The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries Season 1 getting DVD rerelease?

MacGyver · August 28, 2013, 05:30:18 PM

I ran across this interesting listing on Amazon.com today. It lists Season 1 of The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries and has it set to rerelease to DVD on October 15, 2013. Since it's a separate listing from the release that Universal did back in 2005, I wonder if this is just a rerelease of the exact same packaging and all- or if it will include a new redesign for the box art and everything? Now that all three seasons have finally been released, Universal could go back and release a Complete Series DVD box set- that seems to be a trend with companies nowadays. Maybe we could even see a complete series DVD set that would give us the unedited episodes for Season 3 (and hopefully in better condition too). I don't know, of course- but I'd love to see such a release, especially if they might include some extras- like say, interviews with the stars of the show (the primary ones, Shaun Cassidy, Parker Stevenson and Pamela Sue Martin all seem like they would be up for doing such interviews- I know Martin and Stevenson have made the convention rounds.)

tomswift2002 · August 28, 2013, 08:00:11 PM

Right now the home distribution rights are with Shout, not Universal, so unless Universal and Shout work together (like they did with Leave It To Beaver), there would be no Complete Series release, because Universal doesn't have the rights to Season 3.

As for the seperate listing, I'm wondering if Universal is going back and reissuing they're TV shows that they had originally released on the DVD-18's, onto standard DVD-9's. I own Dragnet 1967-Season 1 from Universal and I've had to buy 4 copies already because the discs keep getting DVD rot, and right in the same locations. DVD-18's, while good on paper, never really worked out for Universal. I know that ADV Films years ago reissued all their anime programs on DVD-9's because so many customers were returning the DVD-18's and complaining about the discs having DVD rot and not working properly. (DVD-18's are those double sided DVD's, kind of like the old HD-DVD/DVD combo discs, where one side was HD-DVD and the other was a regular DVD, but for DVD-18's both sides were regular DVD's; DVD-9/5's are your regular single sided DVD. The 18, 9 and 5 refer to, roughly, how much storage in GB each disc had.)

MacGyver · August 28, 2013, 08:12:55 PM

QuoteAs for the seperate listing, I'm wondering if Universal is going back and reissuing they're TV shows that they had originally released on the DVD-18's, onto standard DVD-9's.

Ah- you may be on to something there. Thanks for the explanation of the difference between the two. That would be nice if this is the case as I certainly would not want to have my DVDs going bad on me with the double-sided release done for Season 1.

MacGyver · September 03, 2013, 02:43:53 PM

That listing now has cover art available- it seems to be a modified verison of the original box art, compacted into a single case.

MacGyver · September 03, 2013, 02:46:39 PM

At a cost of 20 bucks, I would probably pick this one up eventually if needed to replace the original Season 1 DVD release I have. (assuming these are the standard DVD-9 releases, as mentioned before.)

MacGyver · September 04, 2013, 04:59:11 PM

I just found this listing on DVDEmpire.com and it lists this item as a "repackage"- so it looks like more confirmation that it is both a slimmer case for the DVDs and hopefully also single-sided DVDs.

MacGyver · September 04, 2013, 05:04:13 PM

Ah- here's the missing clue we needed. Best Buy's listing for this item says that it's a 4 DVD set! So I think tomswift2002's theory about the DVD set having the single-sided (DVD-9) discs is probably accurate. I'd love it if bonus material was also included, but somehow I kinda doubt that would be happening.

MacGyver · September 07, 2013, 02:46:08 AM

I'm confused. I'm looking at Amazon.com's listing for both the original 2005 DVD release of Season 1 and the scheduled 2013 rerelease. The 2005 DVD release has a runtime of 1364 minutes (22 hours and about 44 minutes- which doesn't make any sense, since Season 1 only has 14 hour long episodes- and the 2005 DVD release didn't include any extras on the DVD) whereas the 2013 rerelease only has 864 minutes listed as the runtime. (Of course, the search results page lists the run time as 11 hours and 24 minutes, but 864 minutes would actually be 14 hours and 24 minutes. This would make more sense, since there are 14 hour long episodes in Season 1.)
However, I've found that episodes of an hour long show generally don't actually run 1 full hour, since commercials take up some of that time- usually it's closer to 45 to 50 minutes long for each episode. Of course, even if every episode of Season 1 is exactly 1 hour long [which I kinda doubt]- then there is still an extra 24 minutes on there. Surely commercials and promos for other DVD sets wouldn't take up all that time, would it? Would a difference in compression (the double sided DVD-18 versus single-sided DVD-9) make that much difference in run time?
Maybe Universal is actually including some new extras on this DVD set? I know- it may be nothing, so I don't want to get anyone's hopes up. But hey- I can still be hopeful it might turn out to be something- I'd love to see some new interviews with the stars of the show included. You never know- there could be something to it.

