The Official Network Thread

[Fnord Prefect]

Britbox has potential to be like golden age UK Gold but with the added advantage of not having to remember to set the VCR. However with the two main players seemingly more than willing to let Acorn Media, the BFI, Network, Simply Media, plus the odd other smaller player (I mean how the heck did 101 Films wrangle Ghostwatch and The Stone Tape?) have almost free range regarding the home video rights for the more interesting archive items I'm not getting my hopes up. Not paying £6 a month for the same old same old.

[gouryella]

I took a 30 day free trial of Britbox. It says HD in the info with all The Carry Ons I've checked. Watched a bit of one and it looks HD. 720P, 1080P or upscaled I've no idea. Someone more technically minded (and better eyesight) needs to check them out.

[Long Tom]

Originally Posted by Fnord Prefect

Britbox has potential to be like golden age UK Gold but with the added advantage of not having to remember to set the VCR. However with the two main players seemingly more than willing to let Acorn Media, the BFI, Network, Simply Media, plus the odd other smaller player (I mean how the heck did 101 Films wrangle Ghostwatch and The Stone Tape?) have almost free range regarding the home video rights for the more interesting archive items I'm not getting my hopes up. Not paying £6 a month for the same old same old.

The problem with golden age UK Gold is the same as it was for golden age Granada + and golden age Bravo. No viewers.
While there was a small band of hardcore fans and serious collectors, me included, the bottom line is that the really vintage stuff doesn't get enough of an audience which is why UK Gold dropped the initial restrictions first chance they could. Bar some soaps everything UK Gold aired had to be at least 10 years old but when that was dropped it slowly got toward becoming BBC1 + 6 months and unfortunately repeats of newer stuff gets more viewers.

When new management took over Bravo the long awaited ITC deal got the chop just 18 months into a 5 year deal. And Granada + started removing B&W shows like some episodes of Hadleigh even at 9am to replace them with the millionth repeat of The Professionals simply because Hadleigh got 2000 viewers while The Professionals got 10000.

Britbox could of course include the vintage material because its streaming and not broadcasting but I wouldn't hold my breath.
The logical outcome should be that Britbox carries 95%+ of the archives of both BBC and ITV but I assume on a cost basis they won't think its worth even transferring the stuff to make it available.

Its like the bizarre practice of releasing a brand new series on dvd and bluray just a day or week afer it ends screening.
Surely if you've just watched it on tv you will wait months down the line and by the time you want to watch it a second time the price will be a fraction of what it is on release.
BBC and ITV have some odd thinking. I'd like to say they know their market but I don't think they do

[nitin]

The Last Seduction is a smart and sultry neo noir but IMHO its best attribute is its wicked black humour. Linda Fiorentino is like a force of nature in this movie, in an anti-heroine role that is still unfortunately rarely given to female leads. It’s one of the best performances of the 90s in my book just for how easy she makes it look.

I can’t put this in the same league as the top noirs (neo or classical) because it was developed as a TV movie and frankly it shows. John Dahl does well with what he has but it never really looks more than a good tv show.

Apart from Fiorentino tearing up the screen, Dahl also gets great mileage out of the mischievous score, much like Frears did in The Grifters.

Very enjoyable stuff.

Unfortunately Network’s blu has an unwatchable transfer with ugly artifacting throughout. But if you are region free, Scorpion’s release is far superior because even though it utilises the same problematic master that is overly processed and rife with digital noise, it actually has encoding that doesn’t make all of those attributes (especially the digital noise) worse. Also, if you are one of those people that likes to turn on sharpening in their tv, at least turn it off here because it really plays havoc with digital noise.

[OceanBlue]

Thought I'd ask about this, but what is the current situation with Minder and a Blu-ray release? Are Euston Films the rights holders?

[justwannaboogie]

Winter Sale: https://networkonair.com/167-winter-sale

Not much in the way of blu-rays as usual but I did go for Amat Escalante's Heli for £3.20 delivered.

