Magnum on Blu Ray!

[Rands]

Yes, I tried it in both my Zone A players. Each had the same message saying the Zone A player and Zone B disc were incompatible.

Fortunately/unfortunately, my daughter's Blu-ray just bit the dust, and one of my players has a new home.

BTW, my daughter just started reading the Magnum Mania forums this afternoon. Hopefully, we'll add a new member to the forum!

[ConchRepublican]

I know Junglebird referenced this review earlier in defense of the Blu-Ray picture quality, but reading through the review of the series, well, read for yourself.

http://www.manlymovie.net/2016/11/revie ... x-set.html

"Even if I wasn’t aware that Murder, She Wrote had its roots in this series, I would’ve all the same called it Murder, She Wrote, for men. For the uninitiated — and I guess there are more than a few who have not seen this in its entirety — the series follows private investigator Thomas Magnum (Tom Selleck) as he solves crimes in Oahu, Hawaii. He lives on the property of a beachfront mansion, free on charge in return for his role as a security consultant services. This setup comes with its perks, such as permanent use of the owner’s Ferrari 308 GTS.

‘Magnum’ is a breezy series, upbeat and with authentic locations adding to its charm, it’s a series that must have done wonders for local tourism. While I don’t consider Selleck to the best actor ever, the guy carries a certain disarming likability and you can’t help but indulge in his dream existence of hanging out with blonde supermodels in paradise, in between the ‘mystery of the week’ for each episode.

The show can be quite pedestrian and kind of wallow in filler quite a bit of the time, even the 93 minute pilot is guilty of this. And by the way, don’t allow the pilot to put you off, this is a show that improves going forward. Vietnam is heavily referenced as was the style at the time of 1980 when America began to confront its demons and it also dips into the Cold War now and again — it’s nice when ‘Magnum’ takes the occasional darker turn. Make no mistake, Jessica Fletcher did not dodge sub machine gun rounds in a Ferrari.

For those who liked the series back in the day, it’ll fit like an old shoe. Newcomers should prepare themselves though for a slower and more sedate slice of 1980’s nostalgia."

[JungleBird]

I totally agree with you, Conch! The review really is quite bad and obviously written by somebody who neither really knows the show nor it's "roots" ("Murder, she wrote"?! Really?!)... However, it was one of the only reviews that came out that early so better than nothing at that point I guess...

As a little update on my experience with the BluRay-box:
I watched (and have recordings of) 720p Broadcasts of all seasons here in Germany, and based on that, the comparison to the BluRays doesn't reveal such a big difference than to the DVDs. But as most of you probably are only interested in the picture quality DVD vs Bluray,
I have to say for most episodes (unfortunately actually only S1-6, but more on that later) it's a great improvement. Much more detail (in darker scenes that also means more film grain, of course.. but I can live with that) and even better (and a wider range of) colours than on DVD.
BUT- and that's what really disappoints and confuses me -
some (really only a few ) episodes are REAL 1080p.
For example, most of Season 1 (e.g. "The ugliest dog" is really brilliant FHD!) and after that, random episodes of seasons 2 to (I think) 5.
It doesn't make any sense to me. Why are only a few episodes remastered in 1080p? The Universal fire might seem like an explaination but I don't think that really was the reason because:
Especially season 8 is terrible, picture quality wise! Well, just exactly as on DVD. It's just upscaled to 1080p. But not even from a 720p source as the earlier seasons are (which is why they really look much better than DVD).

Here, I think they just were lazy and didn't want to spend more money (and I'm speaking of Universal as they provided FF with the digital copies). Or how do you explain all episodes of that season obviously are only in cheap upscaled DVD resolution? Even if they used a bad copy because the first one was destroyed in the fire, it would have shown a little more details than DVD. So, really NO improvement there. To quote your president... SAD!

As S1 seems to be mostly real Full HD 1080p and the earlier seasons are at least always 720p, sometimes 1080p (e.g. S5: "The man from marseilles", great quality!) I'd say that's ok and definitly better than DVD. But no excuse for the later seasons, S7 is nearly equally as bad (only a few episodes show slight improvement) as on DVD and S8 is a bad joke for a BluRay...! Bad DVD-like colours, very 'soft' image (low DVD resolution)...

Luckily, my favorites are the earlier seasons anyways, so...

So, yeah.. I really have mixed feelings about this...
Oh, and another minus is the company FF. They don't even respond to kind e-mail requests. And in interviews they are like, 'please write an e-mail to us before you write bad reviews online'... Well, but then, at least ANSWER!

I'm curious, anybody else here also made experiences with the BluRay? If so, please share! I'd love to hear some more opinions from fellow Magnum-maniacs

[BWheelz54]

"Filler material?" Good grief. That "filler material" must be all the depth that makes Magnum so incredible. This reviewer must be a big fan of the recent Transformers movies. Perhaps those are his gold standards?

[thechickinthemiddle]

"Filler material?" Good grief. That "filler material" must be all the depth that makes Magnum so incredible. This reviewer must be a big fan of the recent Transformers movies. Perhaps those are his gold standards?

