Son of a Glitch!

I stumbled across the following comment (left in response to my 1/08/2023 post):

Naturally I had to investigate.

First I had to rip all three distinct Blu-ray versions of "The Human Factor," to see if the file sizes were different between them (depending on the size of your screen, you may need to click on the image below to read the numbers):

Predictably, the Mediumrare file is identical to the Via Vision file (since the former used the latter's disc masters). The Kino file (the O.G. from 2018) is slightly larger, and for the life of me I can't figure out why. The technical specs (video and audio bitrates, etc.) are identical across all three (again, you may need to click on it to actually read it):

Step #2 required me to spot-check each file at the 40-minute mark in question (the target section was 39:59 through 40:10). First, the Kino version from 2018:

...which looked just fine. But when I checked the 2020 Via Vision file, my fears were confirmed: there is indeed a glitch at 40:03 that affects the lower quarter of the frame (right when the desk nurse starts to speak):

Not surprisingly, the same glitch is present in the 2022 Mediumrare file:

So... yeah, this kinda sucks. But to put things into a bit of perspective, this is one very minor error that only lasts a second or so (this is nothing like the "Soldier" audio debacle, which Kino ultimately fixed). If that's the only thing wrong with the Via Vision and Mediumrare editions (other than the gripes detailed previously in these pages), I'm not going to light a torch and storm the castle. I assume Via Vision did some sort of additional compression when they used Kino's masters (which may account for the slightly-smaller file size), which may have introduced the glitch (which then carried over to Mediumrare's release). But honestly---- I have no idea. This isn't exactly my area of expertise.

Thanks to "Anonymous" for bringing this to my attention.

Persistence of (Via) Vision

I now have the UK-exclusive Outer Limits Complete Series (both Blu-ray and DVD) sets from Mediumrare Entertainment in hand; however, that's not what today's entry is about. Before we explore those, I want to back up a step and give the 2020 Australian releases from Via Vision a bit more attention.

As previously reported, the Via Vision Blu-ray improves on Kino's 2018 effort in terms of both content and packaging. Let's hit the packaging first: The set is comprised of two Blu-ray cases (one for each season) and a lavish booklet, nestled rather tightly inside a gorgeous hard outer box.

'Rather tightly' is an understatement. It's SUPER tight in there. But look at that box! There are obviously more iconic aliens/monsters to choose from, but given how brilliantly successful this turned out, I don't mind seeing Ikar there at all. It's a classy job through and through. Sorry Kino, but those clunky digipacks can't touch this.

But it doesn't end there. Via Vision's effort includes all the bonus content from Kino's releases and augments the package with a number of new, exclusive extras:

Audio commentary on "The Hundred Days of the Dragon" by Tim Lucas

Audio commentary on "The Architects of Fear" by David J. Schow

Audio commentary on "The Man Who Was Never Born" by Craig Beam

THE UNKNOWN UNKNOWN audio essay by David J. Schow (regarding a newly-discovered early draft of Joseph Stefano's "The Forms of Things Unknown")

The First Control Voice (early radio spots by Leslie Stevens)

Season Two original ABC commercial spot

Seasons One & Two photo gallery

60 PAGE BOOKLET featuring essays by David J. Schow and episode guide

The booklet, which is essentially both the Kino Blu-ray booklets smooshed together.

Ikar's head extends to the top of the case. Adorable.

In 2020, the Via Vision Blu-ray release was far and away the single greatest release of the series in the history of home video. I never bothered to get the DVD edition (despite my pathological completist nature), an oversight that I finally rectified about a month ago. I assumed that it would come in a similar hard outer box (though it certainly wasn't advertised as such), so the flimsy slipcase that greeted me when I opened the package was admittedly a bit of a disappointment. It's the same exact design, which I do like, but... it still feels cheap (I guess Ikar's head isn't nearly as impressive if you can't pull it off).

