Up to this point I haven't watched the same episode, without and then with commentary, more than twice in an evening. There have indeed been additional commentary tracks that I haven't listened to yet for three of the episodes so far; thanks for reminding me I've got something to go back to!
People complained because there was a big explosion of information about the new set and all the amazing, exclusive one-time-only content it would contain (so buy now!). Rhino and Andrew himself posted about it on Facebook every day, hoping to garner enough funds to finish the project. They pushed and pushed. And then when the (very expensive) product arrived, it was missing several key items that were promised (and were still listed on Rhino's site), and the packaging was complete garbage. It's called "bait and switch"...something Rhino seems to be really good at these days. That's why people are angry. The complainers aren't talking about the "good" content because there was no reason to pay through the nose for it in the first place. That's what a standard retail version should have been for. Everyone who reluctantly shelled out for the super deluxe set was "taken for a ride", so to speak. If none of this bothers you, fine. But it's not fair to accuse people of being whiny complainers when they have a perfectly legitimate reason for being disgusted by the whole thing.
I did not find the packaging complete garbage. The set is nice, extremely good picture quality.. and I'm finding the thing very enjoyable for what it is, not what it isn't. Some of you need to get over it and move on. Just saying, don't buy it.
Thanks for signing up as a new member to complain about something that you have probably previously complained about under a different user name! There are several inaccuracies in your post above. I won't bother to refute each one. If you don't like the release, fine. Enjoy your protests against it. I'd wager 99% of the owners of this release are quite pleased with it. Have a nice day!
What I meant with " a complete disaster" is exactly what Michelle expressed better than me. Rhino lied on his publicity and in the promotion of the bluray set and that is a fact. Also the decision of making this huge and out of proportion package resulted in the box sets being damaged on arrival (as it happened also on the dvd sets of the Monkees with the record player box years ago).It also shows that Rhino does not care about the buyers opinion. My two Monkees dvd boxed sets arrived broken and mishaped on the years I ordered the first and second season. A simpler package and a straighforward representarion of the REAL contents of the bluray set would have resulted in a lower price and more sales of the bluray set but the people that work at Rhino get offended when somebody states the facts as they are and don´t play ball with them. I may be wrong but I think that everything I said is reason enough for thinking that the way everything was handled by Rhino was a complete disaster or alt least a huge dissapointment. People who spend a huge amount of money on anything has the right to complain if they are not satisfied with what they get in return for his hard earned money.
Yes, there's no newly recorded commentary by Dolenz. And yes, rather than 10 full repeat episodes as stated in the promotional material, I think there are only two full repeat episodes with alternate songs. A number of other romps with alternate songs are available only as extras, divorced from their episodes. In any case the "contents subject to change without notice" have all been covered rather thoroughly in this thread more than once already; if I got any of it wrong or omitted anything notable I'm sure someone here will be glad to review all the details again. In the interest of thoroughness, I'll also mention that I believe there were a few extras added to the set after the initial announcement; whether these are adequate compensation for the things that were dropped or whether all this amounts to marketing perfidy are judgments for the prospective emptori to make. Meanwhile the most common complaint about the DVD sets from 2003 — that the audio and video should have been restored for digital release — has been addressed. That job has now been done and done very well for a series of this vintage. We do indeed, should we choose to exercise it. You, however, are complaining under some other privilege, if I'm reading your earlier posts correctly. And that's fine: this is a $200 limited edition Blu-ray box set of 50-year-old television episodes we're talking about here, and you are surely wiser than I not to spend your money on anything as categorically inessential as this.
I don´t undertand why you say I am complaining under some other privilege. Also you only quoted partially my sentence which was "People who spend a huge amount of money on anything has the right to complain if they are not satisfied with what they get in return for his hard earned money." As on the Rhino add of the Monkees bluray set you omitted information when quoting me.
I meant only — correct me if I'm wrong — that you are not among the "people who spend" on this item, because you have chosen not to buy it. That's what the up arrows are for.
Sorry I didn´t know about the up arrows. I only voiced the opinion of my friend who bought the bluray set and he is not registered in this forum. I bought the first Monkees dvd set who got smashed on the mail and then the second season dvd box set who was also released in the same record player format and the cardboard was also crushed in the mail. Why Rhino designs his boxes this way is something that I don´t understand.
