:29:04, and then skips to 00:29:45.
DVD hangs at 00:30:59, and then skips to 00:31:09.
DVD hangs at 00:31:59, and then skips to 00:32:04.
DVD hangs at 00:32:19, and then skips to 00:39:52.
Episode #20 of 22, And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place
DVD hangs at 00:09:21, and then skips to 00:13:58.
DVD hangs at 00:14:51, and then skips to 00:15:31.
DVD hangs at 00:21:48, and then continues.
DVD hangs at 00:38:14, then skips to 00:38:16, and then skips to
00:39:02.
DVD hangs at 00:39:07, 00:39:08, 00:39:09, and 00:39:10, and then skips
to
00:39:51.
DVD hangs at 00:40:02, 00:40:05, 00:40:07 and 00:40:08, and then skips
to
00:40:14.
No, washing didn't fix this problem, and no I didn't polish them because
I didn't want to add swirl marks to them and have the store say it was
my fault that they wouldn't play.
And I have a LOT of DVDs.
So do I.
Sometimes, a
disc does come loose in any and all of the types of DVD boxes,
True, and sometimes the discs are properly seated on their hubs in a
newly opened box, and the discs are scratched on their read surface.
That happens, but it's pretty rare. However, in my experience, usually
those scratches aren't major (long and in the direction of disc
rotation), and usually don't cause skipping/hanging.
but
scratches that deep are weird in general.
Not in the case of the B5 Season and Movie Collection sets. Whether you
consider any of the scratches above as deep or not, they caused skipping
and hanging. When I buy a new DVD, I expect it to be scratch-free and
playable.
I try to open all of my
DVDs within a couple of days of buying them whether I'm going to watch
them immediately or they're going to gather dust on the "To-Watch"
stack for a few [strike] months [/strike] weeks.
With B5 Season and Movie Collection sets, I do it before I leave the
store. With everything else, I do it before I leave the parking lot.
Of course, there's always the chance of there simply being a small
strike of defective discs or sets, like, maybe a dozen or three boxes
or cases or whatever, that end up going to the same store or
something.
Oh that's not what happened. It, loose, scratched discs, have happened
to me, _mainly_ with Babylon 5 Season 1 thru 5 sets and the Movie
Collection sets, both in boxes in the mail from DVD Planet and Amazon,
and when buying sets at Wal-Mart and Best Buy in person, over the course
of six years. I finished buying my B5 collection at local stores, in
person, and checking the discs to make sure they were OK before leaving
the store. I remember one time when I was exchanging a couple of discs
in a B5 set I'd just bought a few minutes earlier, and the Customer
Service Clerk opened a new set to give me replacement discs from the new
set, and one disc was loose in the new set, and rolled out of the box,
across the counter and onto the floor of the store, and I said "See?"
Luckily, it was not one of the discs that I needed (because it was
scratched in the same pattern as those in the links above). With the
Babylon 5 Season and Movie Collection sets, NEVER exchange a whole set
for another whole set, because you never know which discs might be the
scratched/unplayable ones. The odds of getting a set with no loose
and/or scratched discs are very low.
About a year or two ago, several years after buying my B5 and Crusade
DVDs, I bought a set for a friend, a 100% B5 newbie who I didn't want to
get discouraged by him going through everything I had in getting my set.
Out of 40 discs (all of B5 & Crusade, and The Lost Tales, but sans the
Rangers pilot.) , 8 DVDs, 20%, were scratched like I've explained and
shown in this post.
Back when the Director's Cut boxed set of the Dune
miniseries remake (the one in the Gold Box) came out, I oepned it up
at home and discovered that the set was missing the last of the three
discs. So I went back to Best Buy, customer service had me go grab
another one -- and it was missing *two discs* (one of which was the
one I needed.) So we both kinda went uh-oh and she told me to go grab
five or six more of them, so I did. Out of these, two were msising
one disc, two were missing one of the other discs, one was missing two
discs and the last had NO discs in it. Fortunately, one of the boxes
did have the disc that I needed, so it was resolved for me. Sometimes,
a bad batch just slips through.
Yes, I has a similar problem with one of my "House M.D." season sets,
except that my set had two Disc 2's, and no Disc 1. However, that's not
a packaging problem that has occured over the course of six years and
two collections of Babylon 5 and Crusade (one complete collecton and one
sans the Rangers pilot), bought from various sources, both mail order
and local.
In my experience, when it comes to Babylon 5 & Crusade, the problems
only occured with the B5 Season 1 thru 5 DVD sets and the B5 Movie
Collection set, and what do they all have in common, *the* *same*
*packaging* (the same hard plastic material, and the same, cheap, no
moving parts, friction-fit hub design). The Crusade set uses the same
hard plastic, but uses a slightly better hub design, and the Rangers
pilot and the Lost Tales DVD uses a softer, less scratchy plastic and a
better hub design. I've never had the problem with the Crusade DVDs or
the Rangers pilot DVD or the B5: Lost Tales DVD.
--
Mac Breck (KoshN)
-------------------------------
"Keen Eddie" (2004)
Fiona: Get out.
Eddie: Out of the kitchen?
Fiona: Out of the kitchen, out of the flat, out of London, out of the
world. It's full. Get out. Eddie: I can't get out of the world. I
didn't pull the kind of math grades you need to qualify for the space
program.
.
- References:
- Babylon 5 DVDs
- From: Frank Swarbrick
- Re: Babylon 5 DVDs
- From: Rob Jensen
- Re: Babylon 5 DVDs
- From: Mac Breck
- Re: Babylon 5 DVDs
- From: Rob Jensen
- Re: Babylon 5 DVDs
- From: Mac Breck
- Re: Babylon 5 DVDs
- From: Rob Jensen
- Babylon 5 DVDs
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