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Star Trek TOS DVD Box Sets Forthcoming
bluethundr writes "According to Trek Today: the diabolical Trek 'powers that be' have come up with yet another way to separate the hapless trekkie from his hard earned cash. The Original Series is being re-released as a Box Set. Reportedly, the sets should feature enough extras to make (they hope) the die-hard pony-up against their better judgement. They have an image of the box set on the R2 Project. One interesting aspect of this release is that the Region 2 release will package all original season eps in order of original air-date! One also has to wonder why in the world they are still refusing to offer the The Animated Series on DVD, forcing one to buy the bootlegs if you want to get your hands on a copy. VHS only, as far as official release goes. TAS featured most of the original cast, many of the original writers. What's more, is that one episode was penned by another author you may have heard of in which he mingled concepts of his own distinct mythology with that of trek-lore." Update: 05/06 14:54 GMT by S : Phrase by original submitter removed - apologies, I was completely unaware of etymology.
Why didn't they have Sulu at the helm?
I have been pwned because my
Bought the Original Series on DVDs.... wasn't a very good value because you only got 2 episodes per $20 DVD. Maybe this'll be a better value, so... not as much ripping off of trekkies.
I love it - it's great for using to confunse and annoy supposedly "hardcore" trekkies who get all their info out of magazines.
And no, I'm not a trekkie, I'm just an animation fan who shared a house with one a few years back.
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
I know what I will do. I will wait until the boxed set is released, and then two weeks later I will call Paramount and tell them the disk with the special featurettes is not working, and ask for them to send me a replacement. I will then add that with my current TOS collection.
Or maybe I will put my old DVD's on sale on Ebay. Either way, this is a crooked way to conduct buisness.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Fscking racist.
The boxed sets of LOTR are probably making tons of money... perhaps that's why these people decided to recapitalize on a decades-old series.
Not that it's bad or anything!
Wait until this (and LOTR) goes gold, platinum, super-platinum collector's edition with Enterprise scale model, etc.
Then they release The Hobbit/TAS, and the cycle begins again.
"In this scene ... I ... was ... motivated ... by ... the ... "
Regions are not the problem, the problem is the differance between the PAL and NTSC formats. You could have a region free DVD player, but all those DVD's from eurpoe are PAL formatted, which means you need a PAL tv or a way to convert the PAL signal to NTSC. I heard the only way to play them is on a laptop because most laptops can display PAL.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
"it's a scam Jim, but not as we know it"
Actually, they wanted to, but apparently it violates some treaty
1. Your TV is multisystem and correctly handles the PAL signal. AFAIK, you are in the minority
2. Your DVD handles the conversion from PAL to NTSC and what you see on your TV is a converted signal.
From conversations with American friends, I believe you have succeeded with a fluke where others have spent lots to have acceptable results.
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
YOU chose to buy 2 episodes for $20 (and you bought the ENTIRE series?), so don't complain to the supplier if you are willing to buy.
Usually DVD players that can play multiple regions of DVD can also output in either PAL or NTSC and convert on the fly between the two formats. My current player (Sampo 611) does this, as did the previous player (Raite 750).
Check out the explanation of multi-region DVD players from amazon.co.uk
+++ ATH0 +++
You can be forgiven for being too young to know what it is, it was shown in the early-mid '70s after all.
Here is the imdb entry
What kind of racist crap is this? It shouldn't be in a /. article, for one thing. Bad taste. VERY BAD TASTE.
-Christopher Wu
http://www.christopherwu.net/
Of the Star Trek animated series, here is the IMBD entry
If you dont like it, THEN DONT BUY IT.
Noone is holding a gun to your head, telling you to buy the new super-shiny version of the dvd. All that the studios are doing here is responding to CONSUMER DEMAND.
There are plenty of other evil things that these companies do. Harping on SE dvds simply isnt worthwhile.
This problem is solved very, very easily. Just. Dont. Buy. It.
no
From conversations with American friends, I believe you have succeeded with a fluke where others have spent lots to have acceptable results.