We'll see...and like The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, keep looking for more clues in the meantime.

tomswift2002 · September 07, 2013, 05:21:14 PM

It's probably a typo on Amazon's part.

Compression has nothing to do with time, as the compression deals with with video and audio quality. I don't see why Universal would change the compression, unless that were going down to a DVD-5, in which case they would need to squeeze more information onto a single disc, thus dropping the quality.

MacGyver · September 08, 2013, 12:16:35 AM

Okay- thanks for the information.

MacGyver · October 15, 2013, 04:23:05 PM

Well, this is supposed to release today, so I'm thinking of going to check a few stores and see if they got this in- I'll post if I find anything out. I have a suspicion though that this may not be an item I will see in stores, but we'll see. If nothing else, the option is there to order it from Amazon.com- I already have Season 1 of The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries on DVD, so I'm not really wanting to get it again, but I might consider it if it does have the single-sided DVDs on this release... (and I definitely would if it had extras, but that seems pretty doubtful). Anyway, I'm still checking into this....

MacGyver · October 16, 2013, 01:39:05 PM

Well, I did some sleuthing and thankfully it didn't take much investigation to find this! I found a copy for sale at Barnes & Noble. And I can now divulge some more details about it. Sorry if anyone had their hopes up- it's not too much to get all excited about. According to the back of the box, the DVD specifications say that it's "Color and Double-sided". (Just what the original release says.) So too bad about that- no single-sided discs it seems. The only real difference is just the packaging- it now has both discs packed into one plastic DVD case. I wanted to be able to get a look at the inside of it just to confirm things, but there was no way I could do that unless I bought it- and I didn't want to spend about 25 bucks on it, especially since I wouldn't be able to return it then.
Anyway, I did take a few pictures of it so others curious about it can have a better idea of what it looks like and I'll try to post those soon.

MacGyver · October 16, 2013, 09:26:22 PM

Okay- here are some pictures of the packaging.

(Here's the front cover, which is the same artwork as the previous release, except it might be a bit less because the plastic box is a bit smaller than the cardboard box on the original release.)

(Here's the side so you can get an idea of how thick it is. If you look to the right, you can see Season 2 and Season 3 on DVD that the store also has in stock.

)

(And here's the back of the DVD set.)

(I took two pictures because I had a glare on the first one.)

Anyway, there it is. I tried to get a close-up of the back of the box but it didn't quite work too well. But the "Color/Double-sided" specification marking is on the bottom right hand corner of the back of the DVD set.
I hope that helps some for anyone else who was curious about this or perhaps still doesn't have Season 1 of The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries on DVD and wanted to compare the two releases.

MacGyver · October 16, 2013, 09:29:43 PM

For comparison purposes, here are a few pictures of the original release of Season 1 on DVD.

(Notice the larger spine because of the cardboard box which holds two separate plastic DVD boxes.)

(The DVD box for all the episodes with The Hardy Boys.)

(The DVD box for all the episodes with Nancy Drew.)

MacGyver · October 28, 2013, 02:55:51 PM

I was browsing in Target the other day and I happened to come across an interesting find. They are apparently selling Season 2 of The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries for 20 bucks right now. Nice deal!

But I noticed that the box art is different from the original release. I got the Season 2 DVD set back when it released in 2007, so I didn't need another copy of course- but someone who hasn't picked this up yet might enjoy this. It's not really a huge change and I don't think the contents are any different- but I took a few pictures of the DVD set in any case. (Target is known for sometimes carrying exclusive DVD releases, so it's possible this may be a Target-only thing- I'm not sure.)