Let’s Talk About The Promised Land (on Bluray/DVD) News Posted by Ian Symes on 1st June 2020, 08:30 Nearly two months after broadcast, Red Dwarf: The Promised Land is out on Bluray and DVD today, the longest wait we’ve had for new episodes to appear on shiny disc since Back To Earth eleven years ago. That’s assuming people can get hold of their purchases today, of course; ever since the olden days of play.com with their lax attitude towards both release dates and VAT, pre-orders have generally turned up a few days before the official release more often than not, but apparently retailers and postal services have other priorities at the moment, the bastards. Amazon customers were initially advised that their delivery had been put back by several weeks, but this was revised in the last few days and the majority of orders have now been dispatched, as have orders with other retailers such as Zoom. So hopefully we’ll all get our copies within the next couple of days, one way or another. As with every release since 2002, we’ll be putting together a full and comprehensive review, although it may take longer than usual as your resident reviewer will be alternating between this and changing nappies. So while you wait for us to tell you the correct opinion on the packaging, the picture quality and the extras, use this thread to share your initial thoughts.
The Promised Discs News Posted by Ian Symes on 8th April 2020, 21:38 With just under 24 hours to go until The Promised Land airs on Dave, news broke of when we'd see it on shiny disc, thanks to Amazon's pre-order for the June 1st release of both the DVD and the Bluray turning up. A singular disc per format in this case, in a first for a Red Dwarf release, but one that's understandable given the size of the main feature. Mind you, Back To Earth was a similar running time and that managed a whole second disc of extras, admittedly in the rather different home media climate of eleven years ago. Instead, the rather attractive cover, naturally based on the fabulous poster, reveals that there's just under an hour's worth of bonus features, and they break down as follows: Read more →
Series I-VIII Bluray Review Addendum Quickies Posted by Ian Symes on 18th July 2019, 17:15 On 17th July 2019, just over six months since the Red Dwarf Series I-VIII Bluray set was first released, replacement discs for Series III and V finally fell through the letterboxes of complaining customers. On the original release, the entirety of the third series and the second half of the fifth were rendered in the wrong frame rate, resulting in blurry movement and grainy pictures, basically the equivalent of accidentally applying a film effect. This subject rather dominated our original review, which lead to a minor lobbying campaign for a fix. The BBC acknowledged the mistake in February, and assured us that new discs would be ready in "approximately six weeks". Twenty weeks later, were the new editions of these nine episodes worth the wait? Read more →
Scrambling in a red alert situation, a new record time… News Posted by Ian Symes on 22nd March 2019, 13:54 …two months and nine days. That’s roughly the time elapsed between the frame-rate problem on the Blurays first being noticed and today’s TOS update, which represents the first time that the controversy has been acknowledged by an official Red Dwarf source. Snark aside, there are a million reasons why things like this take a while to get addressed – they have to wait for the manufacturers to investigate and put solutions in place before they go steaming in – but even so, it’s been a long wait. There’s not a great deal of new information since the BBC finally got their arses into gear about this just under a month ago, but it’s nice to see confirmation that such a dramatic change to the source material was never the intention of the boxset. An apology might have been an idea, mind. The word “sorry” does at least feature in the BBC’s response quoted in the article, which is a slightly more official-sounding version of the email that was previously sent to complaining customers. The crux of the message is this bit: Details of how to obtain your replacement can be obtained by e-mailing BBC Studios customer support line at DVDSupport@bbc.com If you have already purchased the set and wish to replace the two faulty discs, you can do so at the address above; while we understand that replacement pressings of copies still in shops will be issued as soon as possible. Good and interesting news that rogue copies in the wild will indeed be replaced. Spare a thought for the poor bugger who has to organise that.
