Hi sputnik. Welcome to the forum.

I bought the American version of the Complete Series (the one with all the extras) for Christmas. I have plans to watch the extras with him sometime, so when we do that, I'll pop season 5 in just to take a look and see if I notice what you're talking about.

I have all 7 (6.5) seasons on DVD in my own collection, but these were the individual season releases. Season 5 looks absolutely fine, so I concur that whatever you're noticing is not a problem with the original DVD releases (or transfers).

Of the individually packaged seasons, I think season 1 is the weakest in the transfer. More film grain, more noise in low light, more compression artifacts. Not sure how much of that was due to poorer mastering to DVD or how much to native aspects of the film as it was exposed. While I think the show always had a high production budget, it's probably true that they were able to afford a few more lights after the first season.:-)

FlyOnMelfisWall wrote:Hi sputnik. Welcome to the forum.

I bought the American version of the Complete Series (the one with all the extras) for Christmas. I have plans to watch the extras with him sometime, so when we do that, I'll pop season 5 in just to take a look and see if I notice what you're talking about.

I have all 7 (6.5) seasons on DVD in my own collection, but these were the individual season releases. Season 5 looks absolutely fine, so I concur that whatever you're noticing is not a problem with the original DVD releases (or transfers).

Of the individually packaged seasons, I think season 1 is the weakest in the transfer. More film grain, more noise in low light, more compression artifacts. Not sure how much of that was due to poorer mastering to DVD or how much to native aspects of the film as it was exposed. While I think the show always had a high production budget, it's probably true that they were able to afford a few more lights after the first season.:-)

Thanks!

The way you've described 1 - that's exactly what i'm trying to say about 5. Guess I just don't have the technical jargon for it though.

I can only assume that shoddy mastering to DVD is to blame for the weak production feel of season 5 in my box-set. What to do about it though?

Returning the whole box-set is not possible since it was a bit before Christmas and we don't have the receipt. (Returning the entire set because of 5 would be daft anyway.) Guess i'll just need to buy 5 on its own then.

In reading your post, I just realized that I left out "bought the box set for my nephew" for Christmas. So I don't have it at beckon call, but I do plan on watching the extras with him ('cause I've never seen them) in the near future. I'll definitely check out season 5 and report back if I notice any difference in the American version.

They would be mastered separately from European versions, of course, because of the different TV standards. So I guess it's possible that the American version would look fine and that something weird just happened for some reason with season 5. Your observations have certainly raised my curiosity, though.

Is there a particular episode or passage from an episode that you think illustrates the problems?

FlyOnMelfisWall wrote: Is there a particular episode or passage from an episode that you think illustrates the problems?

Not particularly. It's generally just sub-par (in comparison to the other seasons) picture/audio quality.

The best way to get an idea of what i'm trying to explain, is to stick in a disc from Season 4 or Season 6, skip past the opening credits (sacrilege!) to watch a few minutes, then put Season 5 in the DVD player. Do the same - skip the opening credits and watch a few minutes of the episode. This is how I showed my partner what I was seeing and she noticed it right away.

If there is a marked difference in the production quality, it will become apparent immediately.

It did for me anyway.

It's strange, I had this exact same problem with the complete box-set of Oz. Everything was fine (from a production point of view at least) until the final season.