Miami Vice - The Complete Series - Comes To Blu-Ray 10/4/16

Mill Creek will be releasing the iconic 80's television drama in it's entirety this October 4th on Blu-ray. The million dollar question is "how will it look". List price is $99.99 for 20 Blu-ray discs that will contain all 5 seasons.

Miami Vice: The Complete Series Blu-ray »

Miami Vice DVD news: Announcement for The Complete Series on Blu-ray | TVShowsOnDVD.com »

 

Yipe Mill Creek

 

The music has all been cleared but I am going to let some of you buy it first.

 

Even though I have the complete series dvd box stored away, I've been watching the series for the first time in eons on COZI-TV and am really enjoying it! I'll have to see if the Blu-ray warrants a double-dip.

 

I was 26 and married when this series premiered. Enjoyed it a lot. Then. Fast forward about 25 years, I bought the complete series DVD box. Took all I had to finish it. Lost it's allure for me in a big way.
Luckily, I sold it to my by-then adult son, getting back most of my investment. Was surprised when he told me, a few months later, he had sold it, for store credit. He too, had lost interest in it.

Funny, I'm still curious to see what the review here will say. I've decided it may be the best argument ever, for streaming, over physical discs. I can see myself in the mood for an episode, maybe two, if I could scan the episodes, make my choice, then see a strong 1080p picture, with lossless DTS HD 5.1 audio.

 

Mill Creek Sell Sheet ( courtesy of Blu-ray.com )

 

The only season I want to see like this is Season 1 and maybe some of Season 2.

 

Then you're depriving yourself of some great television, imho. I'm watching season 3 right now and there are some stone classic episodes, imho. I haven't seen season 4 and 5 since forever so I can't comment on those, but there are probably some good episodes mixed in there I would suspect. Seasons 1 and 2 were both excellent save for a dud or two, but that's always the case.

 

i have all five seasons on dvd, but will definitely be getting this.

chad

 

I enjoy Mill Creek's blu-ray of Legend of Billie Jean so I might pick up the Miami Vice set.

 

It's a great show, I've seen all the episodes, I'm a big fan and I've got five seasons on DVD. Season 3 had some great episodes especially Red Tape, Streetwise and by Hooker By Crook, etc. Season 4 is where it all got to be a little tedious, the production values got worse, the scripts etc.

 

Finally, this release is long overdue!

 

I wonder if By Hooker By Crook will be censored

 

Was it censored on the dvd box?

 

They used the edited down scene instead of the original NBC broadcast.

 

Just bought the dvds last year...dammit.

 

This is my all-time favorite TV show. In my view, one bad way to watch it is focusing on some sort of "hey, look how ridiculously '80s this is" sarcasm. For my experience, nowadays, not falling into that is not that easy even to those who watched it back then (it takes some episodes to get into it, I suppose), but I think it is way harder for those who were born later. I believe Michael Mann said somewhere about the 2006 movie that he didn't want to create a nostalgic Miami Vice feature because Miami Vice in its core had nothing to do with nostalgia. It was rather a production with a very strong "current" feeling, maybe even avant-garde sometimes. That's exactly the feeling I had when I watched for the first time a fresh new episode on a Friday night.

I could not believe what they could do by combining music videos language with longer dramatic narratives on a 50-minute show. Already in the pilot, one can see that: when the "In The Air Tonight" scene happens, its 5-minute music video language carries the weight of the entire 2-hour story. In my opinion they only got better with such techniques later (check later episodes like "Red Tape", "Death and The Lady", "Mirror Image"). Sometimes, such "speechless narrative" could even make a not so good episode still a fantastic aesthetic experience.

Also, I just couldn't resist such a good show with the luxury of having Jan Hammer as the music composer. On the first season, the guy composed nearly an album per week! Later, Jan started to recycle material, but always changing things with dramatic effects, adding overdubs with surprising new themes etc. He could keep an enigmatic but identifiable relation between different episodes/scenes that shared music material (compare Season 1's "Nobody Lives Forever" with Season 3's "Theresa", compare Season 3's "Lend Me An Ear" with Season 4's "Mirror Image"). But he still composed a lot even in later seasons (check 3rd seasons's Shadow in the Dark, all original music). And he was generous enough the build a preparation for the music of others (On "No Exit", he prepares during the entire episode the entrance of Phil Collins' "I Don't Care Anymore" on the final scene). He was out of it on Season 5, and to me it was nearly a big lost as if Edward James Olmos got out of it.

