I Love Lucy on Blu-Ray? (Speculation)

Where can I find this Lucy forum?

 

Well, the show was shot on 35mm negative, so they should do the transfers from those. But it is true that some of the Lucy/Desi TV commercials and credits now only survive as 16mm syndication prints.

It's appalling that KTTV Fox 11 here in LA has the TV rights to Lucy in town, but they're still showing bad 1980s standard-def transfers. I have no idea why they can't have access to the newer 35mm HD transfers. They look like Super 8 on a bedsheet, so help me.

 

http://www.lucylounge.com

 

That's the one ...

 

Season 2
http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/Love-Lucy-Season-2-Blu-ray/21003

 

Cool, thanks!

Part of me wants to pay the initial asking price so that there's a season 3, but another part of me doesn't want to give into the extortionary pricing.

 

The show was on for 6 years, so excuse me if I balk at spending $600 total for six years' worth of shows. I think a buck a show ($180 for the entire series) would be reasonable. They're out of their minds parcelling it out a season at a time.

 

Greed has a way of making studios do stupid things, Marc...

 

Greed? Do they really expect people to pay $600+ over a period of five years for a complete run of I Love Lucy? Greed would be releasing it all at once and still charging $600.

Stupidity is what it is.

Those of us with long memories will remember that when season 1 of I Love Lucy was first released on DVD in 2001, it was done in individual releases of 4 episodes each, requiring 10 separate purchases to complete each season. From Wikipedia:

Beginning in the summer of 2001, Columbia House Television began releasing I Love Lucy on DVD in chronological order. They began that summer with the pilot and the first three episodes on a single DVD. Every six weeks, another volume of four episodes would be released on DVD in chronological order. During the summer of 2002, each DVD would contain between five and seven episodes on a single DVD. They continued to release the series very slowly and would not even begin to release any season 2 episodes until the middle of 2002. By the spring of 2003, the third season on DVD began to be released with about six episodes released every six weeks to mail order subscribers. All these DVDs have the identical features as the DVDs eventually released in the season box sets in retail.

By the fall of 2003, season four episodes began to be offered by mail. By the spring of 2004 season five DVDs with about six episodes each began to be released gradually. Columbia House ended the distribution of these mail order DVDs in the Winter of 2005. They began releasing complete season sets in the Summer of 2004 every few months. They stated that Columbia House Subscribers would get these episodes through mail before releasing any box sets with the same episodes. They finally ended gradual subscriptions in 2005, several months before season 5 became available in retail. Columbia House then began to make season box sets available instead of these single volumes.
​

These releases weren't offered solely via mail order, as I quite clearly remember purchasing the first volumes at retail in 2002. I eventually stopped when they started releasing the season sets, bought the first few, and then they released the "heart" set. Fool me once....

Almost 15 years later and they still haven't learned.

 

I have all the individual Season Sets on DVD. I thought they did an outstanding job on those ... the episodes look beautiful. Not sure I would go up to the blu-ray.

 

I got ya beat: I bought the entire run of I Love Lucy on VHS from Columbia House in the 1980s, and when I worked on Life with Lucy, Ms. Ball was nice enough to autograph the first episode box for me. If I can find the picture, I'll post it. Her classic line to me was, "you know, I didn't get a f***in' dime from this thing!"

 

Tvshowsondvd.com has an update posted that retail price is again $129.99. I want this season 2 release but not at that price. I don't know what the cost is to remaster into HD but when I heard Gregg Oppenheimer speak in Jamestown, NY at the Lucy Fest in 2004 during the release of the DVDs he said the show had already been remastered in HD. Unless technology has changed that much or they made better prints who knows?

I know the Stars In The Eye bonus feature is in the public domain so there shouldn't be any fee for the use of that.

 

I happened to see the episode where Lucy tells Desi they are having a baby earlier today. The TV and DVD player may not have been the best, but I must say I suspect the originals are amazing. Desi's suit had a strong criss-cross pattern to it. I am surprised at this - I would have thought such patterns would have been avoided to minimize undesirable visual effects.

