World of Weird Al Yankovic

It actually might not be Shout Factory's fault. Remember, the Weird Al Show was stored on master tapes (probably beta) and those can wear out. It could've just been a defect on the tape itself and wasn't something they could fix.

Weirdojace,

I hadn't thought of that possiblity. If this is indeed true, than Shout Factory should have included a disclaimer somewhere on the package letting us know of the sound problem. I made 3 trips down to Best Buy to exchange my DVD set. That took a lot of my personal time and it was frustrating. I'm going to send Shout Factory a complaint letter. Sorry guys, but this is how I feel. I'm bummed out.

Linda

I haven't seen this mentioned here, but I watched "The Competition" today (along with the rest of the last DVD) and besides the problems that everyone else has mentioned, I noticed that during the second act of the episode there was no score. All the background music was gone!

It's interesting that most of the problems with the set have to do with that one episode. I wonder why. I really don't think it was a problem with the master tapes because if it were, I'm sure Shout! would have printed a disclaimer, as Radiogal said. Has anyone written to Shout! yet to inquire about the problems?

I wonder how many, if any, of these problems will be in the Aussie release? I (or one of the others) shall let ye all know sometime after September 4.

Well, hopefully they'd have enough time to notice and correct the problems before they are released again.

Hey all.

So, like many of you, I was having all sorts of technical difficulties when playing the DVDs on an older player. Now that I've switched over to my much-more-recent laptop, they've been just fine, apart from the problems that apparently EVERYONE has (the cutting out of sound during "The Competition" and lack of matching up audio/video.)

The former may be an overall master tape problem, as someone mentioned, though I do wish they'd say that on the commentary or in a little asterisked note somewhere, so everyone doesn't think it's a problem with only their own disk. The latter, though, is pure error.

I called Shout Factory last week when I was having the original difficulties, and someone very polite called back within an hour to let me know that I must have a defective copy and should get a refund or exchange wherever I bought it.

Has anyone contacted Shout Factory about the overall problems with the disks? Is there such a thing as a mass recall and rerelease? It sounds mighty expensive...

On another note, I did love the commentaries, but wished they'd started earlier in the day so that we could get full commentary on the later episodes instead of comments about how exhausted they were. Particularly spectacular were their renditions of alternate/previous versions of sketches, like the Fred Huggins suicide version and the other voiceover for the Shoe guy.

I would also like to point out two things and then I'll get out of here.

One, the animator commentary guys were utterly clever and cruel to capitalize on the fact that the audio track runs out at the end of the visuals... whether they're in the middle of a sentence or not. I wish Al and the guys had realized it, too, because I was sad every time they got cut off, but I still laughed every time the track ended on a Fatman commentary with "And, the life-changing thing that Al told me was--"

Two, in the middle of the Holiday home movies is a one-frame bit of the shoot's equivalent of a clapboard: if you freezeframe, you can see someone in a very 80s shirt holding a hand written piece of paper which lists the episode name, scene number, director and cameraman, etc. Hilarious that that's still in there!

In any case, love it, even if the show was, overall, diluted almost unrecognizably into what the networks executives thought it had to be. Will keep reading here to hear other's reactions.

Rock on,
Whitney

I showed my dad and my little brother the episode with the nipple scenario in the commentary, and, when they first mentioned it, my dad burst out laughing. Glad he enjoyed it too, after he went through so much trouble to get that DVD for me.

(By the way-- I left the DVD in my little brother's room, and, as I passed by on my way to the kitchen after bed to get a drink of water, heard the DVD playing in his room-- he was watching it as he fell asleep. He always leaves the TV on at bedtime. I just thought that was pretty cool/cute. ^^)

I'm glad to hear that the discs are working fine for you now, Whitney.

Thanks, CatraDhtem.

Yeah, I got my DVD set yesterday. I watched the whole thing bot with and without commentaries. The only problem was the sound drops in the episode The Competition on disk 3, other than that, everything was fine!