The real shocker for me was the discovery that all that exclusive content found on the Blu-ray edition (including my new commentary for "The Man Who Was Never Born") is NOT present on the DVD version. Further, all the Blu-ray content that Kino didn't include in their 2018 DVD* is also missing here (so, basically, this is a clone of Kino's DVD effort). While Kino included a booklet with both the Blu-ray and DVD releases of Season 1, only the Season 2 Blu-ray came with a booklet (and, as previously reported, their 2022 Blu-ray reissues omit the booklets entirely). The Via Vision Complete Series DVD is similarly lacking a booklet, so no proper episode guide is included. The episodes are listed on the reverse of the case inserts, so at least you can see where to find each episode, and asterisks are employed to denote which episodes feature audio commentaries... but that's it. Who did the commentary for "Nightmare," you ask? You'll have to load up the disc to find out (spoiler alert: it's not me, and his initials are DJS). 

Left: spines. Right: Um... the other side. The opposite of spines. Anti-spines?

Hey! I just thought of a hilarious idea: they should've used the image of one of Ikar's soldiers on the DVD to further differentiate the two. It's especially appropriate since, like the DVD version, the soldier is taller and dumber.

So while Via Vision's Blu-ray edition is (or at least was, in 2020 when it was released) the gold standard of The Outer Limits on home video, their corresponding DVD edition is unfortunately... well, nothing special. Via Vision's efforts represent both ends of the spectrum: the best Blu-ray, and the worst DVD. You'd be better off just getting the Kino DVDs from 2018, since at least you'll get a booklet with Season 1.

But c'mon. It's 2023. Why buy DVD at all when you can enjoy the series in high definition on Blu-ray? It boggles my mind that DVD is still a thing, especially since it's been superseded by superior formats twice (Blu-ray and, more recently, 4K UHD). But apparently DVD is *still* the highest-selling home video format.

This is particularly bizarre since virtually ALL televisions sold are either high definition (1080p) or 4K. A helluva lotta people are either still using 20+ year-old TVs or they just don't care how things look. 

What REALLY kills me is that the Via Vision Blu-ray (again, the single greatest home video release of the series ever) was strictly limited to 1,500 units, and they sold out pretty fast (I tried to track down a second backup copy recently, and I couldn't find one anywhere---- not on eBay, not on Australian eBay, not on Australian Amazon, not on Via Vision's website, nowhere. They're just gone, baby, gone. There are rumors that they may be doing a second run at some point this year (which would make it a 60th anniversary release, so hopefully they present it as such if it happens), but for right now---- if you don't have the Australian Blu-ray, you're outta luck.

Shortly after Kino released their 2022 Blu-ray reissues (which deleted the booklets but switched from digipacks to standard cases), UK-based Mediumrare Entertainment announced that they'd be releasing a Complete Series Blu-ray and DVD of their own in December 2022. With the Via Vision Blu-ray out of print and unattainable, the immediate and obvious question was: would the UK release simply replicate the original Kino effort, or would it include the exclusive Australian content? And, perhaps even more importantly, would it include anything new?

I guess I already answered that last question in a previous entry (no, there's no new content). But as to the content that is there.... well, stay tuned. Will the Brits dethrone the Aussies? All will be revealed... soon.

* I don't think I've ever mentioned in these pages that Kino's Season 2 DVD is missing several bonus features found on the corresponding Blu-ray. I'm planning a comprehensive post detailing ALL of the bonus features across all the various home video releases soon.

Via Positiva

On July 6, 2019, I had the honor of appearing on Victor Gamboa’s wonderful Outer Limits podcast, where he grilled me at length about my blogs, podcast, and Outer Limits Blu-ray commentaries. We had a great chat, which you can hear for yourself here. The conversation felt (to me, at least) like a kind of summation on that third item… the work was done, both season sets had been released, we’d been honored with a Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award, and… that was it. Hashing it out with Victor seemed to place a nice marker at the end of eight years of exploring my beloved Outer Limits. It was time to rest.

Ha! cackles the universe. 

A mere six weeks later, DJS notified me that the Australian label Via Vision was planning their own Outer Limits Blu-ray release Down Under, licensing Kino’s supplements in the process. This presented an interesting opportunity to make the supplemental package even more robust (no mean feat, given the extensive treasure trove already extant). He had a couple of new pieces brewing, including The Unknown Unknown, a fascinating glimpse into a newly-discovered early draft of Joseph Stefano’s “The Forms of Things Unknown” teleplay that includes an actual monster (or bear, in Outer Limits parlance, which is referred to as, simply, The Form; you can read this version in From the Inner Mind to... the Outer Limits Scripts of Joseph Stefano, Volume 1, edited by Dave Rash for Gauntlet Press). 

