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Watching Any Good Serials?
Topic Started: Apr 12 2006, 09:28 AM (88,300 Views)
The Batman
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Don Diego
Mar 24 2010, 10:59 AM
The Batman
Mar 24 2010, 10:07 AM
Excellent news! I have enjoyed the quality of their releases for KING OF THE ROCKETMEN and JESSE JAMES RIDES AGAIN and will be sure to pick this one up, too.

Right on Batman - A serial that is great fun - I look forward to a good copy. We will ever see a good print of THE SPIDER'S WEB??

Good to hear, Don, I have not seen M&tA yet.

I have a copy of THE SPIDER'S WEB, from Rodney. I watched it about a year ago and though I can't recall the quality offhand, I do remember it being watchable.

Perhaps another Balconeer can give a more recent quality review for you, Don. It may be worth a look.


Always be yourself! Unless you can be Batman...then always be Batman!
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panzer the great & terrible
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Mouth Breather
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Trevor's prints of both Spider serials are satisfying, and he boxes them together at a decent price.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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The Batman
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Isn't that the guy that crams 15 chapters on one disc, Mr P?

Always be yourself! Unless you can be Batman...then always be Batman!
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LaneCarson
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Terminologies such SP, LP & EP used on VHS recorders were adopted by some (not all) DVD manufacturers in 1996 to help simplify the task of "evolving" consumers to the DVD format. Manufacturers were at pains to demonstrate the similarities so that recording under the new system was "gonna be simple & easy" - an area in which VHS manufacturers had been failing for the previous 20 years.
A quick look at the specs shows an altogether quite different story in regard to "picture quality" comparisons between say, for instance, SP on VHS and some branded (eg Panasonic) DVD players "SP on DVD" - there is about two and a half times more information on the DVD than there is on the VHS tape - at least in terms of DVD players manufactured since 2000 (ie what they are capable of interpreting & understanding)
Additional factors such as the "amount of information going in" always have to be considered ..... color as opposed to B&W ... 2 channel Mono, all the way up to 5.1 Dolby Digital ... whether certain scenes are static or moving (esp whole screen movement eg an avalanche, a posse of galloping horses up close etc)
A good mastery to DVD will take all of these factors into account … with people moving to large, wide screen digital TVs, such steps are vital (esp now that it appears that LCD will progressively replace Plasma)

An interesting note concerning commercial releases - early last year The Budd Boetticher / Randolph Scott western set was released - 75 to 90 minute films in beautiful Technicolor & wide-screen - but mastered to a mere 1.86 Gb per disc.
A single layer DVD holds 4.3 Gb - so each film used only about a third of the capacity of the DVD disc!

Since 2008 I’ve began re-mastering my serial collection using the newly emerging (at the time) technology known as “interpolated line”. This coupled with Progressive Scan settings (which has been around since the early 2000s), yielded results that are vastly improved (esp when the run-time of content is nailed down to the very second!)
Thus far I’ve completed about 160 re-masteries of my catalogue (I originally mastered 190+ serials across a three year period from 2003, in the process restoring fractured end-cards etc)
My re-masteries also include digital restoration techniques wherein I adjust Brightness, Contrast (its amazing how a slight drop in contrast can significantly reduce the “noticeeability” of scratches on film), Sharpness etc.

My most recent masteries have included the Buck Jones serials & The Desert Hawk. Regarding the BJ serials, I haven’t sold any of the newly remastered ones - because I’ve been just giving them away (subject to a couple of conditions) - I recently dispatched more than a dozen of the Gordon of Ghost City serial to members of another Message Board (along with about a dozen or so of a mint digital uncut print of Trigger, Jr. (1950))
Each package included a quality case & original restored artwork (Poster & Lobby Card)
Why do this? Why Not! - I’ve dispatched more than 100 gratis DVDs to members of the other Message Board since 2004. These days I’m just happy for a word of appreciation and the knowledge that my efforts are going to an appreciative enthusiast (proudly displayed on a bookshelf?) … bootleggers, traders and people who seek to copy my DVDs are not welcome (that being the condition of gratis provision) - more than 28 000 successful transactions later, I’m well pleased ….

By the way: “Interpolated line technology” is used in recent formats like AVI and DIVX - our (software engineer) son downloads “Entourage” (etc) from the ‘net
He put all of the latest Season eps (in High Definition Color and wide-screen) plus the movie District 9 onto a single layer DVD and sent it to us.
It played perfectly on our widescreen LCD TV (as well as on our other son’s 52 inch LCD TV)

This technology is also used in Blu-Ray players when they “upscale” ordinary DVDs for big TVs
Trev
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panzer the great & terrible
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Gentlemen, the maestro has spoken. I will only add that I'm well satisfied with everything I ever bought from him. His Dick Tracys and Spiders are the best-looking I've seen. Admittedly, I have a normal sized TV, so I can't say how they'd look on one of those behemoths.

