TV NEWS ON AUGUST 11

http://blog.sitcomsonline.com/2012/08/digital-digest-new-mod-offerings-from.html Welcome to Digital Digest, your weekly source of news and reviews of all things digital in the world of sitcoms! This week, we have a review Perry Mason - Season 7, Volume 1. Let's get going! DIGITAL NEWS CBS has recently picked up the once thought to be abandoned series The Streets of San Francisco and releasing it at an amazing pace lately. In fact, we saw season 3 in July and we'll see season 4 later this month... after waiting several years following the release of season 2. Now, it gets even better! The series will be completed on DVD on October 30 with the release of both volumes of the fifth season, in The Streets of San Francisco - Season 5 (Volume 1 and Volume 2). It is always great to see a series completed, but especially in record time like this. A listing appeared on amazon.com recently which demonstrates that CBS is moving into releasing some of their much older series as MOD products, and it appears that Cannon - Season Three will be the first of these. CBS has been releasing some more recent (as in '90s and later) stuff on MOD, but this marks the first time that a much older series like this has been released as a MOD product. It is worth noting that the first two seasons, when released as a standard release, happened to be among the few CBS releases to make it to stores without having video and audio quality restored to HD quality... so we really expect the same again. A few weeks ago, word began spreading of the second season of Fantasy Island coming from Sony as a MOD product in September. We were a bit skeptical of this announcement and didn't discuss it here (we assumed it was an error) since Shout! released Fantasy Island - The Complete Second Season (Shout!) in May, but as it turns out, it looks as if Sony will in fact be releasing their own Fantasy Island - The Complete Second Season (Sony). It is a bit strange that Sony is releasing something which they've already licensed out to Shout! (and it isn't as if Shout! has lost the rights to the series, because they are in fact releasing Fantasy Island - The Complete Third Season on October 23), but it appears that is in fact what will happen. The Sony set has different artwork from the Shout! set and contains five discs rather than six discs as the Shout! set had, so it looks like it will be a much different release. That isn't all that is different. The MOD set will come at a MSRP that is about a dollar less than the pressed set that Shout! Factory already put out... but keep in mind, a traditionally released pressed set almost always sells for a price much lower than the MSRP while the MOD prices are set by the distributor and rarely fluctuate... so the Shout! set is a better quality pressed set at a lower price. But if you really want the Sony MOD product... it is out there. Warner Archive is going deep into their archives once again this Tuesday, as they release the first season of the original Ruby-Spears Heathcliff series. It isn't available to order yet, but the release will bring all 13 episodes of The Heathcliff and Dingbat Show to DVD. HBO announced this week that Entourage will be coming to DVD in complete series form on November 6 with Entourage - The Complete Series (DVD). But that isn't all... they will also be offering the entire series on Blu-ray with Entourage - The Complete Series (Blu-ray). The DVD will come at a $249.99 MSRP, while the Blu-ray will come in at $299.99. Finally, there are some new offerings on Hulu in recent weeks, but two of them are only available for Hulu+ subscribers and one is only one episode of a series that everybody wants to see more of. For the paid Hulu+ subscribers, you can now watch every episode of the two ALF cartoons, with ALF: The Animated Series and ALF Tales. There is new free content from Fox, as they've added the series Boston Public to the service... but unfortunately, that comes with a huge caveat. They've put up only one episode of the series (Chapter 4), which guest starred Joanna García-Swisher. Hopefully, though, if fans show interest in this one episode, we may see more... I know that I would certainly love to see the whole series available! UPCOMING WEEK PREVIEW Tuesday (August 14) brings Community - The Complete Third Season to DVD. We received our review copy of this today, and will have a review posted very soon. Fans of the classic Robert Urich series Vega$ get to see the series come to an end with Vega$ - The Third Season, Volume 2 (review). Additionally, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comes to an end with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - The Complete Final Season (Season 10). We'll have a review of this set next weekend. Finally, it isn't exactly a Tuesday release, but Time-Life will begin shipping their megaset, The Carol Burnett Show - The Ultimate Collection on Monday.