But DJS wasn’t stopping there. He wanted to provide even more exclusive content in the form of... that’s right, kids: more audio commentaries, which would be grafted onto the existing Kino disc masters. We’d do a total of three: Film historian and audio commentator of renown Tim Lucas would provide a new track for “The Hundred Days of the Dragon” (to compliment Dr. Reba’s Wissner’s existing track), and DJS and I would join forces for “The Architects of Fear” and “The Man Who Was Never Born” (both of which already had tracks by Gary Gerani). Why didn’t we cover episodes that didn’t get commentaries the first time around? Valid question, that. As I recall, Lucas had already expressed a desire to explore “Hundred Days,” and... hell, he’s Tim Lucas, so he can basically call his own shots. And it goes without saying that both "Architects” and “Man/Born” are two of the greatest---- if not the greatest--- episodes of the entire series, so both were/are absolutely worthy of additional exploration. So that was the plan, to be executed over the following few months. 

So that was mid-August. About a month later (September 13, 2019), Kino took home another prestigious honor--- this time the coveted Saturn Award, which is presented annually by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films, who had deemed the Outer Limits Blu-rays worthy of the Best DVD or Blu-ray Television Movie or Series Release (2018-2019) prize.  

Look at that thing! Gorgeous.  

So over the next couple of months DJS and I did some preliminary work on our new tracks for Via Vision, and I found myself increasingly doubtful that I could actually pull it off. See, he’s a natural at this kind of thing---- delivering what amounts to a casual lecture with nothing more than a sheaf of notes to periodically glance at--- but me? I need to script everything out in advance, pre-timed down to the second, without improvised comments and nothing off-the-cuff. It seemed daunting (if not downright impossible) to somehow marry our disparate approaches successfully, so he graciously agreed that we'd tackle the tracks separately--- he’d do “The Architects of Fear” and I’d take “The Man Who Was Never Born,” each of us armed with whatever notes the other had assembled thus far. And I’ve gotta say--- we made the right choice. Schow’s "Architects” track is nothing short of stellar, and my “Man/Born” effort.... well, it might be my best Outer Limits track of the eight I’ve done (or it is nine? Stay tuned). And Schow and I would get the chance to record together... but we’ll get into that in a couple of weeks. 

Via Vision’s Outer Limits release came out in June 2020, and it wasn’t split up in season chunks---- they gave us the whole enchilada in one Complete Series set, with a gorgeous glossy hard box holding it all together. As great as Kino’s efforts were, THIS stands as the ultimate home video presentation of the series. It's nothing short of spectacular. The moment I first held it in my hands, I was momentarily taken back to the earliest days of my Outer Limits fandom, when I was first amassing those beautiful VHS editions, then thrust forward in a heady rush through multiple unsatisfactory DVD editions, standard-def Hulu streams, and finally into the realm of high definition. With the Via Vision set, I felt a tingling and satisfying sense of completion (not that kind, ya perv). I remember how acquiring the Twilight Zone Blu-rays had felt like a cosmic reward of sorts, after decades of buying and rebuying the series. This was that all over again. I don't know what the future of home video looks like---- 4K is obviously a thing, and we're seeing some really great releases... but streaming continues to nip at physical media's heels, and it seems unlikely that classic television will ever make the leap to 4K. And if it never happens... well, this Via Vision set will do nicely. Better than nicely, actually. Honestly, it's better treatment than I ever thought I'd see The Outer Limits receive. It's been over two years, and I still gaze lovingly at it on a regular basis.

The Via Vision set is marked as Region B, but fear not, domestic cats: the discs play just fine in a standard Blu-ray player. However, the set is unfortunatetly out of print (which happens when highly-desirable items such as this are limited to 1500 copies). It appears there are still some DVD copies available, but the Blu-rays are sold out. I heard a vague rumor that Via Vision may do a second run at some point, but there’s nothing concrete as of this entry. I’ll try to report it here if/when it becomes official, just in case any of you wants/needs this exemplary collection in your possession (and trust me, if you’re reading this blog, you most definitely DO). 

Next time: Hey, Nice Package.