Because fully half of your comments contributed to this forum are on this topic, in this thread, I'm sure you were well aware when you posted them that your friend's opinion echoes those of members who have repeatedly expressed deep dissatisfaction with this set here and, in some cases, by extension, Rhino's 20+ year stewardship of The Monkees' catalog. Other recent comments including mine, in contrast, are intended to suggest to the casual reader that general opinion about all this is very much divided, that it's in fact possible to buy this set and to enjoy it, and as a long-time Rhino customer it's also possible to appreciate the sum of what has been done for the 50th anniversary. That's all. I agree that over the years Rhino has made some questionable choices regarding packaging. I think the original DVD boxes were too clever by half. They arrived intact when I bought them, but they've never fit with any other DVD titles at my house, and as a result they've never been stored where family members who are looking for some old thing to watch go to browse. And like others', my Blu-ray box arrived damaged. But Rhino replaced it, no questions asked. (I was sorry to read here that this process did not go as smoothly for everyone as it did for me.) The original one I received, which suffered the characteristic interior damage during shipping, is now sitting atop some shelving, next to the lunchbox that came with Our Favorite Episodes back in 1998. My wife commented last year that she thought that the lunchbox was "cute" and asked me whether I had anything else to put up there with it. This was surprising, because The Monkees are definitely not one of our common areas of interest. Thanks to Rhino's most recent packaging blunder, now it has a companion. In summary, my view is: "complete disaster" is about as apt a description of this set as "essential for every home".
In summary my view is that opinions of members that not praise Rhino's work are criticized and that surprises me.
Please don't be needlessly reductive. Disagreeing with you and with your friend's hyperbole is not equivalent to mindless alignment with Rhino.
Just out of curiosity: were you here following this thread several months ago when this release first came out? Nobody who defended the release (and I was one of the most vocal in defending it) had any issue whatsoever with people not caring for this release. If you didn't follow it, please do yourself a favor and go back and read what was written about Rhino and Andrew Sandoval. It was often seething vitriol full of a lot of character insults directed at the people who put this release together. It went WAY beyond people having issues with certain aspects of the release. It was literally the only time in my life I was driven away from a discussion due to the (what I would classify as) relentless negative bashing, complete with a large helping of entitlement. Everyone defending it acknowledged there were issues with the release; no one denied it. But the conspiracy theories that abounded were totally unfounded and most of the time demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of how releases like this are put together and marketed in these times of diminished sales and revenue of physical media product. And when those who were the most vociferous complainers tried to turn around and play the part of victim because some of us had the gall to disagree with them, that was really the final straw! There really were some ugly posts written back then.
I think that most of the customers that are dissappointed with the blu-ray release are mainly dissapointed by the way Andrew Sandoval made that statement after the release. Many people think he could have replied more nicely to the fans and so they then felt more dissapointed and hurt because they cared for Rhino, they cared for all the work done by Andrew Sandoval with the Monkees catalog and most of all they cared and still care for the Monkees. I can assure you that Andrew Sandoval has changed a lot with time. He was a friendly person but not today. Remember that he even released an album of all places in Spain and then he was a completely different person as he is today when he did some concerts in my country. I am sorry if I have angered somebody with my comments as that was not my intention and for my part this is my last message concerning either Andrew Sandoval or the misleading statements of Rhino concerning the Monkees blu-ray set. There is plenty of good music to debate on this forum and that is what I will do. Merry Christmas everybody and peace to all
I'm fairly certain no one here is the slightest bit "angered" by anything you've said. Your first paragraph sounds perfectly reasonable, but the response from an angry faction of fans at the time of the Blu-ray's release was anything but civil and courteous. It was quite rude, and full of a lot of insinuation about unethical business practices on Rhino's and Sandoval's parts. The criticism was way out of proportion to the problems with the release. And Andrew's response on Facebook was perfectly reasonable, and given the circumstances, quite polite given what was said about him. The only thing that could be construed as anything close to rude was that he said he couldn't respond to each and every e-mail or facebook post. "I simply cannot and will not." That was what certain people got all perturbed about. And of course the irony of it all was that those who were offended by "I will not" were the very same ones who wrote a lot of very personal (and in certain cases, even hateful or vile) things about Andrew. The dude didn't even have final say over what was included in the release, for pete's sake! And he donated several very cool pieces from his personal collection so that we could enjoy them on this release, with no compensation for it. In short, a fan trying to help out other fans, by sharing the wealth. I'm not going to rehash everything about this release; you can get more details than anyone could want by going back to the pages in this thread from when it first came out. Rhino was NOT guilty of unethical business practices with regard to this release. There was no "bait and switch", no dastardly conspiracy to part you from your money and then deliver substandard goods. That would have been counter-productive of Rhino to do that, since the negative feedback from the initial customers would have sunk future sales, and at a print run of 10,000 they knew this wouldn't sell out right away. What Rhino was guilty of was poor attention to detail when they prepared the advance information on the contents; it's obvious there was never any intention of providing "10 episodes" worth of alternate audio tracks. "Episodes" should have been "songs". Is that sloppy and unprofessional? Yes. A deliberate attempt to dupe their customers? How could it be? It's not like people weren't going to discover the error right away! As far as the other missing bits (Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, etc) these were unforseen rights issues which necessitated changes to the release while it was still being put together. And the packaging snafu's were handled by the company before it could even become a firestorm of controversy. In other words, they didn't wait a while before deciding they were going to rectify the problem. I'm not excusing Rhino's carelessness, and they were certainly justified in receiving criticism for aspects of the release where the ball was dropped. But seriously, go back and read what was written, and see if it wasn't just a wee bit out of proportion to the problems! Like you, this is the last I'm going to say about it. It's all already been said dozens of times over! Happy Holidays to you and all Monkees fans!
