Shout! Factory ... an appreciation

Well put.

 

I'm glad to have the Corman Classics as anamorphic transfers. I know that much.

 

I've never bought a bad product from Shout! Factory.

 

Yep, TGG Direct released it around the end of 2013 (same company that did the Sea Hunt and Highway Patrol season sets). Looks good and it's quite cheap ($13 and change at Amazon, although it appears to be temporarily out of stock).

 

I just got two excellent looking SHOUT Blu-rays, one containing a gorgeous transfer of "The Vampire Lovers", and a spiffy-looking double feature of "Blacula" and "Scream Blacula Scream"! They are pristine -- thanks, Shout Factory!

 

Are you only talking about their TV-Show releases, or in a more general way ? I just purchased a bunch of their 80s Horror Movie releases on BD from Scream Factory (The Fog, Darkman, Cat People, The Howling) and they all look really awesome. A clean, remastered picture without any dirt or cut-outs. I really don´t have any complaines up to now regarding the picture quality of these releases...

 

I loved their Halloween box set and have their releases of They Live, Pumpkinhead and Night Breed plus Mad Max and Escape From New York on order. Enjoy all of them. The Halloween set had a sync error for part 4 but they sent out replacement discs and corrected it for future shipments.

 

Waiting for reviews. Please be better than the current blu release! (which I do not own. Kept my SEDVD).

 

I have some things by them. Glad they have made some TV stuff available.

 

I preordered it, too - but because of the shipping time to europe I think others will be way ahead of me regarding reviews. Also I don´t have the film yet as the current BD release. I only have it on DVD...

 

If they licensed the films from the studios, and the studio would pay for the transfer and digital restoration, then I'm sure it'd look great. I did the transfer on Cat People -- at least, the original 1980s transfer -- and it looked fine then.

The problem is when Shout Factory has to start from scratch. They have no resources and nobody in charge to say, "hey -- this is not good enough. We need to spend some money to get this done correctly." As a result, you wind up seeing vast inconsistency in the sound & picture quality of what they release.

I always admired Rhino in the old days, because (as Bill Inglot often explained), he would delay CD reissues weeks or even months when the record labels couldn't find a decent master tape. In fact, he told me that he'd routinely send back the first couple of tapes, just saying "these aren't good enough -- I need the actual master, not a dub." Inevitably, a really great-sounding tape would show up. That's the right attitude to have: start with great source materials, then master them to make them better.

 

Thank you for your deepen reply! I get your premise, but often you will also have to deal with the realities of the market. I would guess, the market for releases like Darkman wouldn´t be so wide and bright, that a small company would have the money to build up everything from scratch or in a way they do for tentpole back catalog releases like Metropolis in Germany. Till know I only saw three movies from scream factory on BD (more are coming up now, of course), but actually they look, sound and overall appear way better, than I ever expected, such releases from more obscure eighties movies would ever be. So I´m actually kind of thrilled of this company right now and would put it next to criterion or moc in my personal favour. Also: There is nothing like those companies here in Germany! And we are one of the biggest market, next to the US market. So I´m always very glad, that there are actually companies in other parts of the world, where I can nowadays get such releases for quite small money and with little effort.

 

I own 56 of Shout Factory's releases, and I've been satisfied with all of them.... until now.
I've just had my first major disappointment with one of their releases: All Quiet on the Western Front - "The Uncut Edition"

I just picked this up yesterday, and I'm a little ticked off. It claims to be the "uncut edition", and while it does restore about 28 minutes of footage, there's a glaring edit made to a particular scene that was intact on the previous DVD!! It's the scene where the French soldiers are cutting through the barbed wire and get killed by a German grenade... in the previous DVD, you see a French soldier's hand reach up and grab the barbed wire just before the grenade explodes.... when the explosion clears, all that remains of the soldier is part of his arm and his hand, still grasping the barbed wire. It's a grisly image and has always stuck with me. But on the new DVD, this shot is edited and the scene ends just before the explosion clears! The shot of the disembodied arm & hand is missing completely! As soon as I saw it, I knew something looked wrong, so I immediately compared it to the older disc, just in case I was confusing things with the similar scene from the original 1930 film. But sure enough, it was intact on the previous DVD.

What a bunch of ridiculous nonsense! They've got a lot of nerve calling it the "uncut edition" when it's blatantly obvious that it's been edited. It's only a second or two of footage, but still... if they're going to advertise something as being "uncut", then it shouldn't be censored in any way! I'm thinking of writing an angry email to Timeless Media and/or Shout Factory to express my disappointment.

 

I've been hearing a lot of mixed opinions on Shout! for a while. The only release I own is the collector's edition of the first Mad Max, which I thought looked and sounded nice. Any other releases that they did a good job on (if there are any)?

 

Like I said earlier, I own quite a few Shout DVDs, and the small edit in All Quiet on the Western Front is the first quibble I've ever had with any of their releases.... I've been perfectly satisfied with all the other titles of theirs I've picked up. That's a pretty good hit-to-miss ratio, I'd say.

These are all the Shout discs I own:
http://www.filmaf.com/search.html?p...n=us&init_form=str0_pub_Shout!+Factory*rgn_us

 

I have no complaints about any of the Shout/Scream discs that I own, and I've got somewhere over 30 by now. I focus mostly on the 80s sci-fi, horror, and adventure titles.

 

You can watch a lot of their releases on their website ShoutFactoryTV

http://www.shoutfactorytv.com/

It looks like they worked with Hulu for the site.

 

I've enjoyed every purchase I've made from Shout! The only problem I have with them is how many shows are stalled by them. They get the ball rolling, the show doesn't sell, and it stalls. I wish I could get the rest of the seasons of Ironside, Marcus Welby, Police Story, Police Woman, The Rookies, and Fantasy Island.