Xena: Warrior Princess on Blu-ray/4K

[Shane Rollins]

Am I the only one who wants Xena: Warrior Princess on some HD format? I just picked up the complete series from Universal and it leaves a lot to be desired. The DVDs are compressed to all hell, and the quality is average at best. While Seasons 3-6 look good by comparison, Seasons 1 and 2 look awful. The first two seasons were shot on 16mm, and are desperately in need of a complete overhaul. Seasons 3-6, which were shot on 35mm, could still use a restoration, but they’re nowhere near as atrocious as the first two seasons. I don’t have any of the older VHS or DVD releases, and I can’t vouch for their quality or lack thereof. All I know is these DVDs suck and could be greatly improved on.

[kobol]

I would also love to see Xena in HD or blu-ray it's a great show & long over do for a release, but I'm sure the price of doing an HD transfer, clean-up, and uprezzing the F/X would be quite prohibitive.

[Batman1980]

Yeah I want it on 4k as well, granted watching it for free on TUBI is a decent alternative.

[Morsoth]

Nooooooo!!!!!!!! This should be in the Wish List section I had hope for few seconds.

[50strat54]

DVD has very very average picture digital is also about the same and digital is SD not HD.

So I'd love to see a bluray come out but I'd say highly doubtful.

So for now glad I have the DVD set, better than nothing

[Gretiem]

Would love to see Xena and Hercules series released on blu-ray or at least HD digital but I am afraid it probably won't happen.

[ol_Dut]

Originally Posted by Morsoth

Nooooooo!!!!!!!! This should be in the Wish List section I had hope for few seconds.

I'm in the same boat. I was hoping for a big bombshell news item, and it instead it's "wouldn't it be neat if..." Raised my hopes and crushed them like a bug.

Needs to be moved or retitled or both.

[Nailwraps]

People realize there is a Wishlist section right?

[Kirben]

I just want to see the later seasons of Hercules and Xena released in true widescreen.

Every re-release still uses the same old cropped masters for the later seasons....

[Jawaburger]

I just started to rewatch the DVDs, and they are pretty poor picture quality. I love the show and am happy to have it available on home media, but would love a remastered version. They could have done so much better PQ-wise, these are really lower tier DVDs. I would even be happy with an up-res with much lower compression!

[GenPion]

I would LOVE to have Xena and Hercules on Blu-ray. These were favorites of mine as a kid.

[willbfree]

There is an amazing fan made upscale of the SD version, using the latest AI upscaling, which puts the legally available version to shame. But the chances that Xena will be remastered in widescreen using whatever extra info is on the film elements is reason enough to wait for the owners to Xena to step up and do it themselves.

[Shane Rollins]

Originally Posted by willbfree

There is an amazing fan made upscale of the SD version, using the latest AI upscaling, which puts the legally available version to shame. But the chances that Xena will be remastered in widescreen using whatever extra info is on the film elements is reason enough to wait for the owners to Xena to step up and do it themselves.

Is there reasonable data on the sides or is it lights/mics/crew members? Buffy The Vampire Slayer instantly comes to mind. They were shot on some 35mm stock (maybe Super 35 but don’t quote me), and matted them to 1.33:1 for TV. They opened it up for a remaster and revealed that it was lights/mics/crew and the like that were matted out. There’s one scene where two characters were fighting and in the opened-up version there’s two crew members sitting right there maybe two feet from the fighting characters. I’d love a matted/unmatted option, but that may be pushing it.

[willbfree]

“ Xena: Warrior Princess was shot in 16x9 from the third episode of season two onwards up the the end of season six, but was never broadcast …”

[Radioman970]

posted same on a Herc thread..but I had 1 dvd from Season 1 of Xena go bad and pretty much the entire 3rd season go bad. The things looks brand new and played right last time. Upping to blu rays would great if it was right now.

[Shane Rollins]

Holy thread bump.

Has anyone actually heard anything? Besides the troll comment on the Hercules thread?

[albabe]

We just watched Episode 1 from our Anchor Bay/Best Buy, Single Season Box (20 years old) and it played funky... so we watched the parts that wouldn't play on Amazon Prime Video.

The quality of the DVD (the parts that played) was light-years better than Prime's Streaming version. Prime's first episode is dreadfully low-res.

There are so many different Box Sets of the Complete Series. Some bare-bones and some with lotsa extra content (like our Anchor Bay/Best Buy version).

I hear some of them are "remastered", but does that mean compressed and smoothed out like the Prime streaming version? I would prefer to see grain. I've heard some of it was shot in 16mm, but on my Box they look pretty great on our 55".

Anyone know what the best Quality version of the series is? With the extra content?

The version we have is similar to this below. Separate Seasons but with all the extra content.

https://www.amazon.com/Xena-Warrior-...dp/B00GFBNHTE/

[Shane Rollins]

I wonder if there's any comparisons out there between all the releases. The four I know are the original VHS tapes (they were massive box sets), the Columbia House VHS tapes, the Anchor Bay DVDs, and the Universal DVDs.

All I currently have are the Universal discs. S3-S6 are fairly good, but S1 and S2 are dreadful.

[albabe]

We picked-up the Australian version that was released in 2023. The quality looks the same as the Anchor Bay/Best Buy version that we had, which is as good as I've seen, but of course we don't have everything to compare it to..

The problem for my wife is it includes All of the Bonus Features from the Anchor Bay, and some but not all of the extras from the Best Buy. But it does have the Special Edition FIN... and the "Sins of the Past" with Commentary from the 10th Anniversary Set.

AND... a lot of the discs are pretty scratched-up... so we got a second set and are trying to make a decent set from the two... and then we'll return the first set. And a bunch of the scatched discs are the same from the Two Sets. Manufacturing problem?