SEASON 9 DVD BOX SET PREVIEW
The season nine DVD box set, to be released August 3, 2010 in North America, has a completely different style of packaging compared to previous seasons. There are no "sleeves," each of which contains two discs. Instead, there is a fancy kind of plastic mechanism (see above) which holds all 6 discs within a typical DVD case. This DVD case is enclosed in a cardboard slipcase.
The menus are typical of those in previous box sets. The one below is the "top level" for all 6 discs (the picture is the same, the disc number is different).
Click HERE to see all of the menus for the individual discs and shows.
NOTE: There are no episode promos for either Nine Dragons or The Bells Toll at Noon, therefore, there are no menu cards for these two shows. When you click on the episodes in the disc menu, you go directly into the shows.
The subtitles for the shows are in white and they have done a much better job with them than previous box sets. The subtitles are more like closed captions with detail like [CAR HORN HONKS], [DOG BARKING], [SIGHS], etc. Also, when people have their backs to the camera or are far away, they are identified in the subtitles like "CHIN HO: Yes, Steve."
The teasers before the main titles are included. These are about 30 seconds long. Where there is an episodic promo, this is about 1 minute long. For all the teasers I have seen so far, all the material comes from the episodic promo.
Of course, with season nine, I was particularly interested in the first episode, the two-hour Nine Dragons, since this is my favorite Five-O episode.
It looks like CBS/Paramount used the same "master" for making Nine Dragons as the Columbia House (CH) videos. (See this page for further information.)
Now I wasn't too crazy about the CH video, because the quality left a bit to be desired, but it looks like that they have cleaned up the print considerably.
On the CH video, there were two places where there were obvious scratches on the print.
One is where McGarrett says goodbye to Suzie, the Chinese girl.
On the CH print, there is a scratch down the back of McGarrett's suit -- click here.
On the DVDs, this is not obvious to me at all (I am viewing this on a 40" LCD TV, this is a screenshot via my computer) -- click here.
However, using this DVD screenshot, I cranked up the brightness as much as I could with this photo program I use and you can see the scratch -- click here.
The other bad scratch on the CH print was near the end, when Wo is watching monitors -- this scratch lasts for several seconds.
Here is a screen shot from the CH print, where the scratch is very obvious: click here.
Here is the same thing from the DVD, where the scratch is much less obvious: click here.
Cranking up the brightness for this Wo shot as I did with the CH screenshot of McGarrett above did not produce an appreciable difference as far as I am concerned.
There are also other inconsistencies in the print quality (the end credits suggest the film was processed in Hong Kong -- at least for the Hong Kong sequences). For example, when McGarrett is saying goodbye to Suzie on the DVDs, there is a shot from the back of him where he says "I can make it across the street alone." On the DVD, there is a lot of dirt in this very brief shot. But in the shots immediately before and after, there is no dirt at all, suggesting problems with the film while shooting or developing.
Updated July 23, 2010