Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? Series
BOX-ART
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Both sets have a render of the gang, within a back sparkle-y frame. The top of the frame is labeled, "Hanna Barbera Golden Collection." A description of the sets is on the back, with more renders of Shaggy and/or Scooby. Special features are also listed on each box.
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The set has been repackaged a few time but these are the original separate releases, rather than re-releases, or the complete/all in one set.
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MENUS:
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Seasons one & two has a small intro, with instrumental music from the show, that plays before putting you at the main menu. Some small animations play, with a flashlight being used a the selection indicator. Season three has no intro, music, or animations. Both menus feature menus with various renders of the cast. One menu from season three erroneously features a render of the group from the Zombie Island film. All menus have options for play all and episode select, with a some having an extra sub menu for special features.
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VIDEO
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The video looks good. It's been mastered from an HD scan that Warner Brothers did sometime after their acquisition of Hanna Barbera's assets. Some early VHS & DVD sets use a different un-remastered source, and these remasters looks quite a bit different. Colors are cooler, with better contrast. Both have lots of grain, pops & splotches however. Bit-rate is decent, no major compression is noticed.
The one major issue the set has is that some episodes are encoded as interlaced, but aren't properly set as needing inverse telecine, so players will interpret this as a progressive image and show all the horrible combing artifacts at 29.97!
The limited edition Blu-Ray seems to be using the same source as what was used for these DVDs, but with loads of noise reduction. From what I've researched about the Blu-Ray set, I don't necessarily know that I would recommend it over the DVDs. I just don't think it looks better, it may even be worse with all the DNR!
AUDIO
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Both sets are presented with the original English Dolby mono. It sounds fine, a bit dated, and the laugh track overpowers the dialog at times though.
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As a side note, the limited edition Blu-Ray set re-uses the same audio mix as these DVDs, but with a dual mono configuration. Meaning the bit-rate is actually lower, with 192 Kb/s being split between two channels effectively making it 96 kb/s!
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FINAL THOUGHTS
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TECH. SPECS.
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Seasons One & Two
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ASPECT RATIO: 1.33:1 (Original Full-Screen)
NUMBER OF DISCS: 4
DISC SIZE: Single & Dual-Layer
REGION CODE: 1 / NTSC
SUBTITLES: English, Spanish, French
RUN-TIME: 9 Hours 9 Minutes
AUDIO: English 1.0 (192 Kb/s)
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Season Three
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ASPECT RATIO: 1.33:1 (Original Full-Screen)
NUMBER OF DISCS: 2
DISC SIZE: Dual-Layer, Single-Layer Double-Side (DVD-10)
REGION CODE: 1 / NTSC
SUBTITLES: English Only
RUN-TIME: 5 Hours 59 Minutes
AUDIO: English 1.0 (192 Kb/s)
What's New Scooby-Doo? (Volume 1) (W.I.P)
BOX-ART
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MENUS:
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-The menus are all widescreen enhanced.
-There are no chapters
-The artwork is all based on something from each episode. (This was in an era where WB actually put effort into their menus!)
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VIDEO
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-The episodes are the originally broadcast 4x3, not the 16x9.
-They all suffer from aliasing, with the middle two having some slight haloing artifacts.
-The aliasing looks like the video was scaled to 480x480 then back up to 720x480...
-While later releases lack the haloing, the episodes have always had the aliased look on DVD. This could be solved with a new release using the newer HD masters....or y'know a Blu-Ray set!
-Compression is mostly okay, with fast motion looking kind of rough.
-Colors & contrast are fine.
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AUDIO
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All tracks are presented as Dolby 2.0 Surround at 192 KB/s. The French dub has the intro theme fully localized, while the rest are the original English. They all sound fine, with the Dolby Surround adding a decent extra kick.
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EXTRAS
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The main extras here is the featurette with Simple Plan about the intro theme. There is also some music videos & a, "How to draw featurette," all of which I believe are recycled from other Scooby DVDs. There's a teaser for Scooby-Doo & The Monster Of Mexico, Scooby-Doo Meets The Harlem Glob Trotters (DVD/VHS), and a promo for Ozzy & Dr. X. The final extra is a menu game called, " Extreme Boardin' With Scooby-Doo!" At the bottom of the extras menu is some text about DVD-ROM extras, which consist of some Scooby-Doo CD-ROM game demos & Interactual player. There's also some archived website stuff, that only half works.
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FINAL THOUGHTS
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TECH. SPECS.
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ASPECT RATIO: 1.33:1 (Original Full-Screen)
NUMBER OF DISCS: 1
DISC SIZE: Single-Layer
REGION CODE: 1 / NTSC
SUBTITLES: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese SDH
RUN-TIME: 1 Hours 25 Minutes
AUDIO: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese 2.0 Surround (192 Kb/s)
What's New Scooby-Doo? (The Complete 3rd Season)
BOX-ART
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The cover features a render of the gang based on one of the episodes featured in this set, of a monster hiding on some coral reef. The back also has ocean themed renders, with a description of the set. At the bottom are a list of some extras, along with various tech. specs. and logos.
Both the front and the back mention a bonus episode, which is the Christmas episode. The episode was actually aired as the tenth episode of season one, but was included with this set as a bonus. The Valentines day episode, which was originally in season, this is included as the bonus episode for season one set. So, basically they swapped the Christmas & Valentines day episodes for some reason.
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MENUS:
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A static menu with a loops of the theme, has renders of Shaggy & Scooby running from a monster. You're presented with options to play all, select an episode, language, or extras; on disc two.
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Various renders are used throughout the menus, mostly something having to do with an episode in the set. The menus are presented in anamorphic widescreen, despite the episodes themselves being in 4:3.
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VIDEO
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The video quality is fine, there's really only two problems. The first is that most episodes have a slight aliasing issue, probably from downscaling an HD source. The second is that the episodes are using the 4:3 aspect ratio. Now, the 4:3 aspect ratio seen here is exactly how the show was presented on TV at the time, and likely intended to be, but the show was produced in 16:9. While the show looks perfectly fine in 4:3, it was protected for that framing after all, at times it's obvious things are being cropped at the sides some times. Some examples are included in the image gallery.
AUDIO
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Episodes are presented in their original English 2.0 Dolby Surround format, with a French 2.0 dub also being available. The audio sounds fine, it was nice an bass-y at times when I was listening via headphones. I was a bit surprised by the fact that this set has matrixed surround, as I figured the show would just have been using cheap stereo. It's also worth noting that the iTunes versions of the series is only using standard stereo, so the DVD sets are the only way to get the original Dolby surround mix!
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EXTRAS
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A quiz, the Christmas episode, and some trailers are among the bonuses included in this set.
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FINAL THOUGHTS
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TECH. SPECS.
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ASPECT RATIO: 1.33:1 (Original Full-Screen)
NUMBER OF DISCS: 2
DISC SIZE: Dual-Layer
REGION CODE: 1 / NTSC
SUBTITLES: English SDH
RUN-TIME: 4 Hours 56 Minutes
AUDIO: English 2.0 Surround (192 Kb/s)
French 2.0 (192 Kb/s)
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BOX-ART
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MENUS:
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VIDEO
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AUDIO
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FINAL THOUGHTS
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TECH. SPECS.
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ASPECT RATIO: 1.78:1 (Open Matte Widescreen)
NUMBER OF DISCS: ?
DISC SIZE: ?-Layer
REGION CODE: 1 / NTSC
SUBTITLES: ?
RUN-TIME: ?
AUDIO: English ?.? (? Kb/s)