knight rider online

Hi people, how are you all? Been great myself to be honest. The Knight Rider season 3 DVD box just came out in Holland and I thought lets update you all on how it looks...

Well first of all. The box does not contain any extra's not even a season 4 episode, which to be honest is fine by me! However some “making of's” would have been a nice addition but... sadly...

The image looks nice and clear the sound is good, nothing extraordinary but... well good enough. However... there are some drawbacks. Even the most belated released version (our Benelux version) has missing sound effects! especially disc 1 & 3 are affected, also I feel that this box release was a bit rushed in order to get finished, not only because of the missing effects but also due to picture errors. Once again disc 3 is especially "bad", in the episode "Dead of Knight" there is a very small "black box" to be seen next to Michael during a scene where he is driving KITT. Its almost as if something went wrong during encoding of the show (encoding or digitising). And this hunch gets worse as in the episode "Lost Knight" in the scene right before the 2 bad guys get rolled over in their truck the image is heavily “pixelized” for a moment... this is also due to bad digitisation... a bit sluggish by Universal... don't get me wrong... I love them for finally releasing the show on DVD but you'd think they could have given the box a bit more of tender, love and care before releasing it.

On a good note... The box itself looks very nice, its full of colour and pictures (though sadly not all from season 3, some are season 2 and 1, this again adds to the sluggishness). The season is released on 6 single sided DVD's and come with only the English soundtrack (compared to season 2 that came with the French, English and German soundtrack) also in the subtitles there have been cuts... they are only in Dutch. The sound is in 2.0 Dolby Digital Mono and the image is 4:3 full frame.

All in all a cool and nice box, though with some very sluggish errors, sadly… 7 out of 10, thanks to those errors. Could have been a lot more… Could have been… but isn’t.

Hi people small update for you all: I am to be honest very much let down by the quality of the work that Universal has put into this box... I love this season but the enjoyment is completely destroyed by the very annoying bugs in this set... disc 4 (as I have found out today...) has again a lot of missing sounds (in fact all discs have) but here is the thing that is really annoying: It has encoding errors AND the image actually freezes for half a second more than once!! This is really sluggish Universal. Now as I understand Universal Holland has had some trouble the last year and was forced into a reorganisation, but you would think this should not reflect on the DVD's...

Anyway here are some screenshots I took for you people so you can judge yourself, I can not capture all the errors, as you would not believe how many there are... let me note the images are NOT altered but show the content of the DVD as is! By the way one thing I did note... though correct me if I am wrong... the Dutch release has a new main menu layout... looks cool !

By the way my rating has now dropped to 5 out of 10... Thanks Universal ...

Let me know what you all think... Thanks !


The Dutch main menu screen.


Look behind Michael's head right on the headrest of the seat and the rear bench... you can clearly see a white box (looks black on a PS2 DVD player). Clearly an encoding issue.


This image says it all really... heavily pixelized image also due to an error in digitising... screen is like this for a split second... spoils the viewing pleasure as you can imagine.

I think the image quality looks very nice, yes there are some errors in digitising, but that's not very annoying!
The missing soundeffects, that's annoying.

Not annoying?? It is for me. When in every episode almost the image either freezes or has pixels... I mean... the first two boxes were damn near perfection in terms of quality and now this? A let down for me anyway .

The problems spotted in the two pictures are also in the third disc of Season 3, which was released in the UK last May.

However, these problems do not exist in the Region 1 release in the USA and Canada.

In addition, the Dutch menu screen is exactly the same with the UK release. The only difference is the fact that there is not 'Setup' section. Instead of that, there is the 'UK Market Only' section, which includes a promotional video from Universal Playback.

Finally, the UK version has: 1) 2.0 Dolby Digital Mono, 2) 4:3 Full Frame, 3) Only English Soundtrack, and 4) NO subtitles at all.

In other words, the only difference with the version in the Netherlands is the Dutch subtitles.

The Season 2 DVD in the UK has also several audio languages (English, French, German) and subtitles in many languages. Both DVD releases of 'Seasons 1 and 2' are much better compared to the 'Season 3'.

Certainly, the missing sound effects and video faults are very annoying.
I am very sad with the DVD release in the UK.
(you can find my review of it in the following link:
http://www.knightrideronline.com/phpbb/ ... ht=#109732)

I believe that the Region 1 release in the USA and Canada is better. As I mentioned above, the video problems spotted in the episodes 'Dead of Knight' and 'Lost Knight' do not exist . The menu screens are different and better, because they also include the synopsis (and date of release) of all the episodes, and on-menu scenes/chapter navigation (at least it has subtitles in English and Spanish - they have also added French subtitles in the new/corrected version).

I really hope to get in my hands the replacement discs of Region 1.
After all, they have now added the missing sound effects.

Regards,
Sofoklis

Could anyone here give me an adres (or email) to Universal to ask if they are fixing these DVD's too... as I think this is just sluggish and unacceptable. Thanks people.

Solid Snake wrote:Could anyone here give me an adres (or email) to Universal to ask if they are fixing these DVD's too... as I think this is just sluggish and unacceptable. Thanks people.

Anyone at all ??? Please ???

Come on you guys?? Please help me out here?

Solid Snake,

The only email address I can give you is the one for the American Season 3 DVD set...it might work for the overseas set, too:

USHE.ConsumerRelations@worldmarkinc.com

Joe

Thanks a million Joe! Will give it a shot later!