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FrauBlucher wrote: Wed Nov 18, 2020 4:03 pm The Best Years of Our Lives is moving over to WAC in December

I knew that was coming, thank god I held off on buying the ridiculously-priced OOP blu. Great news that they're making a solid business decision and prioritizing it!

I’m glad I’ve held off as well! Should we expect this to come with an increase in bitrate or overall quality? I know WAC generally has higher standards but I don’t know how they usually treat titles that make the jump from an existing blu ray release.

I've rented the previous one plenty of times from my local library and it looks great so I doubt I'd notice any improvement personally, if there was even a need

bad future wrote: Wed Nov 18, 2020 5:12 pm I’m glad I’ve held off as well! Should we expect this to come with an increase in bitrate or overall quality? I know WAC generally has higher standards but I don’t know how they usually treat titles that make the jump from an existing blu ray release.

All the discs they have re-issued are the same disc image as the previous WHV discs.

A lot of folks are going to be very happy with this very popular release.

Bluray.com...The Shop Around the Corner

It looks like Amazon are leaking of titles... The Man Who Would Be King and The 100: The Seventh and Final Season... So far

Wow, thrilled we're finally getting Huston's masterpiece- WB is on a roll

Hopefully they include High Sierra in this month’s announcements. Huston’s screenwriting precursor to The Maltese Falcon and my second favorite Bogart performance. But any Huston, especially this masterpiece, are always welcomed.

therewillbeblus wrote: Sun Dec 06, 2020 5:55 pm Wow, thrilled we're finally getting Huston's masterpiece- WB is on a roll

Huston's masterpiece has already gotten a Blu-Ray release:

https://www.amazon.com/Man-Would-King-B ... -tv&sr=1-1

Yeah, I was just going to post that. It was released on Blu years ago as a digibook. It's just being moved to WA like many previous digibooks in a standard Blu-ray case and with (superior) original poster art.

Isn’t that release OOP though? I didn’t say it was the first blu-ray release and I’m still happy about it, just like with the announcement of The Best Years of Our Lives, another “finally” situation to get a normally priced copy again after some hopeful speculation

yes. It's been OOP and currently lists at $148.11 so it's almost like a new release

I remember passing on that BD of The Man Who Would Be King because the transfer was a bit of letdown - pretty soft on the details along with some visible grain reduction, I wasn't sure if the transfer was merely showing its age or if it was subpar to begin with. I was hoping they'd re-do it, but of course that never happened and once Amazon et al cleared out their inventory it became a collector's item. Glad it's coming back into print but pretty bummed that we'll probably have to settle for the same one that needed a re-do.

FrauBlucher wrote: Sun Dec 06, 2020 4:16 pm It looks like Amazon are leaking of titles... The Man Who Would Be King and The 100: The Seventh and Final Season... So far

The 100 S7 isn't a leak - it was a Dec 2020 title that got bumped to January.

They couldn't have figured out a way to include this masterpiece, fer Chrissakes?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY1Me-Oo84Q

New titles announced today: Room for One More, After the Thin Man, The Pajama Game, and much to the delight of everyone on this forum. a 4K restoration of Good News from the original camera negative.

The Pajama Game DVD, last I checked, looked pretty ugly, so the Blu-ray could be a real improvement. A pretty interesting (and fun) film!

Good News They Sure Are Blu Edition

Pajama Game did look rough on DVD but I wouldn’t hold out for miracles, I think that thick look is inherent in the source. David Hare would know way more than me about it

Wow. Two day-one orders in the same month—knock me over with half a pajama set.

Keep pumping out the good MGM musicals - Good News is right at the top for me, hopefully Lili and I Love Melvin follow

david hare wrote: Thu Dec 10, 2020 8:00 pm They are already prepping the 51 Showboat, and a number of other Freeds are already done.

Great to know about this potential upcoming releases. Do you have anymore hints of WAC futures classic titles that you could give us?

Per the Blu-ray forums, it sadly appears the second set of Tex Avery is a bit of a botch job, with many cartoons with poor restorations or DNR applied. Apparently due to shifting priorities with the pandemic and certain restorations being prioritized for HBO Max then others. Extremely sad as WAC is probably the single most consistent label in the business right now that these would get messed up.

Ribs wrote: Wed Dec 16, 2020 9:19 pm Per the Blu-ray forums, it sadly appears the second set of Tex Avery is a bit of a botch job, with many cartoons with poor restorations or DNR applied. Apparently due to shifting priorities with the pandemic and certain restorations being prioritized for HBO Max then others. Extremely sad as WAC is probably the single most consistent label in the business right now that these would get messed up.

That was a depressing read. Here's an excerpt from one post:

A friend e-mailed Jerry Beck regarding this set, and according to Mr. Beck, the team who worked on the cartoons for HBO Max was a different team than the one who normally restores the films, as the old team was let go during the pandemic. This explains the severe drop in quality. WA will not put out a third Tex set unless they can use the old crew. Beck personally did not spot any DVNR, but he admitted that he did not inspect the cartoons frame-by-frame.

I didn't realize the big Bugs Bunny set (which I planned to get) was also a botch job. I haven't gone through all the relevant posts, but here's one:

The reason this set is shoddy, is for other reasons: incompetence in authoring (filling BD50s with only 28 GB), using ridiculous LOSSY audio (when you've got 22 GB wasted space for the BD-50, wow! we can't spare the space for DTS-HD!), and most unforgivable: using measly video bitrates of only 15 mbps. Again, they could have easily increased this to 20-25 mbps and STILL had room to spare on their BD-50s.

I've scoured the web for reports of WB's layoffs and haven't found any (just endless HBO Max articles), but they're evidently widespread enough to impact every aspect of the company. I'm still waiting for a shipping notification for my black Friday WA order. After waiting more than two weeks, I emailed the company regarding my order's shipping status and received no response. Today I finally emailed a second time threatening to cancel the order and bring the issue to Twitter/forums, and received this cursory response:

"Please note that the manufacturer of Warner Archive discs is currently experiencing production and shipping delays, due to a combination of greatly increased order volume and staffing requirements dictated by current conditions. Orders are currently shipping approximately 12 business days after receipt.

If you placed an order during our Black Friday/Cyber Monday 4 for $44 sale and you received an order confirmation, we have your order and so does the manufacturer. These orders are shipping as quickly as possible, and you will receive a shipping confirmation with a tracking number once your order is on the way."

It's clear that AT&T doesn't value Warner Bros very highly, much less the Warner Archive and its web store. Here's hoping future releases are still competently restored and authored.

Funny, I also emailed them the other day after not having received my order either (and being a bit worried with "ships within 5 business days" still listed next to each release), mentioning that I was expecting it sooner as I need to send out some movies for Christmas presents on the West coast so a timeline would be helpful, and I haven't received a response yet.. wait, that's not funny at all