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Wheat Loaf posted:What's the deal with shows like St. Elsewhere which were very popular, acclaimed by critics and won loads of awards but never showed up on streaming and only ever had their first season and nothing else on dvd? Hour long dramas had a tough time in syndication. It was easier to package 30 minute shows that didn’t have multi-episode storylines or require viewers to be overly invested. That’s at least why you don’t see them in syndication. I’m not sure why they’ve been slow to streaming. I’m not sure how well those shows hold up now. A big part of St. Elsewhere, LA Law, NYPD Blue, and Hill Street Blues was pushing the envelope about what you could show on TV. But that envelope was blown out a long time ago, so they’d probably seem tame now.
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Jun 12, 2018 00:20
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roomforthetuna posted:Columbo didn't age well though, because it stayed on DVD and isn't available on any streaming things, you can't even buy the episodes to stream. It used to all be on Netflix wonder which company decided to pull it because no money was better than sharing the money
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Jun 12, 2018 00:24
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Columbo is always on me tv or one of those channels here. I've never watched a full episode but I like to tune in for a few minutes to watch Peter Falk do his thing. Spielberg directed the first episode and I believe Jonathan Demme the second. Neat stuff
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Jun 12, 2018 00:32
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Columbo is really excellent television. It's not a whodunnit, as mentioned before; it's a howcatchem. It's incredible watching some of those smug bastards sweat and panic as this unkempt, raincoat wearing, seemingly clueless man runs circles around their stories and alibis.
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Jun 12, 2018 01:09
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Len posted:It used to all be on Netflix wonder which company decided to pull it because no money was better than sharing the money
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Jun 12, 2018 01:14
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roomforthetuna posted:The funny thing is it's pretty cheap to get the complete DVD box set, probably cheaper than it would be to buy the episodes to stream in Amazon/Google's store if they were available that way. $1 per episode. And they'd be sharing the money with Amazon selling the DVD set through them too, and incurring all the physical overhead. I caught the box set on sale a few months ago for $43.
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Jun 12, 2018 01:22
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ReidRansom posted:Maybe they toned it down in the anime. I wouldn't know, I walked away and refuse to be associated with it in any form. FWIW they did, a lot. Most people who only watch the anime have no clue the manga is like that and get really, really mad at me for calling the author a pedophile until they look at it.
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Jun 12, 2018 01:54
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Speaking of TV series that don't show up anywhere, I recently sought out an Evening Shade set for a birthday gift. My parents ate that show up. I haven't seen it since it originally aired in the early 1990s, but remember a ton of good character moments. Burt Reynolds starred, but had the sense to play the straight man to the slightly wacky townspeople. Anyway, only season one is on DVD out of four and that season came out a few years ago. As for the ultimate DVD set, all uncut episodes of The Carol Burnett Show. Only bits and pieces are out there with about 100 of the 278 episodes being released on various compilations. Rights are apparently a nightmare.
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Jun 12, 2018 02:41
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roomforthetuna posted:The funny thing is it's pretty cheap to get the complete DVD box set, probably cheaper than it would be to buy the episodes to stream in Amazon/Google's store if they were available that way. $1 per episode. And they'd be sharing the money with Amazon selling the DVD set through them too, and incurring all the physical overhead. This is how I wound up with Knight Rider on DVD. Tracked down the complete collection on eBay for $30, far cheaper than paying $2-3 an episode for four seasons. I also enjoy how NBC keeps a tight watch on the original Knight Rider by copyright striking everyone etc, but lets the godawful 2008 remake hang out on a forgotten corner of their own website. But let's talk some different Glen Larson trash, Automan! It's well put together just 80s as all hell reverse Tron buddy cop in an era when computers were still magical mysterious things and the computer hacker geek was not considered an important part of the police/investigating squad (every modern cop show now has at least one quirky hacker computer geek). Episode 7 however has aged too well in the "science fiction predicts the future" sense. That is the episode in which the villain is the guy who designed the L.A. municipal computer systems and tries to get revenge for being accused of embezzlement and getting fired by hacking the power plant to cause half the city to blackout, hacking the dam to try and flood the city, and tries to kill the henchman who betrays him by hacking his car to accelerate and lose brakes. Plus a character mentions during the chaos "Oh no what if he hits the hospitals next!" Sadly most of those examples are now real life issues and problems, never mind when they crop up in NCIS or that recent random crime show Ted Danson was in. All I can think is all that hacking must have seemed like hot bullshit in 1983 when it first aired.
