1. Land of the Giants, The Time Tunnel, and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea will be issued on DVD format in 2006. They will all be remastered, uncut, and extra's added. Sadly, this was not done for Lost in Space

The above info is a quote taken from the Website of our own JUPITER-2. He alone deserves the credit. You can read the full text of various updates on his site. There is a link to it in his post about the 1/2 scale B-9 on the Assembly Line forum here at Hobbytalk.

I want to thank him for doing the digging and for keeping in touch with Kevin Burns.

Obviously, that news about LOTG and VTTBOTS is VERY good. I hope it also puts to rest the theory that Fox didn't remaster LIS because it was too "small" of a TV show. LIS is the flagship of Irwin Allen on TV. More than any of his other productions, it has survived popular culture into the 21st Century. Regrettably, LIS sufferred the fate of so many DVD releases...as the "first" of it's genre, it was "experimental". Fox tried to see if they could sneak cheap, bad transfers under the radar of fans. Well, the fans figured it out.

So it sounds like Fox got the message. It's too late for the Lisfans but it will be to the benefit of others. I'm a fan of all the Irwin Allen shows so I can't be too bitter. I guess at least one show had to fall on it's sword too prove that you can't fool the buying public.

Great news !!! Thanks ! :)

Actually, it was TVshowsonDVD.com who broke it, so they, and their source alone deserve the credit.

http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/newsitem.cfm?NewsID=3823

and there has been no announcement of any kind about them being remastered. I also remind you that you can legally call something "digitally remastered" by plugging your VCR into your computer and digitizing it. While there will certainly be a degree of noise reduction and such, just like what was done with LIS, Fox has not announced, nor have there been a single indication that they're going to go back and retransfer from 35mm film which would be required for the digital <i>restoration</i> you've been asking for.

You're misinterpreting what I've been saying, LIS isn't a "small" show, in fact it was high on the list of Fox titles to come out when they first started doing TV on DVD. Unfortunately the sales of said DVDs just aren't all that hot, so they're not going to throw money at a show it won't make back

Like with LIS, you're probably going to see whatever the best tape masters they have available. You can choose to believe me or not, but everything I've said about LIS has been true. I'll be very happy for the fans if TT and VTTBOTS don't share the same fate, but don't be screaming and say I didn't warn you either.

Voyage, and Giants are the ones I really want. I have been watching Time Tunnel on Encore's Action channel, and it is not as good as I remember.

Now I don't have to transfer my Sci-Fi channel coppies to DVD.

I'd be very suprised if they remaster from the films also. This is hardly ever done except for WB and big special editions. Universal uses the same masters they used on the video tapes for classic movie franchise sets. MR. ED dvds were most likely made from the same tape masters used to make what TVLand is showing. They look real good because they were most likely digitaly remastered last time the show was syndicated. Lost in Space was probably only syndicated once and when Sci-Fi channel came along they probably just got copies of old syndicated prints. The show was never "cleaned up" each time it was re-syndicated. Australia, or wherever it is the show has been on non stop for 30 years probably get new tapes/prints, or whatever stations use every so many years made from the same master the first ones they got were. The quality of the source was allowed to just degrade over the years because until DVD fox had no reason to clean it up. There was no longer a market for the show. I doubt even Sci-Fi would air it now, maybe at 3am on weekends. When Fox saw what condition the show was in they should have made a business decision as to whether clean them up or just drop the whole thing. There are those that are just happy as pie to have the show on dvd, period, and those who want good clean quality masters. In this case I don't care. I had the CH set and transferred them to DVD myself. When season one of LIS was released I compared it to the ones I made and the quality was identical. I passed on the rest of the DVD sets. I still have the show on DVD and avoided having to buy it. I recently got The Bob Newhart Show season one dvds which are from Fox. The quality is miles above that of LIS and yet Fox produced this set the same way they did LIS, used the most recent tape masters. They were in better shape because the show has been resyndicated more than once. Time Tunnel will probably look exactly like the ones Encore is airing, average quality, hopefully uncut. Land of the Giants will probably be made using the same masters used on the CH dvds, below average but not near as bad as LIS. VTTBS is unclear. The sci-fi channel prints are abysmal. The ten episodes released by CH were outstanding. There were box sets of VTTBS released on laserdisc in Japan so there are most likely more episodes of real good quality.
Maybe Fox should have done what WB is doing. Fox didn't think LIS sales would justify remastering the series. WB, who supposedly remaster everything, have serious doubts there is enough interest in Maverick, Cheyenne and F-Troop to justify the expense of remastering so they remaster a few episodes and release a "sampler" and base future decisions on whether to release the series based on the sales of the sampler. Fox should have remastered the first 5 episodes and released that and then either remastered the entire series if it sold well or just cancel the whole idea if sales were low.
Since most tv shows get released on dvd without any cleanup because they were remastered more recently for syndication, I'm curious as to the revenue generated from syndication vs that from dvd sales. For example: if TVLand wanted to show LIS would what TVLand has to pay Fox for syndication rights far exceed what DVD sales would generate and thus give Fox the incentive to remaster LIS?

One thing people have to remember is that WB's film-based releases (basically shows before 1985), most of them are multigenerational beloved shows they want to archive for HD, like the Dukes of Hazzard. Considering that it's likely to continue to make lots of bucks for them, it was worth their while to do so.

Since most tv shows get released on dvd without any cleanup because they were remastered more recently for syndication, I'm curious as to the revenue generated from syndication vs that from dvd sales. For example: if TVLand wanted to show LIS would what TVLand has to pay Fox for syndication rights far exceed what DVD sales would generate and thus give Fox the incentive to remaster LIS?


TVLand is likely not paying Fox as much as you think.LIS is a low-value property, don't forget Nickelodeon afforded it for years. There's no way what they're paying per episode would pay for proper restoration of that episode alone. If there were a likely future customer for the title, maybe things would be different, but TVLand, or an even smaller channel are the only future customers, and there's not enough people buying the DVDs to make up the difference.