marker

Having just watched my just bought new box set of ghost squad from network, I am very disappointed with the picture quality.
series one seems to be on 35mm film and really shows its age with a poor picture a lot of light at the edges,and the rest of the boxset seems to be a very poor video transfer grainy poor resolution and in some places quite shaky.
seems to me that Network have done nothing to improve the picture quality on this release, and for £50 i feel a bit cheated, to be honest there is a lot of other network items coming out this year that I would be interested in buying, but this last experience has now made me rather wary.



cheers marker

mariocki

Wait 'til you see the prints on the Adventurer set - one of them looks like it's been spliced together using sellotape.

marker

Many thanks for the warning I had thought about getting the adventurer set it costs about £17 to buy so I suppose if its not to good, you have not paid a fortune for it.

These sort of bad releases make eBay bootleggers wares look good I always thought that when these company's re released this stuff they made an effort to make it within reason at least presentable.


cheers marker

smudge

I have yet to dip into my GHOST SQUAD, but bad as it may be it'll be better than the ultra-grainy 50th gen VHS's I have. I did think though, given the delays with GS, that they might have been putting some effort into it.

It seems that as their catalogue expands, NETWORK are content to just put out any old print on a number of titles. Shame.

Anybody know what the ACE OF WANDS is like ?

Smudge

Welcome to my house. Enter freely, and of your own will...

clitheroekid

From another forum:

"Our DVDs arrived yesterday and am pleased to see that Network seem to have made a very good job of this one (I've yet to look at any of the discs besides the Special Features one). Andrew's booklet is a reassuringly weighty tome and I look forward to reading it. Please to see an episode guide to the whole series in there, too. My knowledge of the early episodes is sketchy at best, so it'll be good to read up on them"

penfold

It explains why quite clearly on the box....the first series survives on the 35mm it was shot on. Series 2 onwards was shot on long-wiped videotape, but telecined in the 60's onto 16mm for overseas sales....and these 16mm films survive. Network have released what they could...they can't invent archive material. No, Ghost Squad isn't cheap (I thought the first series looked brilliant by the way, with camerawork by one Nick (sic) Roeg) but if you are interested in ITC series it's a must have, and no-one else will bother releasing a series even more obscure than Gideons Way....

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

mariocki

Is there much in the way of location footage, Penfold? Do you know which studios it was filmed at?

penfold

Not offhand, but I would guess Pinewood, and mostly studio-based.

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

mariocki

Thanks, I'll pick it up at some point.

Foster twelvetrees

which was fantastic to someone who never heard of it before taking a punt on the DVDs

penfold

I'm having a whale of a time at the mo, alternating A&E Danger Man's with Ghost Squad.....great stuff.

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

David Brent

I assume everyone is talking about the 1961 television series "Ghost Squad". At first I thought the thread was about the 2005 series that goes by the same name.
I cannot recall ever seeing the sixties series.
I saw the latter series but did not rate it too highly.

Dave.

Lord Brett

I thought the 1st series Ghost Squad prints looked fine, very sharp if a little speckly. Network haven't restored them, but it does show how standards have shot up in the DVD age that they are seen as being a bit substandard. Remember those godawful dingy, grainy 16mm prints Channel 5 video used to put out of classic series?

The second series doesn't look great, but it's a telecine job, and unless it's Dr Who, with a guaranteed market, that's the quality we have to put up with to see the series at all.

batman

I have several of the Network collections and I am very pleased with all of them. Some odd episodes in the Big Breadwinner Hog and Budgie sets are not 100% but at least we are getting to see this stuff. Gideon's Way is a great series .... perfectly placed halfway between Dixon of Dock Green and The Sweeney .... now if only someone would bring out a Z Cars set.

Bats.

I'm the cutest bottom judge!

smudge

Beaconsfield Studios...

Smudge

Welcome to my house. Enter freely, and of your own will...