Magnum Mania!

Ok so after browsing all the reviews on amazon of the Magnum DVD set it is apparent that the quality is poor... I own seasons 1, 2, 3, and embarrassinly enough havent been able to watch them so have nothing to ccompare to. Besides the obvious of wanting to own and watch them all... is it worth it to buy them given the consisstent complaints about the making of the DVDs? Are they made diffrently now...etc. any help is appreciated... thank you!

I have known about complaints about the quality of the DVD's on Seasons 1-4 and I actually only own Season 2. I have watched all the DVD's at least 3 times and have not had a problem with them. I think the problems that people have had in the past with them is that the DVD's are burned on both sides. I believe that in seasons 5 thru 8 they are only burned on one side. But I could be wrong, since I don't own them. I have heard that Season 3 is particularly bad. But like I said....I own Season 2 and have never had a moment's problem with them. I think you either get a bad batch or you don't. Anyone else have any input? Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong!

Yes, that pretty much explains it. Universal received a lot of complaints for using double-sided discs for all of their tv boxsets. They eventually began using single-sided discs, but this change didn't affect Magnum until Season 5.

The problems with the first four seasons vary, and usually depends on the dvd player. Many older players have trouble reading them, and it causes the image to freeze for a few seconds, then skip.

Overall, I haven't regretted purchasing them. For the most part, it's not as bad as it appears on Amazon. I only had trouble with a handful of episodes in Seasons 2 and 4, but it was never so bad that I couldn't watch the episode. It usually consisted of nothing more than a minute's worth of aggravation. (The one exception to this was Wave Goodbye, which had problems throughout.)

Yeah, the double-sided discs were the issue, for some. As Shermy said, it really depends on what type of DVD player you use. The older DVD players in particular really struggled with the double-sided discs.

I myself havn't had many problems at all with the discs. Lucky, I guess.

I'm glad they switched to single-sided for Season 5 and up, however. A good move on Universal's part. The discs are more reliable, less prone to scratching and with the disc artwork, they just plain look better.

It should also be noted that this problem exists only on R1 discs, all of our R2 discs right from the very first episode are single sided and work perfectly. Plus it would appear that some episodes on the R1 discs are edited, such as the episode 'The Man From Marseilles'. On our R2 discs the full conversation in French is heard between Tanaka and Det. Jean Claude Fornier.

And we always thought that you guys in the US had it good!

I back you up on this one, 308 GTS.
Same goes for "Little Girl Who" who speaks French with Higgins, and Vietnamese with Magnum. (Don't know if it's real Vietnamese though).
But NO EDITS on the DVD's from the good old continent...

I guess I'm one of the lucky ones. I have seasons 1 through 6 on DVD and haven't had any problems at all.

I've got 1 through 6 as well, 2 is pretty much the buggiest in my opinion.

I've never had too much problems with 3 or 4.

However once I got a new DVD player (solely for the reason to watch Magnum without the DVDs skipping), I haven't had a problem with any of them.

5 or 6 have no problems at all, but the way the DVDs are stored annoys me when I try to get at DVD 3 or 5. If they could have the packaging from 2-4 and the DVDs of 5 & 6, I'd be one happy Doc Ibold!

Long story short, if you're in region 1, it helps tremendously if your DVD player is somewhat recent. Anytime I try to play them on an older DVD player, skip central.

Vanity wrote:I back you up on this one, 308 GTS.
Same goes for "Little Girl Who" who speaks French with Higgins, and Vietnamese with Magnum. (Don't know if it's real Vietnamese though).
But NO EDITS on the DVD's from the good old continent...

Hi Vanity, yes I guess we are the lucky ones in old Europe!

Doc Ibold wrote:Long story short, if you're in region 1, it helps tremendously if your DVD player is somewhat recent. Anytime I try to play them on an older DVD player, skip central.

I have noticed that each DVD has a particular region on it, and I have seen the comments of others regarding the regions. The DVD's I have say "Region 1." What do the Regions mean?

For those of you who have Season 3 on DVD, does your disc 3 have the disc information in tiny white letters on a bright yellow background? I wonder who at Universal came up with that bright idea. I almost went blind trying to figure out what season the disc belonged to as I could barely distinguish the white letters on the yellow background.

The region codes refer to which part of the world the disc is released. For example, North America has Region 1, the UK has Region 2, etc. The general idea is that it's supposed to give the studios some control over certain aspects of the films (ie. edited versions; price; streetdate; etc.) Of course, in reality, it's not too hard to get a dvd player that can play any region.

IslandHopper wrote:I wonder who at Universal came up with that bright idea. I almost went blind trying to figure out what season the disc belonged to as I could barely distinguish the white letters on the yellow background.

LOL...no kidding. All of those letterings are pretty bad, but that one takes the cake. I wonder if later pressings of those first four seasons will be upgraded to single-sided discs?

Thanks for the info Shermy.

Here's the breakdown of DVD region codes:

Thanks James

Now, isn't that all a bunch of b.s, it's worse than the old VHS/Betamax issue. Or the utter nonsense of PAL vs NTSC or SECAM etc, etc. I always thought that progess would eventually rid us all of this type of nightmare...evidently not!

Next it'll be HD vs Blue Ray in region 1 or 2 with Divx Decoding etc, etc...jeez what a nightmare

If you do have problems with the DVDs, I know that you can replace them, usually free of charge. Universal studios has a damaged DVD replacement program that I have used to replace 2 of my season 1 discs, as well as all of seasons 3 and 4 of the A-Team and I did not have to pay a single cent. So if any of you are having problems, this is an avenue to look into. It usually takes around 6 weeks to get the new discs.