Bluray Re-Mastered (in a good way) News Posted by Ian Symes on 26th February 2019, 15:15 It’s fair to say that the long-awaited release of Series 1-VIII on Bluray was a controversial one. Reaction to the bulk of the content has varied, but the one thing that everyone agreed on is that Series III and half of Series V were utterly ruined due to some sort of de-interlacing error that rendered the episodes in the wrong frame rate. Since we published our not-entirely-positive review, a small but noisy campaign for replacements and/or refunds started, thanks to the likes of Andrew Orton and his tireless emailing, and George Martin of Which?, who teamed up with perhaps the most intelligent and sexy Red Dwarf fan in the world in his reporting of the issue. And today, that campaign has paid off. Those who have emailed the BBC to complain have finally received a satisfactory response, the pertinent bit of which is: After a comprehensive review with all our suppliers involved in the manufacturing of this product we have now identified the source of the problem. De-interlacing did occur at tape to digital capture stage with one of the suppliers. This was not part of the Blu-ray authoring process as we originally had reason to believe. The mastering of this release was a multistage process involving three separate suppliers. We hope you will understand that it would be inappropriate for us to say specifically where this fault occurred as we are remedying this with the company concerned. We have started the process of recreating the masters and re-authoring these discs which will take approximately six weeks. This is great news, obviously, and we’re looking forward to seeing the results, whilst not holding our breath bearing in mind that we weren’t keen on the rest of the Bluray versions in the first place. But after a frustrating few weeks in which official Red Dwarf sources have been silent and the BBC initially refused to acknowledge that anything was wrong, this is a big win. Well done and thank you to all those who fought for this.
Red Dwarf: Series I-VIII Bluray Review Reviews Posted by Ian Symes on 18th January 2019, 09:21 Oh boy, where to begin? This is comfortably the largest Red Dwarf release ever, containing not only 71.2% of all episodes ever (or Series I-VIII, as most people refer to it), but all the extras from the original DVD range, including The Bodysnatcher Collection. Not only that, the episodes have been restored, upscaled to a high-definition resolution, and given what's been officially referred to as an "extensive" colour grade. It's a release that was rumoured for a very long time before it was finally announced, and one that's only now arriving some three and a half months later than the original release date. Our attitude towards the release during that time has ranged from ambivalence to open hostility, but now that it's finally here, is it indeed the ultimate collection of Red Dwarf - the definitive version of the episodes, packaged with all the extras you'd ever need - that it has the potential to be? Read more →
Let’s Talk About Series I-VIII (on Bluray) News Posted by Ian Symes on 11th January 2019, 13:31 The release that is both long-awaited yet not particularly hotly anticipated is finally happening this coming Monday, the 14th January. However, it’s become clear from both social media and our forum that some lucky individuals have started to receive their pre-orders already, mostly ones from Zoom if you want to try and get in on that action. Our review will be along in due course (not promising any dates, as none of us have received our copies yet), but in the meantime, please use this thread to jot down your thoughts and share your insightful opinions. For example, there’s an extremely intriguing nugget hidden away in today’s TOS update: (Incidentally, contrary to our previous reporting, we can now confirm that the bonus DVDs for each series do actually contain everything that was on their equivalent original release discs – including the original menus!) So it looks like we are getting the music cues and talking book chapters after all, so it would seem the controversy and debate on that score was in vain. Ho hum.
Bluray Extras Confirmed! News Posted by Ian Symes on 7th December 2018, 11:48 With the Bluray release just over a month away, we now have confirmation of exactly what's packed in to those 19 shiny discs. Firstly, with regards to the episodes themselves, the TOS update is keen to emphasise that the extent of the re-mastering this time around is to upscale the video, clean up any damage and polish up the colour grade, rather than making any significant changes to the overall show. They note that there's no change "to the feeling of each unique season", so VII will keep its film look but none of the others will have it added. Bless, they know we've been burnt before with re-mastering, so they're just trying to reassure us. Read more →
Bluray artwork! News Posted by Ian Symes on 26th October 2018, 11:38 It's rare that a TOS update is trailed in advance, but when it is, it's usually something special. There is certainly much to discuss here - the artwork for the forthcoming Bluray release: Read more →
Blu-ray is loaded News Posted by Jonathan Capps on 3rd August 2018, 11:54 Well, here's hoping we've never used that headline before. Before today the only source of information we've had on the Blu-ray releases of Red Dwarf 1 to VIII is from a very premature Amazon listing and Doug's Tweets on the subject. It is, however, now all official and that, and GNP are going ahead with what seems to be an entire set released on the 1st October as part of their ongoing and extensive 30th anniversary celebrations. Read more →