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Jun 12, 2018 03:19
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Wheat Loaf posted:What's the deal with shows like St. Elsewhere which were very popular, acclaimed by critics and won loads of awards but never showed up on streaming and only ever had their first season and nothing else on dvd? Sometimes there's bizarre licensing issues. It's entirely possible for something like a song they used in one episode having a contract like "you can use this on TV." At the time it made sense as shows just weren't released on VHS. Nobody really thought about DVD or the internet happening like it exists now. So they need to get the rights to the song to release the episode on DVD or in streaming. Everybody figured it'd just be syndication and reruns on the rerun channels forever because nobody will ever cancel their cable, right? Now, the film and television industry...they...uh...let's just say have a history of using creative accounting to dick people out of royalties. In those cases the musician owning the rights to said song will go "lol no gently caress you I'm never giving you any more rights to anything ever again." Other times it's just a greedy record label being a greedy record label and demanding onerous royalties. Yet more times the musician owning the rights has just lost his damned mind and refuses everything or is legally unable to properly consent to such a contact. Yet other times the rights to the song are murky as nobody has thought about it in over a decade, somebody can't be tracked down, it's tied up in a lawsuit that's eight years going, or the rights are collectively owned by a band that had a messy breakup and they all despise each other and at least one of them will say "no" just to spite the rest. Sometimes the rights to an entire show, or even just specific episodes and seasons, can get murky. Intellectual property changes hands like a joint in a circle of hippies. Some of the things above happen; maybe somebody owns the rights to one of the seasons and wants to charge a stupid amount of royalties. Maybe the residuals are prohibitively expensive because that one episode had somebody famous to boost ratings. Maybe one of the actors had a "TV only, no adaptation to any other media" clause in their contract that is absolutely inviolable. This all can happen to movies and video games too! tl;dr who the gently caress knows? It could be any number of legal reasons. It's also entirely possible that people just plain forgot about it.
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Jun 12, 2018 03:26
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Sometimes the rights to an entire show, or even just specific episodes and seasons, can get murky. Intellectual property changes hands like a joint in a circle of hippies. Some of the things above happen; maybe somebody owns the rights to one of the seasons and wants to charge a stupid amount of royalties. Maybe the residuals are prohibitively expensive because that one episode had somebody famous to boost ratings. Maybe one of the actors had a "TV only, no adaptation to any other media" clause in their contract that is absolutely inviolable. The worst is where the copyright is held by a company that goes out of business and no one was explicitly given control of it so it's impossible to say who legally owns it, but the law says that someone must own it so no one can do anything with it until it's sorted out (which it never will be). This wouldn't be a problem if copyrights ran out in a reasonable amount of time (or ever), but as they just keep getting extended indefinitely those "orphan works" will never be public domain and will remain basically inaccessible forever.
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Jun 12, 2018 03:57
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Tiggum posted:The worst is where the copyright is held by a company that goes out of business and no one was explicitly given control of it so it's impossible to say who legally owns it, but the law says that someone must own it so no one can do anything with it until it's sorted out (which it never will be). From the looks of things Disney isn't pushing for another extension so they can keep exclusive control of Mickey so that might not be a problem much longer. Steamboat Willie's copyright (and thus the copyright on Mickey) apparently runs out this coming January. Disney was always one of the major pushers for retroactive changes to copyright for literally this reason; they wanted control of Mickey to not go to the public domain. However because of stuff like orphaned works, legal shenanigans based on derivative works of old stuff, and whatever it looks like there might not be an extension this time around. As for orphaned works, well, I'm no lawyer but I figure all it would take is somebody to release orphaned works somehow and then successfully make a case that because the copyright holder no longer exists and nobody was given ownership it's public domain now. Of course then you'd have to deal with the headaches of all the connected rights and any other insane entertainment industry contracts involved and... ...now that I think about it that's probably why nobody does that. They do not want to sort that out when the paperwork might have vanished with the copyright owner.
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Jun 12, 2018 04:08
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Tiggum posted:The worst is where the copyright is held by a company that goes out of business and no one was explicitly given control of it so it's impossible to say who legally owns it, but the law says that someone must own it so no one can do anything with it until it's sorted out (which it never will be). That what happened to the videogame No One Lives Forever, which can't be re-release digitally because the license is just in limbo.
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Jun 12, 2018 04:09
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Rirse posted:That what happened to the videogame No One Lives Forever, which can't be re-release digitally because the license is just in limbo. I heard about that but I can't help but wonder what happens when people start uploading it to the internet on free sites like is done with abandonware. I get that abandonware is a legal grey area but if people are distributing an abandoned game where it just isn't clear who owns the rights who gets to sue? Though I think in that case isn't there weirdness where multiple entities do have some legit claims? Like I think one of the designers is part owner and a publisher gets some say or something. The legal situation of that game is weird. Wasn't there also a partially finished sequel to the two games that never got finished or something? I never did play it and heard both games were pretty drat good but apparently finding copies now is a pain.
