The DVD is now available on the Warner Bros. web page as part of the archieve collection.
It is 19.95 and is a beautiful print 2 DVD's for $19.95 and is the complete mini-series
Ummm, the Warner Bros webpage where?! If it's the US, you should say so.
(I do wish you Americans would start to realise there are more people on the planet, and on IMDb, than just you lot.)
You might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.
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A beautiful print? It's not even remastered! What are we comparing it to?
shareAlso be warned that the American Warner release a a "made-on-demand" DVD-R. Enjoy it the first time, because it probably won't play after a few months.
shareI have both the Warner DVD and the UK Region-2 DVD by Anchor Bay/Fremantle. The Warner DVD actually looks and sounds a little better, and being 1.33:1, shows more picture at the top and bottom. But the UK disc does have a director/writer commentary track and some nice production stills whereas the Warner disc has no special features.
shareThanks for the info cwy2009.
A) How good is the commentary? If you could only have one, is the commentary good enough to make up for the difference in A/V quality?
B) How long have you had the WB version? As you may have noticed, another user suggests that the made-for-demand disks have a limited shelf life.
The commentary is very informative. With it being 3 hours long, the commentators were able to cover a lot of topics such as the making of the film and the history of the Ripper case. There are other extras on the DVD as well. Here is a review: http://homecinema.thedigitalfix.com/content.php?contentid=5395.
As to whether the commentary is good enough to make up for the video quality, I think it isn't. Not only is picture poorer, but the widescreen image is cropped from the original full screen image, and it loses a chunk of picture at the top and bottom, leaving you wondering why sometimes heads and legs are slightly cut off. This movie is from the 80s, when there was no widescreen TV, so it should be seen in its original TV broadcast aspect ratio of 1.33:1, which is why I suggest you get the Warner version as well. The UK version can be had cheaply at Amazon UK for about 10 USD but you need a multiregion DVD player with PAL conversion: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jack-Ripper-DVD-Michael-Caine/dp/B0010KG2KQ
I got the Warner DVD-R just two weeks ago. And this is my first Warner Archive disc so I don't know what the overall quality of these Archive discs is like. But I have bought other commercial DVD-Rs and never had a problem.
Yes, DVD-Rs in general can be a headache because if the dye on the disc is of poor quality, it could fade and render the disc unreadable in just weeks or months after burning. If you burn your own DVDs, make sure you buy high quality brands such as Taiyo Yuden: http://www.digitalfaq.com/reviews/dvd-media.htm.
The problem with these burn-on-demand discs from Warner, Universal, and Fox is that you never know if they use high quality discs or not. And the fact that these discs are the studios' way to save cost doesn't inspire confidence that they would use high quality discs. If the movie you bought is really important to you, I suggest you make a DVD copy of it yourself (with high quality discs of course) or rip it to a computer hard drive.
Over the last ten years, I have amassed close to two thousands DVD-R discs that I either bought or burned myself, and the encouraging sign is I only have had 10-20 discs that have become unreadable (and those discs were all of the same brand and make). This leads me to believe that among high quality discs, the "fail rate" is fairly low.
This is also now available on German release blu ray.
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