Thunderbirds limited edition box sets (1965 series)

[Nailwraps]

There is a problem with the audio however. I won't get into the specifics (long story short, they were using PAL masters converted to NTSC then converted back to PAL), but the Movie audio is presented in the correct pitch (ironically), but the Episodes soundtrack is in a high PAL-pitch.

I e-mailed Anderson about this and this is what they had to say:

"The pitch is adjusted to in each instance to match original episodes as closely as possible. The format of masters varies for each available asset, and there are inherent differences in audio quality of each master, which results in differing audio quality dependent on the source."

"The sources for these soundtracks were from masters with different frame rates. Working with old masters such as these it is often necessary to convert frame rates (from 25fps to 24 fps etc), as the standard format for region-free Blu-ray compatibility is 24fps. When making any such necessary changes, we work to ensure that the re-speeds are undertaken in such a way that does not affect the picture motion adversely. We also use various audio editing techniques, such as pitch shift, to ensure the audio quality is as close as possible to the original mono audio. This work however is subjective, and as each audio source also has its own qualities (inherent to the original master format) the results for the episode and movie soundtracks will always differ slightly. However, we are happy with the balance we have achieved here to ensure pitch is always as close as possible to the original mono track from the episodes (i.e as originally recorded)."

Which doesn't make sense for 2 reasons; 1.) Thunderbirds and all of Gerry Anderson's ITC output was automatically and intentionally shot and recorded at 24fps/NTSC (as a way to help sell the shows to America) and 2.) If they knew the pitches used for the Episodes soundtrack were higher-pitch, why not simply correct them?

What's odder (but good) is that they manage to correct the pitch problems for the Movie soundtrack. As I said, the movies were made using PAL transfers and adding additional sound effects and music from NTSC/24fps sources, so how they manage to convert everything at the proper pitch and speed is interesting. When Network released the Stingray movies, they had the Movie soundtracks in the pitch the way it was created and the Episodes soundtracks in their correct pitch.

So I don't understand why the Episodes soundtracks for the Thunderbirds release wasn't pitch-corrected.