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("old" news but not posted here yet AFAIK)

In what (to my knowledge) is the biggest double-dip in the history of DVDs, ADVision will be re-releasing the entire Farscape series over the course of 12 special "Starburst Edition" volumes. Each volume contains 6-8 episodes. Each season has 3 volumes. A new volume comes out once every couple of months from now until they get through everything. 14 new sets of commentaries have been recorded, new documentaries and featurettes have been produced, and ADVision is mining archives of footage for other stuff to include (hopefully some bloopers and deleted scenes).

The good news: So far, each volume appears to be pretty cheap. Volume 1 hits retail shelves this Tuesday and Best Buy has it for $12.99. If each volume is roughly $15 (and cheaper with sale prices), then you can buy an entire season for less than $50, and get the entire series (plus Peacekeeper Wars) for less then $200. Not only do the re-releases offer a chance for the show to get a much-enhanced retail presence (a lot of stores won't stock old TV releases).....but finally all the people refusing to get involved with the show because it's "too expensive" have no more excuses. It's about the same price as any other hourlong drama, and cheaper than a lot of its peers in the science fiction genre.

The bad news: Obviously, this is a huge slap in the face to loyal fans that paid ~$100 per season for the original DVD releases. I only have the first two seasons (and only heard about the Starburst editions as I was about to order Season 3 at DeepDiscount), and I'm pretty annoyed and upset. It looks as though there won't be any rebates or trade-in offers, but if you can get $30-40 trade-in credit at a used DVD dealer then perhaps the upgrade will not be expensive. The new discs will have all the features that the originals did, so there is no need to keep the originals around.

I don't keep up with the Farscape online community, but I imagine that they would be pretty upset (particularly those that just paid $100 for the Season 4 box set that only came out a few weeks ago). OTOH, anyone that loves the show that much will probably be happy to see releases that could immensely expand the show's audience and thus help the prospects of seeing a new Farscape mini-series.

 

[G4life98]

i always wondered why the farscape dvds were so fucking expensive.

 

[DarthWoo]

Wait, I'm confused, so is each "Volume" going to be just one disc, or more like 2-3? Squeezing 6-8 episodes onto one disc would be a pretty tight squeeze.

 

[Tenguman]

i always wondered why the farscape dvds were so fucking expensive.

dead series, relatively small but greatly loyal fanbase == high$$$

now there's a chance that the series will come back, thus super cheap DVDs to test interest levels.

 

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Each Starburst Edition is two double-sided DVDs. Volume 1 is seven episodes. I suspect it will be two episodes per side, and with one of the four sides having 1 episode plus all of the extras.

By contrast, the original DVD release only had two episodes per disc (sometimes three), which meant that there were roughly 40-44 discs in the entire series.....Starburst Editions will have 24 discs (give or take). Part of my attraction to it is that the series will simply take up less space on the shelf.

 

[FortNinety]

Well... I guess I'm glad I never bought the show yet! I just feel sorry for my best friend; he's one of those guys that has all the DVDs up till this point.

 

[DarthWoo]

One of my friends had bought me two of the Season 1 DVDs so far as gifts (just the individual discs, not a boxset), so I wonder what I'll say if I end up getting these.

 

[Killthee]

I can't wait.

 

[FortNinety]

When do these come out?

 

[borghe]

today.. a quick search of bestbuy.com shows every store in my area has them in.. $12.99

next disc comes out in january which should be the next 1/3 of season 1.

 

[The Shadow]

If they're putting that many episodes on a disk, I assume the encoding is more compressed and doesn't look quite as good as the original release. There's still reason to go for the more expensive set so I wouldn't feel too bad.

Still, for poor people like me who sell oranges underneath freeway overpasses, the Starburst Editions is welcome news.

 

[calder]

Damn, they still didn't get it totally right.

I've held off on the sets simply because, like X-Files, I refused to pay that much more than 'normal' for dvd sets without anything special to justify the extra cost. And the multiple volumes was stupid, and from what I recall when I first checked the DVDs out the extras were mediocre at best even if they hadn't been 50% more expensive than what I'm interested in paying for a TV set.

It's better than the horrible, horrible DVD sets they came out with first, but it's still not something I'm dying to go out and get. :\ One season = one set... how hard is that to figure out?

 

[border]

If they're putting that many episodes on a disk, I assume the encoding is more compressed and doesn't look quite as good as the original release.

2 episodes for each 8-9 GB side of each disc. That's exactly the same as it was before. I actually kind of doubt that they went back and lowered the bitrate on everything.

One season = one set... how hard is that to figure out?

Errr, why does that matter in the first place? The individual volumes don't add up to cost more than a decent box set, and I imagine that they will start selling them in box sets once there have been enough discs released.