 

You'd never see it with crappy 1950s film chains. I doubt if this even became visible until they started doing the retransfers in the 1980s. What I generally do with problems like this today is, we create a digital mask over just the cloth area and defocus it a tiny bit, essentially anti-aliasing this one part of the image while leaving everything else pin-sharp. I had a movie not long ago where we had nurses in pin-stripe uniforms and wound up having to track all of the costumes to reduce their sharpness to eliminate moire. A lot of work that should've been anticipated by the costume department.

 

I don't know who sets the prices but whoever it is doesn't have a single clue about what's happening in the market place. I can't believe they would sell copies at that price to anyone other a handful of the biggest fans...who can afford it...and by handful I would put the number at no more than 100. That's just plain stupid....no other word for it. I am one of those that doesn't even see the need for this. I have the really nicely packaged box set on standard DVD and, really, why does anyone need it to look better? If you could get the entire run for around $100, well, maybe. And I would still have to think about it. My favorite show, by far, is the old Columbo shows. The blu ray set can only be purchased from Japan, and on a good day the cheapest I have seen it is $365. Which isn't bad considering they are movies, and it really isn't that much per episode. And though I have many box sets and love buying them, if I won't buy my favorite show for $365 ($36 or so a season) I certainly am not going to spend what is even beyond a premium price for my second favorite show, I Love Lucy.

 

Like Videot, I bought all the Columbia House VHS copies at $29.95 a whack. I can see why they tried doing the DVDs that way, and it probably worked for a while. They could never do that now.

 

I should have read the earlier posts before I must posted mine. Glad to see others using the same language...talk about a stupid, completely uninformed decision, probably made by one clueless guy. This is never going to fly, and then they will cancel it and blame it on too low demand. I have to wonder....is there a reason why they don't want to continue releasing them? They can't seriously expect these to sell, can they? As crazy as it sounds, maybe at this point whoever makes the price points wants this to fail, for reasons we don't understand.

 

My experience with Viacom and Paramount is that there's generally a committee that discusses this stuff over a period of a few days, and they run different scenarios and spreadsheets based on estimated sales and total price. If they sell 100,000 copies at $100 each, vs. 50,000 copies at $200 each, which one gives them greater profit? They also have to balance out advertising, shipping, physical production costs, royalties, and all that stuff.

I'm reminded of how the direct-marketing business makes some silly piece of exercise equipment, and then they discover they sell far more of them in commercials with the item priced at $29.95 rather than commercials where it's only $19.95. There are people who believe if it's more expensive, it must be better. I don't think home video works that way, but movie executives can be strange people.

Note that Paramount/CBS/Viacom has had quite a turnover in their home video execs, and I believe they're currently the lowest-profited major studio this year.

 

Just...no.

Ed

 

Good info, as always. So, I misspoke when I said "one dumb person." What I should have said is a "roomful of dumb people." We'll see how those spread sheets work out for them! Maybe they should do a sample poll among people who would actually buy a copy! I think the results will be much different than the spreadsheet that shows great profit if sold at $130. They seem to have forgotten that you have to have sales to make those projected profits! Don't mean to ramble about this, again, but I am just amazed that companies like this can be so incredibly out of touch with the actual market for something they are providing. This isn't going to sell at all for that price! All of us here know that...how can they not? And seven seasons at that price? Never.

 

Since they're perpetuating the same mistakes made since the VHS days, I assume that it's been the same roomful of dumb people all along.

If they were to offer a complete ILL, including the Lucy/Desi Comedy Hour, on Blu-ray for $150 list I'd buy it. Anything else is NO SALE.

I'd actually like to see that later Lucy series given the same treatment. I grew up on Here's Lucy.

 

Yup, I also have to completely disagree. Content is king...if its good, people will come even if its black amd white. Maybe not as many, but good material is good material. Most of their themes are still relevant today, which is why the show is still syndicated in most markets. That has to tell you something. And it isnt that the stations don't have much else to offer!

 

I really hope you have this kept somewhere safe...what you have there is a true treasure. Very lucky!

 

I was too stupid to grab a snapshot! But my hand to god, she really signed the box herself. This was on the sound stage at the old Warner Hollywood lot (Santa Monica & Formosa), around the time Aaron Spelling shot a lot of his TV shows there.

I'm baffled as well. The mastering didn't cost that much. They could literally kick the whole set out for maybe a hundred bucks and make a little profit. If they sold ten times as many copies, this would result in a far bigger overall profit.