Sucks about the later seasons though. I understand crossover-wise how they wouldn't be included since later DVDs didn't have them either, but it seems downright bizarre to stop improvement in PQ in seasons 7 and 8, especially since on the DVDs season 8 never had great color to begin with. I don't know how much to do with it FF had, and I don't know their stature as a company (Shout! Factory in the states has released a lot of shows that have been abandoned by bigger studios on DVD, and PQ is usually pretty good and not worse than it was originally, but a lot of their releases are sitcoms and not filmed like Magnum). On top of that, I would think some money would be chipped in to at least upscale eps whose original sources couldn't be found.

Hopefully whoever indeed hopes to release it here will have the money and resources to improve on this.

[MagnumsLeftShoulder]

I don't have Magnum on blu-ray and I won't risk buying it until it is released in region A, but I did recently purchase the Mill Creek release of Quantum Leap on blu-ray and it looks awesome! It doesn't look as good as something like Hawaii Five-0 (2010), but compared to what QL looked like in 1989 on a 19" Panasonic that you still had to walk across the room to change the channel it's pretty amazing. There are no extras (not even subtitles) on the Mill Creek release, and in some darker scenes there is some graininess (outdoor scenes look awesome); but compared to what it looks like on the NBC streaming site it's a huge upgrade. So if Mill Creek does do a Magnum release, I'm all in. Giant TVs, HD, and blu-ray have certainly spoiled us!

[Macca24]

Hi everyone! I've been lurking around for awhile hoping for news on a US version of Magnum on bluray. I've been checking here almost every day, and I realized that it would be nice to say hi to you all, and express how happy I am to see so many people that still love this show. Also, I wanted to let you all know that I recently discovered that all 8 seasons of Magnum is available on Starz in high definition ( via the Starz app) to hold us over until a true region A set comes along. I don't know if this had been mentioned here, but wanted to give you all the heads up in case it wasn't . I've been binge watching it casting it to my TV this past week, and it really looks great.

[Styles Bitchley]

Hi everyone! I've been lurking around for awhile hoping for news on a US version of Magnum on bluray. I've been checking here almost every day, and I realized that it would be nice to say hi to you all, and express how happy I am to see so many people that still love this show. Also, I wanted to let you all know that I recently discovered that all 8 seasons of Magnum is available on Starz in high definition ( via the Starz app) to hold us over until a true region A set comes along. I don't know if this had been mentioned here, but wanted to give you all the heads up in case it wasn't . I've been binge watching it casting it to my TV this past week, and it really looks great.

Welcome Maca24! Board isn't as active as it one was, but still a great crew of veterans. I think the only way they'd convince me to buy a new set of DVDs would be if there was a significant upgrade in quality and some great bonus features or episode commentary. I bought my DVDs early and paid top dollar, so Universal won't get more from me without a fight!

I've actually ripped all of my discs into MP4 and now watch them on my Apple TV. It's not as good quality as the disc itself but way more convenient. I guess the quality doesn't mean that much to me. I used to watch it on our old family Sony back in the early 80s so it was never the image quality that had me coming back for more.

[thechickinthemiddle]

So from some selective "searching and viewing" of these episodes , I can determine that the episode lengths, etc. are the same as the UK DVDs, and commercial breaks are certainly not abridged.

"L.A." and "The Man From Marseilles" are fully uncut, and in the case of "China Doll", its syncing issues regarding audio and music are no longer there. Rick's dialogue with the two tourists doesn't have music playing over it, and the Six Million Dollar Man sound effects seem to be in the right places now. I'm guessing the issues before had to do with the DVDs using a different source.

Improvement of PQ is definitely all but abandoned in season 8, which is a shame. Even in earlier season episodes where there's not a huge improvement over the DVDs, they still largely look good in general, but taking, say "Tigers Fan" for example, one could easily mistake it for a DVD print.

Hope this helps!

[MagnumsLeftShoulder]

I just saw on Amazon that the Miami Vice blu-rays are less than $40!!! Ugh...why can't we get MAGNUM???

[Coligion]

I just saw on Amazon that the Miami Vice blu-rays are less than $40!!! Ugh...why can't we get MAGNUM???

I thought the same thing! I keep looking to see an announcement from Mill Creek for Magnum, but there has been nothing so far . Here's hoping the upcoming BD release of Rockford Files does well financially and can help make a stateside release possible.

[308GTS]

It's still way over priced here in the UK. I'll wait until the full BD set is $9.99

[MagnumsLeftShoulder]

I e-mailed Mill Creek and this is the reply I got this morning.

Good Morning,

Thank you for contacting Mill Creek Entertainment with your product suggestion. Your e-mail has been forwarded to the appropriate parties for further review and consideration. Unfortunately, we do not have the manufacturing or the distribution rights to the Magnum P.I. television series.

Sincerely,

LYLE GOFF
CUSTOMER SERVICE MANAGER
cid:A57BACB4-1214-47B6-923A-D236FF4C4C73
15102 MINNETONKA INDUSTRIAL BLVD | SUITE 200 | MINNETONKA, MN 55345
office: (763) 259-3204 | toll free: (866) 410-9000

[thechickinthemiddle]

Huh, ok. Maybe Universal themselves will do the North American release, which would at least show promise of extras and/or a decent series-wide transfer. Here's hoping.

[marlboro]

Two questions:

1) Murder by Night from season 7 - did they correct the dvd problem with the dream sequences being in color?

2) Ki' I's Don't Lie - did they include the non syndicated version, by any chance?


Apologies if someone has already answered these.