Contrary to the majority of fans maybe, I think the best season of the show was the third one, with the darker tones and more colorful photography, with the graver plots (perhaps because Dick Wolf started to be part of if), with the ivory white Ferrari Testarossa on the dark-blueish night scenes. I even preferred the strong "white glow" Miami Vice logo at the opening that replaced the "pink glow" pastel logo from the previous two seasons!

I do agree that Seasons 4 and 5 started to have so-so and bad episodes together with good ones. But some of the unforgettable episodes came with those seasons (Child's Play, Death And The Lady, "The Burnett Trilogy", Borrasca, Heart Of Night).

I am a bit worried with the Blu-Ray transfer, though. I was very unhappy with the change of colors the DVDs had in comparison with the original broadcasts, and I am afraid the Blu-Rays are going to be just the same (only with more resolution). I could never change image settings in order to make the DVDs vaguely remember the beautiful tone the original broadcasts had. Sometimes the colors on the original broadcasts were a bit unrealistic but irresistible (the sea was sometimes very blueish, the neon lights were dreamlike), but on DVDs it looked as if someone decided to "correct" and equalize things (there's a discussion about it on a fan forum here). I have no hope the Blu-Ray will be different. I appreciate the image quality, far better than the '80s, of course. But I can't live with the tint/hues messed up beyond repair.

 

I worked on Seasons 4 & 5 for broadcast and syndication, and the show was fairly heavily supervised by Universal and the staff producers, and they had very specific ideas as to how they wanted things to look. That was both a colorful show (for the bright scenes) and a dark show (for the night scenes), which was very challenging. The low-contrast prints provided were OK, but I would bet when they scanned from the original negatives, there'll be 10 times more detail and potentially better color.

Be warned that you may be comparing how the DVDs look to an imagined version of the show in your head, based on 30-year-old memories. I haven't seen the DVDs (which were new transfers), but I would bet they might very well be better than what we originally did for NBC. Universal did all their own remastering at the Universal Digital Video Services department on the lot, and I think Michael Mann had some input on them.

 

This information about Universal and the staff producers indeed wanting the show to look in a certain way is very interesting.
I kept my copies of the broadcasts, so indeed these 30-year old airings are fresh in my head. It is undeniable that the DVDs have a better quality in terms of details and resolution, and Blu-Rays are going to be even better and that sense. But what I miss is the right colors (no matter they were "unreal" sometimes) and the darker look (and more colorful on the bright scenes, as you mention). For instance, the Miami Vice logo (at opening) from 3rd Season on originally looked very different than the DVDs. Originally it was a dark blue together with strong pink, but on the DVDs it was green with purple (for a comparison with pics, please check this link). That happened also with the earlier Seasons, but not so noticeble.

My bet is that the prints got old and "warm", and they did nothing about it on the DVD transfer. Or maybe they even tried to make the "unreal" look to look more real.... The Blu-Ray Cover of the DVD shows 3 photos, 2 of them are from actual episodes (the second photo from 3rd Season, the third photo from 1st Season), and they look pretty much close to the old official DVDs to me.

 

Loved the first 2 seasons.

 

You know, everyone says that, but I'm at the end of season 3 on Cozi-TV right now and I have to say season 3 has been excellent. A bit darker, perhaps, but I like dark. Very good stories and acting - not so many rock musicians guest-starring. I'm getting ready for seasons 4 and then 5 now, and I went to IMDB and looked at the episode descriptions and there's quite a few good ones sprinkled in those 2 seasons so they aren't a total wash like some folks would have you believe. I hope when people pick up this new bd set they give season 3 another chance - they might find their old memories of it not being so good were made in youth and haste.

 

Absolutely! Season 3 is my favorite. Fast, darker, stylistic mature (the long arc film language powered by the music videos aesthetic reached its peak on Season 3, IMO). You can't get any better than Shadow In The Dark, Red Tape, Duty and Honor. Also, I think visually the series turned to be simply gorgeous. I never cared that much about pastel colors (something that critics say every time they talk about Miami Vice), so I liked a lot the spicy visuals one got on Seasons 3-5.

 

There is a difference in the graphic look between print (which was used for the NBC broadcasts) and negative (which was used for the DVDs), but it is possible to better match them today than it used to be. I cheated on the 25 or 30 shows I did and used a digital version of the credits that I had prepared prior to the session, to make sure the main title was exactly the same week after week.

 

Cool information! Thanks!

 

So here's the million dollar question: Do you think they went back to the original elements for the Blu-ray transfers?