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Jun 12, 2018 04:17
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They did two games and a spin off that probably would have been DLC if released in modern times (Contract Jack.)
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Jun 12, 2018 04:23
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Remember that time Google digitized literally twenty-five million books but whoops, turns out copyright laws exist? relevant quote: quote:It’s been estimated that about half the books published between 1923 and 1963 are actually in the public domain—it’s just that no one knows which half.
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Jun 12, 2018 04:38
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Len posted:It used to all be on Netflix wonder which company decided to pull it because no money was better than sharing the money I believe ABC owned the rights. Edit: They had the rights for 14 years. NBC Universal has them now. El Gallinero Gros has a new favorite as of 04:47 on Jun 12, 2018 |
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Jun 12, 2018 04:45
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ToxicSlurpee posted:I heard about that but I can't help but wonder what happens when people start uploading it to the internet on free sites like is done with abandonware. I get that abandonware is a legal grey area but if people are distributing an abandoned game where it just isn't clear who owns the rights who gets to sue? The NOLF series is freely available for download: http://nolfrevival.tk/ Given that this site has been up for a couple years without a takedown notice, I'd call it halal.
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Jun 12, 2018 04:54
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Volcott posted:They did not tone it down in the anime. Which was bad. The anime at least bothered to have her hair cover her bare chest.
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Jun 12, 2018 04:58
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Copyright law is just the worst sometimes. Victor Miller cowrote the original Friday the 13th and virtually nothing else except soap opera episodes. However, literally everthing related to the F13 franchise credits him with the time honored "based on characters created by", despite him having zero to do with the invention of Jason. Well in the past 2 years he's been fighting in court using an obscure rule-something about not being technically employed at the time of writing means he gets more control over the ip. Well it was just announced that things have moved forward enough that all further works with it come to an indefinite dead halt. Including the wildly popular online video game that has been chugging out dlc since launch. It can still be played fine, but the programmers can't add in anything they've been working on for months any longer. The whole thing reeks of petty greed.
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Jun 12, 2018 05:33
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Sometimes there's bizarre licensing issues. It's entirely possible for something like a song they used in one episode having a contract like "you can use this on TV." At the time it made sense as shows just weren't released on VHS. Nobody really thought about DVD or the internet happening like it exists now. So they need to get the rights to the song to release the episode on DVD or in streaming. Everybody figured it'd just be syndication and reruns on the rerun channels forever because nobody will ever cancel their cable, right? That's basically the reason why it took Freaks and Geeks a decade if not more to get a DVD release - the music rights were pretty insane. IIRC the only reason it even happened was because the creators were willing to put in the work to get the legal side sorted. Not a lot of shows have that going for them.
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Jun 12, 2018 07:37
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ToxicSlurpee posted:I heard about that but I can't help but wonder what happens when people start uploading it to the internet on free sites like is done with abandonware. I get that abandonware is a legal grey area but if people are distributing an abandoned game where it just isn't clear who owns the rights who gets to sue? And then there's the other type of "abandonware" which is games where the copyright is held by a known entity, that entity just isn't selling the game any more or making it available in any way. Those cases are even more clear cut and more likely to get the hosting sites in trouble. The ethics of it depend, basically, on how you feel about copyright law in general and orphan works specifically, but legally there's really no case to be made. Copyright still applies even if the holder is unknown or isn't doing anything with the property. After all, there may be someone out there with an ironclad claim on the rights who just doesn't want the work to be available to the public and doesn't want to come forward as the owner, and that's their decision to make.
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Jun 12, 2018 07:45
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Choco1980 posted:The whole thing reeks of petty greed. That's literally the entire entertainment industry.
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Jun 12, 2018 07:45
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Daria and probably other MTV shows have big issues with music rights on DVD. In Daria's case and many others they just replace the music with generic tracks or soundalikes, which can lose a lot of the feel.
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Jun 12, 2018 07:53
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Daria and probably other MTV shows have big issues with music rights on DVD. In Daria's case and many others they just replace the music with generic tracks or soundalikes, which can lose a lot of the feel. Another interesting case is Donnie Darko. They shot certain scenes with songs in mind, but then were unable to obtain the licenses. For the director's cut they were able to get the licenses and so it uses different music in those scenes.
