[78-L] A word of warning concerning playback of Warner "BigBand" set Re: They are practically Giving away the Vitaphone DVD set!

[David Lennick]

I'm still finding DVDs that begin with commercials and promos that can't be 
stopped or skipped through..drives me crazy. "Oh Brother Where Art Thou" is one 
such. (I'm also mad at the DVD industry for constantly rereleasing the same 
material with slight revisions or "ultimate" versions..seems to me I couldn't 
play the "Don't Call Me Shirley" edition of "Airplane" without the commentary 
or figure how to get past it, and I gave up watching my Rocky & Bullwinkle DVDs 
a couple of years ago because it took a full 2 minutes to get past the cutesy 
opening menu and then I'd still have to figure which episode I wanted to watch.)

Anyone remember the early issue of "Lawrence of Arabia" where one disc would 
play and the other wouldn't, if you had a first generation DVD player? I had to 
take that set to a store and try it, and 3 of the store's players wouldn't run 
it either.

dl

Martin Fisher wrote:
> Hey Mike,
> 
> I'm a fan of the indisposable "DELETE" button when it comes to the lists so 
> probably didn't read your earlier post of warning after the fiftieth message 
> in the thread....
> 
> Yep.  I'm relegated to watching this DVD set in the bedroom on a little 13 
> inch monitor, sitting in front of the computer, or reconfiguring my living 
> room setup temporarily.  This, along with the comment by our resident IT guy 
> stating that our server would be much better off if we replaced all those 
> unwieldy archival uncompressed 96/24 wav files with mp3s, just makes my day. 
> ;-)
> 
> Martini
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Michael Biel" <mbiel at mbiel.com>
> To: "78-L Mail List" <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
> Sent: Monday, December 14, 2009 11:47 AM
> Subject: Re: [78-L] A word of warning concerning playback of Warner 
> "BigBand" set Re: They are practically Giving away the Vitaphone DVD set!
> 
> 
>> I brought this exact thing up last week, although not in the message you
>> reprinted.  I found it would not play in the Sony drive in my computer
>> nor in my Discmaker copier (which we use to duplicate Leah's
>> documentary), but would play in a Magnavox recorder, and a Philips
>> player.  I did not test it in my Ilo or LiteOn recorders because I do
>> not trust them anyway.   They obviously do not want them being ripped in
>> computers, and this might affect how a stand-alone recorder's drive see
>> them, but it makes no sense to purposefully disable their playback in a
>> recorder, since it is the recorder you would use to take the signal from
>> a player!!    Actually, the copier's play-only input drive did read the
>> disc but said it was RCC protected and would not proceed.  So that is
>> the answer of the other question about what would happen if you do get
>> it to play in a computer.
>>
>>
>> Frankly it would be a pain for some people if they can't play it in
>> their computer because that is some people's entertainment center.  The
>> RCC copy protection should be enough to protect ripping by most ordinary
>> people, so why did they have to go the extra step.  In the past there
>> have been threats by the disc authorities to demand trademark removal
>> from discs that have things that restrict PLAYING, such as when the CD
>> authority threatened Columbia when they put in some programs that
>> damaged computers that merely played certain CDs a few years ago.  Note
>> that these discs contain a DVD "Download" trademark.  This must have
>> some allowance for how these discs act.
>>
>>
>>
>> Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com
>>
>>
>>  -------- Original Message --------
>>
>> From: "Martin Fisher" <wmfisher at mtsu.edu>
>>
>>
>> Just a note concerning the playability of this set.
>>
>> The back of the box is flagged with this statement, verbatim.
>>
>> "This disc is expected to play back in DVD video "play only" devices,
>> and
>> may ot play back in other DVD devices, including recorders and PC
>> drives."
>>
>> So far, disc 1 plays back in a Coby and Toshiba DVD player and Plextor
>> DVD
>> PC drive. Other PC DVD drives come up as not recognizing the region
>> code.
>> I also have a Sony DVD recorder that will not load the discs.
>>
>> Martin
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- 
>> From: "Michael Biel" <mbiel at mbiel.com>
>> To: "78-L Mail List" <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
>> Sent: Friday, December 11, 2009 9:31 PM
>> Subject: Re: [78-L] They are practically Giving away the Vitaphone DVD
>> set!
>>
>>
>>> From: "Steve Shapiro" <steveshapiro1 at juno.com>
>>>> When you order the 6 dvd set, a code comes up which says MOD.
>>>> The company says that MOD dvds are not mass-produced, but Made On
>> Demand.
>>>> I presume this is each time someone orders such items.
>>> Yes, this was discussed when the Warner Archive series was first
>>> introduced back a year or two ago. I mentioned in my discussions here
>>> that these are DVD-Rs but are nicely printed so that you wouldn't
>>> notice. It is designed to allow for items of limited interest without
>>> having to warehouse quantities or distribute them to stores. This is
>>> similar to what Greenwood Press is doing for some of its
>> discographies,
>>> and what the Smithsonian does with the Folkways and Cook recordings.
>>>
>>>> Perhaps our business is keeping someone in job./steve
>>> That is a nice thought in this economy, and I am happy to support
>> this
>>> end of the commercial disc business because it is giving the company
>> a
>>> clear denotation of what materials ARE of interest. Each sale here is
>> a
>>> definite sale, while sending them to stores can often result in
>> returns
>>> from the store. If films like these sell well enough to support their
>>> production, hopefully more will be released. I have a feeling that
>> this
>>> set is partially a result of the interest in the Jazz Singer box,
>> both
>>> in sales and in word of mouth/internet.
>>>
>>> Mike Biel mbiel at mbiel.com