Peter Lenkov on the cancxelation

[mach440]

Emme Tomimbang did a retrospective-type show about Classic H50 which was broadcast around the time of the 1996 convention in October 1996 in Honolulu. This appeared on the 7th disc of the season one DVD box set. There were some minor edits in the show on the DVDs as compared to the original broadcast (I don't recall specifically what they are).

Emme did another retrospective more recently, focusing on the H50 reboot, which featured Mark Dacascos, who played Wo Fat, but also had appearances from some actors who had appeared on both shows like Al Harrington and Jimmy Borges. At the very end of this show, Lenkov was asked if the show would reach 12 seasons. He sort of hesitated, and then said "Touch wood."

Yeah, sure seems like CBS caught him (and everyone else involved) by surprise in pulling the plug now. But as you said elsewhere, maybe it's for the best since the quality had actually improved in recent seasons and they went out on a (kind of) high note --- surely no one wanted to repeat the fate of classic Five-O's "one-season-too-many."

Emme was listed in the cast for one of the last two reboot shows as a woman with groceries, but did not appear in the show, as far as I remember. No doubt she will be in the deleted scenes on the Season 10 DVD set which reportedly will be released early in July rather than the usual September.

I also noticed there've been no reruns since the finale, maybe as part of the syndication contracts? I do wish they had not discontinued releasing the annual Blu-Ray versions after season 3 --- now I have to be content with my DVR copies of the series as broadcast, recorded over-the-air in HD, which (albeit stuck with commercials and annoying "Colbert" promos) are actually a higher quality picture than the DVD sets ...

[Mr. Mike]

I also noticed there've been no reruns since the finale, maybe as part of the syndication contracts? I do wish they had not discontinued releasing the annual Blu-Ray versions after season 3 --- now I have to be content with my DVR copies of the series as broadcast, recorded over-the-air in HD, which (albeit stuck with commercials and annoying "Colbert" promos) are actually a higher quality picture than the DVD sets ...

Sorry about the delay in replying to this. If you go to Amazon sites in Europe, you will find Blu-Rays of seasons higher than 1-3 which were released in North America. I have seen them for seasons 4, 5, 6, 7 and one more. I once asked this guy I know at CBS Home Entertainment in the USA about these, and he said they were region-free, which means they would play on North American Blu-Ray players. But I have never purchased any of these myself (seriously ... not interested) and if they were NOT region-free, you would require a special Blu-Ray player to show them on your TV. There are other conditions, aside from the price of these, some of which are not particularly cheap, like whether the sellers will ship to North America, whether they REALLY are region-free, etc., etc. Typically if a disc at a non-North American Amazon site is not playable in the USA, Canada, etc. there will be some stern warning in the description, such as there is when something at Amazon.com is a region 2 DVD or a Blu-Ray disc not intended for local consumption, but there is nothing on any of the Five-Zero discs I looked at on amazon.co.uk. So it's a case of buyer beware!

I have often been curious about whether the Blu Rays of seasons 1-3 in North America were better quality than the DVDs. The video quality of some of the DVDs of seasons 1-9 I have borrowed from the library were what I considered REALLY bad. They remind me of the TV tapes I made of some Classic H50 episodes when compared to the remastered DVD sets. Check this page, you will see what I am talking about:

http://fiveohomepage.com/season12/comparison/

[ringfire211]

Mike it’s hard to believe that the DVD quality of the new show would be as bad as the TV broadcasts of the original show. Isn’t everything in HD these days, even on DVD?

I mean we now have re-releases of old shows from the 70s and 80s (ROCKFORD, MAGNUM, A-TEAM, AIRWOLF) in HD. So it’s hard to imagine that a modern show wouldn’t be automatically in HD on DVD.

[Mr. Mike]

Ringfire, what do you mean by "HD"? Blu-Ray? DVDs are not "HD." Are you thinking of the term "remastered"? This improves the quality of video from TV shows by cleaning them up, enhancing colors, etc. But it doesn't make them Blu-Ray quality on their own.

If you have a DVD player these days, most of them will upscale the video so they look better on high resolution TVs. Ditto for Blu-Rays, some Blu-Ray players will upscale them to 4K definition.

There actually was a video format called "HD" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_DVD) which competed with Blu-Ray, but turned into a big flop.

As far as the DVD releases of Classic H50 are concerned, they were all remastered except for the 10th season, which looked lousy by comparison. When it came time for the entire series to be reissued again in a large box, CBS remastered just the 10th season, improving the quality quite a bit. Classic H50 has never been reissued on Blu-Ray.

[ringfire211]

No I mean all shows today are in HD when shown on TV are they not? In fact that was the big draw of the new show - colors popped, making Hawaii look especially beautiful (minus the yellow tinge of the earlier seasons). So why would this same quality not translate to the DVDs? You were saying that on DVD the show looked as bad as the broadcast versions of the original show. Which doesn’t make sense. I would expect the show on DVD to look just as good as it was on TV. Why would it look worse? That doesn’t make sense. Unless we’re talking about some home-burned bootleg versions. But the official releases should have the same quality as was shown on TV.

I may have to rent one disc to see what you’re talking about. It doesn’t make sense that a modern show would be released with crappy video quality.

[Mr. Mike]

The quality of DVDs will be shitty compared to either Blu Rays or an HD TV broadcast, because DVDs are only 480p, as opposed to 1080p or 1080i or whatever for the other two things. Shows made for TV these days may be in HD (high definition), but if you don't have an HD TV (like a newer model), results may vary, I suspect.

[ringfire211]

I don’t know Mike but it doesn’t make sense that a modern show would put out stuff on DVD with crappy quality. Who’d want to buy those DVDs? They’d be shooting themselves in the foot. It’s not like releasing some obscure European Charles Bronson flick on DVD (I’ve seen some of those with some pretty crappy quality - but that’s understandable since there isn’t a large market for those to get them remastered) but with a modern show like Five-O it’s different. Even the classic show they remastered them for the DVD releases. So for the modern show to look worse on DVD than the original makes no sense. I’ll check it out for myself - I’ll add a disc to my Netflix queue. Very curious about this.

[Mr. Mike]

I don’t know Mike but it doesn’t make sense that a modern show would put out stuff on DVD with crappy quality.

I'm not saying that companies intentionally put out stuff on DVD in crappy quality, I'm saying that when you put out stuff on DVD, it >is< crappy quality, relative to Blu-Ray and hi-def TV.

I specifically remember seeing some "deleted scenes" that were on one of the Five-Zero DVD sets. The quality of these was very DARK. I had a feeling that if you looked at the same scenes on the Blu-Rays (assuming they were available), the quality would be much better.

[ringfire211]

See, Mike, I disagree with that. I totally don’t think that stuff on DVD is crap compared to Blu-Ray. Most of my collection is DVDs, not Blu-Rays and I have no desire to upgrade. In fact I prefer my James Bond DVDs to the Blu-Rays which I also own. The colors on the DVD are more fresh and colorful looking whereas on the Blu-Ray they are more muted (and yes I have my settings set correctly and I’m using an HDMI cable) as well as the sound gets too loud on Blu-Rays in all the wrong places and times. I have to keep turning the volume up and down, something I don’t have to do on my DVDs. Honestly I don’t get all the hype about Blu-Rays. I think we’re just spoiled these days and we want to see every pixel, every pore on a person’s face. Any modern day DVD (and most older ones) are perfectly fine viewing. I have DVDs where nothing is remastered and they’re perfectly fine and far from crappy.