Having no direct visuals of what is in the boxes, I'm thinking "work tracks", as in audio masters? Purely a guess....
Oh interesting. That would make sense. They're different colors as well on the boxes. Not familiar at all with how prints would look for TV shows.
Yes... I don't own a Blu-Ray player but want this set, so it looks like the time to buy one might be coming soon... But even if I buy this Blu-Ray edition, I'm holding on to my DVDs of "The Monkees" TV series...
I've held out on getting Blu-Ray for so long.... but... I kinda want this! And, I'm not even a big Monkee-man!
I agree: I think the DVDs of their series look great... Looking elsewhere, some people said they think the DVDs look awful: I don't see that myself at all... The only thing I would change about the original DVDs of the show (besides adding more content had it been possible at the time) would be having a "play all" option available and getting the volume equalled out between the titles menu and the episodes themselves...
Take a look at what has be done to Pee Wee's Playhouse, using the original film elements and scanning them in HD:
They were reissued in 2012 and the same as the 2003 ones. Least w/ Blu-ray, you get HD and a higher res. And it's likely to be the last physical format. But never say never.
How about the audio on this? A big deal is being made of the audio on The Beatles 1+ blu-ray release. Will there be anything special on this set in this regard?
Thank you for the side by side... that is definitely a persuasive argument for ordering the blu ray Monkees series (which I did the day it was made available). I am keeping my fingers crossed that the audio improvement will be just as impressive. As Andrew Sandavol suggests, this is an attempt to archive the series for the future, so I am confident sound and picture will both be exceptional.
I imagine if it's BRD (blu ray disc) the sound will be surround or close (or better hopefully). The Beatles Hard day's night BRD had 3 different audio options (mono, stereo and surround). Did anyone hear Andrew Sandoval's www.cometothesunshine.com latest podcast episode? 9th anniversary show. He mention he's working on the Monkees BRDs and another annoucment surprise should be coming shortly!
Note that "W.P." would stand for workprint or work pic (the rough picture showing how the shows were cut together, piece by piece, scene by scene), and the "W.T." would be work track (the temporary mono mix of the show used only during cutting). Traditionally, the workprint is labeled in black ink, and the work track would be in red ink. Man, I happened thought about film cutting in years and years and years. Been too long. I would be surprised if it was in 5.1, because TV shows made prior to the 1980s were always mixed in mono, generally 3 tracks for dialog, music, and effects (DM&E). It's true that you can pan the effects or add re-recorded effects, and you can also drop the entire mono mix out and replace it with a stereo track if it exists, but getting surround beyond that requires a lot of time and expense. It can be done -- all the Star Trek shows were remixed, as one example. Note that in the case of comedy shows like The Monkees, there's a good chance there would be a 4th track for laughs, which was pretty typical in this era. My memory when I was working with the master 35mm mags on Get Smart was that everything was 4 track: DM&E + Laughs.
Biggest news would be multiple audio tracks per episode (I.e. diff songs). Any definite word on that?