Both my U.S.-purchased DVD players can be region-modded and can play PAL DVDs with NTSC output, and I paid $170 and $80 for them a year or more ago. It's not a fluke, it's smart shopping, although the DVD-CCA nazis may be making it harder these days.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
On the contrary, regions are a big problem, and they do NOT prevent piracy they BOOST piracy. Most TVs, DVD players, and Computers have the option to switch between NTSC and PAL (I'm writing to u from Asia, and we have that option, I'm sure American TVs/Computers do too. However, with this fucked up region system, here's what happens. LOTR fans in Asia would like to own the LOTR DVD. However, these LOTR fans are bracketed in Region 5 (I'm talking about the Indian Sub-Continent here).
Question: How many Hollywood movies were released in Region 5 this yr? The answer is FIVE, and LOTR was not one of them. So people in Asia have the choice of paying $20 for the DVD + $20 Shipping to Asia from America, to get a Region 1 DVD which their hacked DVD player will play...OR.... they could go down to the local bootlegger and get a pirated DVD/VideoCD.
Let's see what would happen in a non-region encoding situation:
LOTR DVD is released, simultaneously worldwide. Person in god-forsaken 3rd-world country has easy access to the legal, region-free DVD at local prices...
My Favourite Meme
He took "The Soft Weapon" and rewrote it with Trek characters. But he couldn't even be bothered to change the Kzinti to Klingons, which would've been the logical mapping from Known Space to Trek. Frankly, I think it's disgraceful that he took money for this hack job (and I say that as a big Niven fan).
I actually argued about this with someone online once. He brought up Kzinti in a Trek context, based on that episode. I said they had no place in the Trek universe. But he insisted that since it was in TAS, it was canon.
OK, call me a fanboy, but this isn't a troll. I'm glad to see somebody else remembers this, anyway.
Share and Enjoy: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Interestingly, I understand that an increasing number of DVDs of older shows are being released in a "region zero" (region-free) format.
My understanding of the rationale behind this is to cut the production costs on something which will sell, but not sell enough in some areas to make region coding worthwhile. When they're around 20 or so years old, there's not much to lose to piracy.
On the other hand, stopping the region-coding of movies might be bad for the cinema industry. Why? Well, take the movie Galaxy Quest. The UK theatrical release date was the same as the US DVD release date. Given the prevalence of international sales via, say, eBay and Amazon, I can imagine people being tempted to buy a DVD and sell it if they don't like it, or buy a secondhand one.
That said, IMHO movies like LotR wouldn't be hurt due to simultaneous releases, unless they take more than a year to get out to the most remote cinemas in some parts of the world.
So, the long and short? My 2c is that region encoding is good for the industry in some cases (and also means they don't have to squeeze every language soundtrack or subtitle onto the same disc), but is also detrimental to the industry - if, for example, ST:TOS had been released in region-free format originally, Paramount would have easily at least doubled, if not tripled, their sales. (I don't intend to buy it now. The profile says recovering ex-Trekkie, and not only do I not want to waste the money on that stuff, but that packaging is hideous.)
"It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue." -- Zork
Chekov:
"In sis seen I vas mota-waited by the large wessel looming..."
Scotty:
"..but we could'na finnish the seen, as we just did'na have the film!"
Shouldn't that be from his parents' hard earned cash?
For fun, calculate how much DDT would be lethal for you!
The star trek box sets are SO overpriced its not even funny anymore. Look at other popular tv box sets for comparisons and they are much cheaper. CSI $60, Friends $55 for season 1, $35 for other seasons, Angel $45, Buffy $45, West Wing $45. But DS9 $97, TNG $97-$111. For the same number of episodes as other tv shows.
I would love to get all the TNG and DS9 box sets but not at $100 or higher a box. Paramount is gouging star trek fans because they know they can get away with it. Its a big slap in the face to star trek fans but they are to stupid to realize it.