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Jun 12, 2018 09:52
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Do you guys remember that show "Ed" (2000-2004)? I sure wouldn't mind seeing that again, but I assume copyright got in the way there too.
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Jun 12, 2018 09:52
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P. hosed up how Eddie Mcdowd ended with him stuck as a dog.
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Jun 12, 2018 10:05
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I've heard about a late 80s show called Wiseguy which was and is very highly-regarded as an early adopter of continuing story arcs. It was all given a home release, but there was a set of episodes relating to the music business which used licensed music, and on the dvd they're apparently just left out entirely. I imagine that must be more frustrating than replacing the songs with generic tracks.
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Jun 12, 2018 10:36
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1000 Brown M and Ms posted:That's basically the reason why it took Freaks and Geeks a decade if not more to get a DVD release - the music rights were pretty insane. IIRC the only reason it even happened was because the creators were willing to put in the work to get the legal side sorted. Not a lot of shows have that going for them. WKRP had the same problem. They released the first season with most of the original music replaced. It tanked. Then Shout! Factory came along and was able to secure about 80% of the original songs.
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Jun 12, 2018 12:40
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Jedit posted:Another interesting case is Donnie Darko. They shot certain scenes with songs in mind, but then were unable to obtain the licenses. For the director's cut they were able to get the licenses and so it uses different music in those scenes. Carlos was supposed to have a lot of music from The Feelies, but the band didn't want their music associated with terrorism, so the director had to change the score way into post production, keeping one song for a non-violent scene.
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Jun 12, 2018 13:25
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Apparently the Odd Couple home video releases are a total hackjob as well due to music licensing.
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Jun 12, 2018 13:34
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One of the reasons Spaced took forever to be released in the west is that the producers wanted to preserve all of the licensed music.
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Jun 12, 2018 13:41
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You'd think they would have figured it out by now and licensed it for not only airing, but also home copies/streaming when they originally get the license. I'm assuming it's a money issue.
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Jun 12, 2018 14:04
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Solice Kirsk posted:You'd think they would have figured it out by now and licensed it for not only airing, but also home copies/streaming when they originally get the license. I'm assuming it's a money issue. This costs a bunch, bunch more, and when youre working on a show with no idea if itll succeed or fail spending a bunch more money now to make a better viewing experience later after the show ends, possibly in formats that dont exist now, is crazy. Luckily streaming video is most peoples DVDs now so no issue
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Jun 12, 2018 14:48
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Mokinokaro posted:One of the reasons Spaced took forever to be released in the west is that the producers wanted to preserve all of the licensed music. "in the west"? is the UK part of the soviet bloc now?
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Jun 12, 2018 14:59
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ookiimarukochan posted:"in the west"? is the UK part of the soviet bloc now? I think if you're separated by the second largest ocean on the planet it's safe to say that area is a cardinal direction away from you.
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Jun 12, 2018 15:01
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Barudak posted:Luckily streaming video is most peoples DVDs now so no issue Just wait until Comcast quietly blocks the major streaming services behind a paywall
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Jun 12, 2018 15:11
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Grand Gigas posted:I love that there isn’t an episode where Columbo fails. The man is perfect and doesn’t carry a gun and I love him. There was a ep where his captain discovers it's been 3 years since Columbo had last been certified on the gun range, and Columbo spends the ep trying to get out of it. At one point he complains that he'd have to dig his gun out of closet (since he's not even carrying) to trying to get another officer to take the test for him.
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Jun 12, 2018 15:37
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Daria and probably other MTV shows have big issues with music rights on DVD. In Daria's case and many others they just replace the music with generic tracks or soundalikes, which can lose a lot of the feel. The reason MTV shows are like that is because MTV brokered a deal with the music labels when they were starting out that if they played a music video at all they were allowed to use that music/video in anything they wanted. Which made sense at the time seeing as it let them create music video shows without having to make new deals constantly. Its just that nobody expected to repackage the scripted stuff they were doing for home release since that was so rare.
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Jun 12, 2018 15:39
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muscles like this! posted:The reason MTV shows are like that is because MTV brokered a deal with the music labels when they were starting out that if they played a music video at all they were allowed to use that music/video in anything they wanted. Which made sense at the time seeing as it let them create music video shows without having to make new deals constantly. Its just that nobody expected to repackage the scripted stuff they were doing for home release since that was so rare. Music licensing was pretty much a problem with every TV show until the 2000's when DVD started taking off, and suddenly if you wanted to own an entire TV series, it didn't require a wall of VHS tapes.
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Jun 12, 2018 15:44
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