[BarnDoor]

Some interesting new announcements:

Alfie Darling

Home At Seven

Man At The Top

The Mind Benders

[StarDestroyer52]

Originally Posted by BarnDoor

Some interesting new announcements:

Alfie Darling

Home At Seven

Man At The Top

The Mind Benders

Home At Seven sounds like the type of title I would enjoy. Might have to buy that one down the road.

[BarnDoor]

A couple more:

The Count of Monte Cristo (1975)

The Man in the Iron Mask (1977)

I was hoping to import these at some point, so good news on that front

[mattyl149]

Seeing mention of Nightmare Park reminds me that I ordered it when it came out and I received it. A week or so later I received another copy. I checked that I hadn't ordered two in error

I'm not sure whether there was a problem with the original disc and this is a replacement, or an error on Networks part

I might contact them to check if I'm the only one who's received two copies

[CV19]

Originally Posted by mattyl149

Seeing mention of Nightmare Park reminds me that I ordered it when it came out and I received it. A week or so later I received another copy. I checked that I hadn't ordered two in error

I'm not sure whether there was a problem with the original disc and this is a replacement, or an error on Networks part

I might contact them to check if I'm the only one who's received two copies

I also bought Nightmare Park at the time of release, but I only received the one copy. However, I do remember Amazon some time ago sending me a duplicate disc within about a couple of weeks of having received the first one for some strange reason, and when I contacted them, they told me to hang on to it. From memory, I think it was an Arrow title.

[spearce8]

Who decides at Network on which titles to release on Blu, or is it just what's made available to them.....not one of those new batches I'm interested in, why don't they do a Poll once in a while.

[CV19]

Originally Posted by spearce8

Who decides at Network on which titles to release on Blu, or is it just what's made available to them.....not one of those new batches I'm interested in, why don't they do a Poll once in a while.

Might still be worth dropping them a line and letting them know what you'd like. The reason I say this is because I made an enquiry to them quite a long time ago now with regards to releasing a couple of titles I had in mind. They replied by saying that although they weren't in the pipeline, they were perfectly happy to receive requests.....even though they couldn't be guaranteed. Not sure whether they still have that policy now, but there's certainly no harm in asking.

[BarnDoor]

More still:

Keep Fit

Love, Life & Laughter

Passport to Shame

They've certainly upped their output for 2020.

[Aclea]

Originally Posted by spearce8

Who decides at Network on which titles to release on Blu, or is it just what's made available to them.....not one of those new batches I'm interested in, why don't they do a Poll once in a while.

Polls are notoriously unreliable - it's easier to vote than to put money down and the winners almost always turn out to be poor sellers, especially on deep back-catalog titles, which are typically slow sellers where people wait for a price drop. There's a reason Fox and Warner Archive didn't repeat their polls. It's pretty much the same with write-in campaigns, where the most requested titles are usually the worst sellers. Call it the 'Day One preorder!' phenomenon.

[gouryella]

Originally Posted by BarnDoor

More still:

Keep Fit

Love, Life & Laughter

Passport to Shame

They've certainly upped their output for 2020.

George Formby on Blu-ray? Yes please!

[Aclea]

Curious choice for his first BD - I'd have thought No Limit or Spare a Copper would have been more likely, but maybe SC are planning to do those themselves and are waiting to see how Network does with this. Hopefully it means we might see more Will Hay on blu as well.

[pwarner184]

Wake me up when the the next Anderson Blu's announced... ;P

[wabrit]

Apologies if this has already been covered, but are the blu rays of The Shout and Hell Drivers now OOP? Amazon has only 2nd hand copies, they're out of stock on the Network website, and the scalpers are already gathering on ebay (for Hell Drivers at least).

[Aclea]

You can still access their page directly on their site, which isn't usually the case when they discontinue an item, so it may hopefully just be out of stock. The DVDs are still listed as being in stock.