Your right. I have NEVER seen a buyout that didn’t result in people getting let go and quality go to Schiit. Seriously. And at least in my industry, when Verizon bought out GTE, they purposely lost maintenance contracts for phone maintenance. If an account didn’t bring in at least 17 million annually, it was dumped, and then the started laying off copper techs, like my Wife and I. So, unfortunately the Golden Monkees era at Rhino seems to be over, but for you hardcore Monkees fans out there, you got some pretty choice products over the past 3 decades. Not a bad thing at all. Beave
Good points. I just got the 2 2011 DVD sets, 6 discs and 5 discs. Minimal packaging, but totally fine. Triple foldout box, nothing fancy, there was no real good reason why they had to go with a box like they did with the Blu-ray’s, it’s actually kind of silly, like the Scooby Doo “Bus box”. Just dumb, I’m not an 8 year old kid anymore, you don’t need to market a product to me by making it look like a toy. The 10 discs in a serviceable box with a good book of liner notes, list it at $119.99 and it would have sold out in 2 years. But now we have this………. But, there’s more………… In my next post! Beave
So in a sick and twisted way, I got to wonder if Mike's death and the outpouring of response is going to light a fire under rhino's butt to either find or remanufacture the Monkees Blu-ray sets.
Ok, next post. So for all of you out there bummed that we’ll probably never get the Blu ray set there is some good news! This is in reference to this set, which I believe came out in 2011, (corrections gladly accepted): https://www.amazon.com/Monkees-Coll...ovies-tv&sprefix=The+mon,movies-tv,248&sr=1-6 I was able to get the set on eBay for $178 total, $58 for a vg season 1 and $118 for a sealed season 2, prices including shipping and Washington state 10% tax. Pricey but a lot less than what a lot of people on eBay are selling the set for. So, me and the wife started watching season 1. Now I’m NOT a hardcore Monkees collector, I loved the show when I was a kid, and I do know that a lot of you are hard core collectors, so go easy on me here, not trying to step on anyones toes here. Playing the DVD discs in our OPPO103 player the visual quality was MUCH BETTER that what reviews led me to believe. Yes, there are scratches here and there and it’s obvious that a true restoration was not done to these prints. But, given that, on a scale from 1 to 10…. DVD quality wise, the set is a solid 9.2. The opening segment on all episodes we watched are inferior prints to the actual show itself. But when the episodes start, the visual quality is Excellent! The picture colors are clean sharp and not over saturated. And the pictures are NOT dark! In fact the picture “balance” is again, excellent! Only the opening and closing tags are inferior picture wise. They must’ve worked on the color and contrast elements of the films, because these really look GOOD. SO, the long and short of it is that the 2011 dvd sets are excellent, their not HD, but especially if your blu ray player upscales, I can’t see anyone really having a problem with these at all. The audio is fine, nothing special but nothing really wrong with it either. So I’m glad I got these, yes it was close to $200 but I’m done. And the quality is BETTER than I expected so I hope this info helps others confused by differing opinions on the picture quality of this set. RIP Michael, Peter and Davy. You gave us Much fun and good times. BeaVe
We can wish for that but the sad state of physical media right now makes me think more like leasing the hd data to Disney plus or Netflix, no outlay at all money wise. But today I got an email from eBay for a sealed season 1 for $75 buy it now. Very reasonable, of course it sold already but it shows their still out there for a reasonable price. But who knows. If the story about the warehouse is true, then someone might stumble upon them, but by that time, we’ll all be dead! Beave
I got both seasons on DVD in 2012, before the prices went through the roof. I was on the fence about getting the Blu-ray set and waited too long and kicked myself afterwards. But as noted earlier, on the DVDs the episodes themselves have pretty decent picture quality. I'm watching them this weekend and I'm really enjoying the cavalcade of guest stars. I'm watching "Don't Look A Guest Horse In The Mouth" and there's Jerry Colonna as Dr. Mann...what a trip seeing him!
Big time! The producers really put out a first rate show! And the one cool thing for collectors with the DVD set is that you can see the true shape of the film elements before being cleaned up for Blu ray. And it’s not that bad. The color rendering really impressed me. Very well done for the time it came out. What it would take is a miracle to see it rereleased. Not going to happen in this environment. And especially seeing the backlash that happened when the original pre order was up! No marketing guy is going to look at that and try and talk the bosses into another one of those. Sad but true. If Rhino was still TRULY independent, I could see it happening, but just like the Warner Bros, Looney Tunes, we’re pretty much at the end of the cycle. Get what you can get, especially on physical media, because it just doesn’t look good down the road for us. Beave
No. But the boys are a LOCK on the next Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominations list! They won't actually get in, but they'll get on that list. When Micky dies they'll get in and the singer from Smash Mouth can induct them!
I was, and am, quite happy with the way the Rhino DVDs look. I don't get how people grumbled about them not looking good.
The DVDs OK. I even remember being excited about being able to tape the episodes on VHS back in 1986. But the Blu-rays look even better:
I personally wasn't too happy with the DVD's when they came out. But the bluray's look amazing. Better than I could have ever imagined or hoped for. This comparison is a bit extreme, because not all the episodes looked as bad as this one, but with the type of tv's and monitors we have these days, I think it's still accurate:
Thank you for bump in the Thread...sure hope Warner or Rhino media does a physical release again of The Blu-Ray television series in budget package please!
I wonder if anyone here has bought this? Picture Quality: A++ in 1080P HD (Digitally Remastered) Monkees, The
Somebody’s brought this up a ways back and I went to the guys website. It’s obvious he’s home making these. And the point was brought up taking 10 discs and putting them on 2, a lot of data has to be dumped to make that work. Even if they were dual layer, your still going to have to compress the crap out of it to make it fit on 2 discs. I looked up his site and didn’t see anything really negative about him, but still if it walks like a duck……………. For $58 I got the 1st season dvd set, I’m happy with that. I’d be interested in seeing what the data rate is on these. 40 mbs is standard…………….. Beave
I was just watching S1 E15 ("Too Many Girls") and was pleasantly surprised to discover, after all the talk about Different Drum being nixed by the producers, it did end up being performed on the series after all....just not in the way you might think.
Good points but the official Monkees HD YouTube uploads are compressed (~365 Mb) and look better than my DVDs. If he used two, 50Gb discs (100Gb), that's over 1.5Gb/episode so it could look OK.
Well there seems to be 2 guys doing the same thing, or one guy under multiple auspices. This guy comes across as Asian, maybe a Japanese side, and the other site, looking almost identical to this one makes it seem like he’s in the states. But either way, if he did use high capacity blanks, it might be good, but I’m not going to plunk down $65 shipping and tax, to find out. Now on the other hand, I HAVE bought DVD’s from individuals on eBay who home authored video and the couple I got (The complete Tex Avery Cartoon Collection that was released on Laserdisc being one of them), they were done very well. Artwork, disc quality all were excellent. But in the example of the Avery set, I think there’s 5 discs and it cost me $45. So, there are some people filling that niche. Maybe someone here will have the money to blow and take a chance. BeaVe