Just try one, Bat. Trev's service is perfection, and the quality of his product is often superior to what we see from this hemisphere. He also has some hard-to-find items -- and of course that pesky copyright business doesn't work in Australia.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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The Batman
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Geez, sorry you typed all that out, because "there's no way I am reading all that".

Someone give a two sentence breakdown of all that?

Always be yourself! Unless you can be Batman...then always be Batman!
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panzer the great & terrible
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Sorry, I don't understand that stuff, but what it boils down to is what I said before -- so far, for me, Trev's DVDs look fine, the price is right, and the service can't be beat.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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The Batman
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There we are, short and sweet. Thanks, Mr P.
Always be yourself! Unless you can be Batman...then always be Batman!
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JazzGuyy
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I just finished "Phantom of the Air", a 1933 Universal serial starring Tom Tyler. It was in a pretty good transfer from Rodney but with a packaging anomaly. Whoever created the cover mixed up Tom Tyler and Tim Tyler. The print on the cover is for the movie title and "starring Tom Tyler" but the illustration is for "Tim Tyler's Luck".

As always, Tom Tyler looks good in a serial but his acting is about as wooden as it gets. His face seems incapable of any expressions beyond an occasional smile.

The serial overall was decent. It is another of those fearless pilot serials that seemed to have been so popular in the '30s. At least, I assume they were popular, since so many were made. I guess it was quite a thrill for a 10-year-old to see all the stunt flying, wing walking and other aerial carryings-on in these serials.

Lots of action, super-science (the villain is after the antigravity device that enables a plane to be remote-controlled (Huh?)), dogfights, fistfights, smugglers, car chases, etc.

There are a couple of weird lapses. The smuggler villain is smuggling some sort of contraband which the heroes get from him but we never find out what the mysterious contraband is -- gold? drugs? We never find out. We also never find out why the antigravity compound requires a plane. Couldn't anything be made to fly with it? And the serial has those plane crashes where the planes hit the ground and are totally wrecked and the pilots walk away. Shades of Ace Drummond!

On my serial scale, I'd give this one 3 stars.
TANSTAAFL!
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KanSmiley
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panzer the great & terrible
Mar 25 2010, 05:50 AM
Sorry, I don't understand that stuff, but what it boils down to is what I said before -- so far, for me, Trev's DVDs look fine, the price is right, and the service can't be beat.
I would agree Paul. I have purchsed many, many DVDs from Trev and have NEVER been disappointed. Several years ago I did get one that for some reason had a flaw or wouldn't or something...I have even forgotten now what the problem was. I e-mailed him...he e-mailed back and I had a new DVD as fast as it could come From Australia to Kansas.

Have no fears about his quality. And in some cases he he throws in extra DVDs or mp3s. You can't go wrong buying from him.

Smiley
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intoxicated, adj.: When you feel sophisticated without being able to pronounce it.
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mort bakaprevski
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JazzGuyy
Mar 25 2010, 08:35 AM
Tom Tyler looks good in a serial but his acting is about as wooden as it gets. His face seems incapable of any expressions beyond an occasional smile.
And didn't John Ford take great advantage of this when assigning him the role of Luke Plummer in STAGECOACH!! Also served him well as Kharis.

On the other hand, I thought his acting really loosened up during the 40's. He was quite warm & affable in THE PHANTOM.
"Nov Shmoz Ka Pop."
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Barcroft
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Something else worth mentioning from Trev is the Tailspin Tommy set which includes both serials and the 4 movies that were made at Monogram. I had recently got the movie upgrade from him and though I mentioned it on the Monogram page I felt I should also mention it here also. The movie prints are very good and they include the complete Monogram Logo and correct running times.
Barcroft
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Pa Stark
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Jazz Guy, even stranger was in late 70's Nostalgia Merchant's and later Republic Home Video's release of SECRET SERVICE IN DARKEST AFRICA had some of the cast listed on the box, and the fifth name was someone named Roy Prucer. Who in the hell was he?
Edited by Pa Stark, Mar 25 2010, 08:31 PM.
Honest and Lovable Pa Stark
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andarius
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Just watched the first chapter of Batman (1943) - The Electrical Brain - will watch Chapter 2 - The Bat's Cave - Saturday morning!
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The Batman
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andarius
Mar 26 2010, 02:32 AM
Just watched the first chapter of Batman (1943) - The Electrical Brain - will watch Chapter 2 - The Bat's Cave - Saturday morning!

Andy, when your done the serial, tell me that Croft is not the Robin to beat!

Always be yourself! Unless you can be Batman...then always be Batman!
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