I have the Contender 7 disc set released several years ago and the quality is good. But I've read on amazon that the quality of the latest release by Optimum (from October 2006) is of inferior quality to the Contender set. Can someone enlighten me? Is the quality of the Optimum set any good? And what's the 8th disc about in that set?
shareI haven't seen the earlier discs so can't compare them. As for the extra disc, it certainly isn't for any extras. Two of the episodes have commentaries but otherwise the discs each contain 3 or 4 episodes and that's it.
I'd say that the image quality is borderline acceptable for a relatively recent production (in contrast to some beautiful restorations of much earlier material). Some of the discs have 4 instead of 3 episodes and the compression is even more noticeable. The film master they are taken from looks like a period interneg or interpos with no restoration. It looks pretty washed out and sparkly in places. Those episodes shot with higher contrast and richer colours - mainly the first series - stand up much better. Those which look as if they were shot to achieve a thinner negative look more like 16mm at times.
By comparison with the 35mm ITC series, even the much earlier ones, the image quality is very unimpressive.