Is there a 500 minute dvd version?
I've seen that around the net? 500 mins?
The version I own is 300 mins. There's over 3+ hours of footage?
You want the 2000 release from Harmony Gold and Trimark Home Video. It's 550 minutes (or 9 hours 10 minutes).
It's got a picture of Shaka's dad dancing on the cover with an african sunset and a giant superimposed leopard behind him. At the bottom in big yellow letters it says "SHAKA ZULU" with tiny lettering above stating "William C, Faure's" and small lettering just underneath reading "Orginal Full Length Feature". It's a box set with 3 double-sided disc, each in its own DVD case.
Altogether there are 10 episodes. Each side of a disc has 2 episodes running roughly 55 minutes apiece. So that's 110 minutes per side and 220 mins per disc. However disc 3 is only 110 minutes, the first side comprising the last 2 episodes while the second side has the slight special features of a brief narrated timeline and a full on trailer reel of trimark home video releases. The correct running time then is about 550 mins or 9 hours 10 min.
The back of each case reads a runnning time of 220 minutes, however this is incorrect because the 3rd disc only has the program on it's first side
Yeah, the packaging is horribly inaccurate, I mean shouldn't Henry Cele be on the cover instead of the guy that played Shaka's dad?
The supposed "Special Feature" on side B of disc 3 of an extreamly brief narrated timeline sounds like it's being read by some random intern. Now if Robert Powell read it, we'd be cooking. But alas, it's just a bored girl reading an abbreviation of Wikapedia. So yeah, fairly useless.
The picture quality is not as good as I would like but is slightly better than what a prestine VHS would be at least. It's acceptable.
I'm fairly certain this is the only complete DVD version of Shaka Zulu as it originally aired on TV.
Good luck finding it though, my understanding is that it's out-of-print.