I actually bought the set (damaged) and also received two replacement boxes (damaged), after weeks of contemplating whether or not to buy it at all. Sandoval was certainly convincing when he was pushing it non-stop. And now that the set is a disappointment, he refuses to even discuss it. How convenient! Nothing going on there at all. Just customer satisfaction at it's best.
The restoration on the shows themselves is beautiful. They are miles better than anything I have ever seen on television or any past home video format. (The shows even have the Screen Gems toilet paper closing logos, which isn't a huge deal really, but I am glad they are there.) I think they announced this set (about a year or so ago) before they had really started working on it. They planned to have all kinds of extras included, and as the project went forward, they ran into rights issues and elements issues with certain things. Got to remember, Rhino is a division of Warner. I have a bunch of their animation DVDs (Warner Bros., Hanna-Barbera and others) so I'm very used to final releases differing significantly from what was first announced, for instance Amazon.com: B. D. Sampson's review of Best of Warner Bros. 25 Cartoon Collection... » (i.e. if you think they "lied" about the extras on the Monkees Bluray set, you have got to check out the above link where almost the whole contents were changed. Not "condoning" or "excusing" it, just saying I'm used to it!) I used to joke that when a long-anticipated release (of whatever) was announced, I'd ask for the release date of the inevitable "disc replacement program" given how many avoidable screw-ups often happened -- usually not things that would "ruin" the release, but still things that shouldn't have happened (like the "next week's villain previews" being left off the majority of the Batman episodes). If they'd just had a big fan of the series check the stuff before releasing it, they would have caught a lot of this kind of stuff. I would like to have had more of the alternative soundtracks for the shows, but when you realize that the ones that were included came from Andrew Sandoval's personal collection of 35mm prints and are only there because he insisted on it, I'm glad a fan is behind these projects. (I was disappointed that there wasn't more, but glad for what is there.) The stuff on the "bonus disc" probably isn't going to be re-watched a million times, but a lot of it is really cool. I for one had never seen (for instance) the silent outtake footage from the romps, the Head outtakes, the "Someday Man" TV lip-sync performance, 33 1/3 outtakes, etc. I don't know, maybe I'm weird, but I'm more focused on what is there than what isn't. Bottom line: If you're a mega-Monkees fan (the kind that springs for repeated multi-disc reissues of the albums with different bonus tracks) then you will want to have this set. If you remember liking the Monkees TV show as a kid, then you probably want to wait for a cheaper mass-market version of this.
It's not a matter of them "lying", per-se. The issue that I have is.... If Rhino couldn't license half of the stuff they promised it would include, then why did I send them all that extra pre-order money that they "desperately needed to complete the project"? Where did it all go? Shouldn't I be entitled to a partial refund?
Who said they needed your pre-order money to complete the project? Rhino decided to undertake a huge project in restoring each episode from the original negatives. Once they made that decision (and they did so knowing they weren't going to recoup their costs until much further down the road, with streaming and syndication rights) they were committed, regardless of how many sets they were going to sell in the pre-order period. Did Hughes and/or Sandoval imply that pre-orders might allow them to include additional extra material? If they did, I certainly missed that, and I tried to follow all of the info that was out there as the project was being worked on. And what exactly did Rhino "promise" they would license that they failed to? They assumed they would get the footage that included Johnny Cash, but were rebuffed. That amounts to what, a minute or two of footage? Your suggestion that they couldn't license "half" of what they promised is typical of the exaggerated complaints that have been hurled at this release since it was announced. Other than the Cash clip, where he compliments them and sings a verse of the "Everybody Loves A Nut" tune, and the 20 seconds of Jerry Lee Lewis, what else did they fail on? When you're performing legal clearances on the amount of material that was under consideration for this release, it's a near-certainty that you'll experience a few unexpected problems with publishing rights before you reach the finish line.
I knew of the damaged box issue before, but what was damaged in your set? I ask because I've yet to buy the set and wouldn't mind knowing what I might end up with damage-wise...
They're currently re-running the Monkees over her on Satellite TV, from these new HD Transfers. They look fantastic. Sadly, the masters that are being sent to the station are 16:9 cropped (and this station is very much against cropping or changing the original programs, so it's not them tampering with them).
Well, finally made my way through all the blu-rays, finished playing disc 10 as I write. It was an enjoyable yet long experience. I've said earlier I only saw the TV shows upon first broadcast so it was fun to see them again. And I've never seen Head or 331/3 revolutions per Monkee. I enjoyed both of those two although very dated and could have been so much better. My only last concern was that 331/3 TV special only played distorted wide screen and not in the original 4X3 aspect ratio of TV back in 1969. Has anyone else had this issue?
Only one other poster has that I know of. Very interesting. I found the "alternate" version of the special on the disc plays "stretched" on my TV, but the "main" version is just fine. I guess you have to manually set your display to 4:3 to see it undistorted.
