Columbo: The Complete Series DVD

[kemcha]

I just purchased Columbo: The Complete Series on DVD from Best Buy. Ended up getting it for $61.99 at Best Buy with a price match from Amazon. At any rate, one thing has me curious about whether Universal did any work at cleaning up these episodes.

Currently, I've just finished watching the first season and there is no anti-aliasing. The episodes are crisp and clean and I'm watching these episodes on a 32" Samsung HDTV. The video quality is absolutely stunning and if these weren't DVDs, I'd be wondering if these weren't Blu-rays that I'm watching.

All in all, it wasn't a bad deal and compared to the individual season sets previously released, this set has been wonderfully produced. For anyone who is interested in knowing, these are all single sided DVDs, they include the two pilot movies that kicked off the series, they included every regular episode of the TV series as well as every movie and every reunion movie.

[manicsounds]

Keep in mind that the final set of Columbo DVDs released in the US were cropped to widescreen, while the foreign releases kept the original ratio. This is also the same for the complete set.

[kemcha]

Do you mean that the complete series collection has the correct aspect ratios? I'm aware that there is a lot of debate in regards to the "widescreen" format where it concerns the later "reunion" movies when the entire series was broadcast on television, they were "made for TV" movies. But, I also know that some studios would film in widescreen or letterbox format but would broadcast the content on TV in its full frame format or its 4:3 ratio.

[Hair-Metal]

Watching my season two dvd's and noticing on a few of the episodes when they talk it is not matching up with there mouths, kinda like an old Godzilla movie from the 60's/70's, anyone else notice this glitch?

[WBMakeVMarsMovieNOW]

They had this for $28 Amazon Prime day.

[thatguamguy]

Originally Posted by kemcha

Do you mean that the complete series collection has the correct aspect ratios? I'm aware that there is a lot of debate in regards to the "widescreen" format where it concerns the later "reunion" movies when the entire series was broadcast on television, they were "made for TV" movies. But, I also know that some studios would film in widescreen or letterbox format but would broadcast the content on TV in its full frame format or its 4:3 ratio.

To my eye, the widescreen versions appear very obviously misframed. I haven't actually watched them in fullscreen to be 100% sure, but just watching them in widescreen convinced me that the widescreen masters that were used for the R1 DVD and the HD versions are wrong. I would assume that it was shot for fullscreen, but it's possible that it was shot for widescreen and they cropped it incorrectly. Either way, it's annoying, because I actually enjoy watching a bunch of the later ones. The mysteries aren't as good, but they are more entertaining and they mostly do the good kind of fan service.