Zombie Flesh Eaters

[Hugh]

This is great news. Well done Arrow on doing the right thing.




*Cough* http://www.cult-labs.com/forums/310279-post2026.html

[Mentasm]

Originally Posted by the blob

Oh come on, if we're stretching it to masters and encodes then Arrow would have had to run replacements of half of their BD catalogue!

Let's keep it at genuine errors/faults please.

Well said. If we were to include dodgy encodes then a lot more of their releases would come under scrutiny for replacements. A lot of them have been filtered, have poor compression, or other anomalies. The gamma on the recent Lady Snowblood BD is completely wrong, but hardly anyone complained about that even though it's like watching the film through a grey filter. I can forgive the glitch in Vamp because that was apparently an issue with the master and also affected the US release (and other than that the film looks great), but compared to most other labels - and I'm including smaller indie distributors in this - Arrow has a pretty shocking QC record.

The real issue I have with the missing footage is their response to it. The sequence of events appears to be that they denied knowing anything about it, only for someone (a reviewer) to come forward and say that they told Arrow about it before the release date. If true I can think of two scenarios for this: either they actually told Arrow's PR company rather than Arrow, and said company failed to pass the info on (as happened with The Cabin in the Woods), or Arrow knew about it and didn't want to spend the money to fix the issue on the first run. Neither situation is particularly good for the consumer, but the former is at least more forgiveable.

After this they blamed a technical issue with the seamless branching, in spite of having it pointed out to them multiple times that this is not the case. The footage is not on the disc and all they need to do is look at the file in question to see this for themselves. It was insulting that they kept offering this explanation when it had already been proven wrong.

Finally, asking customers to pay for a corrected product was never going to win them any friends. I can't think of a single replacement programme where I've had to pay to receive corrected discs. I had new Superman discs sent to me from the US back in the days of DVD when it was discovered the boxed set had the wrong versions of two of the films. I had a new Inception disc sent to me free of charge. Cabin in the Woods was replaced for free. The Pirates of the Caribbean BD was replaced by Disney (years after I originally got the disc with my player). The Matrix Revolutions was replaced free for a video glitch. Hell, the DVD release of Panty and Stocking was recalled and replaced recently!

I know they've now done a u-turn on the charge, but the damage is probably already done. To employ an over-used turn of phrase, 'at the end of the day' businesses live and die by the quality of their products and their relationship with their customers. I believe (and Arrow now seems to agree) that the whole £5 replacement programme was incredibly short-sighted and has damaged their brand. How many people are going to hold off for reviews of Arrow products before they buy after this debacle (rather than pre-ordering)?

I know economic times are tough, but that's not an excuse for shoddy QC. There are plenty of other small (and smaller) labels out there who don't have the number of issues that Arrow have. If their QC was better they wouldn't be in the position of needing to have to keep spending money on fixing these problems, or indeed of launching ill-conceived schemes asking their customers to pay for their mistakes.

Still, one has to wonder how this was missed after three rounds of QC. Were the people checking the disc unfamiliar with the film? If so, why? Shouldn't someone with intimate knowledge of the work be A/B checking it against another source? I appreciate that mistakes do happen, but they seem to happen with alarming regularity at Arrow.

[PaulD]

Originally Posted by Hugh

This is great news. Well done Arrow on doing the right thing.




*Cough* http://www.cult-labs.com/forums/310279-post2026.html

I find it hard to commend them for this since they were clearly backed into a corner. Still, glad it's happening and I hope it doesn't come at too much of a financial cost for them

[fuzzymctiger]

I don't quite get all the hate for Lady Snowblood, I started watching today, and sure the colours screwed up, but that was out of Arrows control.

Toho are notoriously strict with foreign releases, taking every precaution to stop reverse importing (Importing better releases of their films from foreign countries), to the point Arrow weren't allowed to use any images in special features, which is why we only have one special feature.

If you look in the booklet, the material was restored and supplied by Toho, and Arrow have very little control of the final product.

[Wes]

Morally, they had to replace-for-free, but the whole business has been deeply disappointing. I was lucky - I usually wait and see when it comes to discs, so I'll grab a copy of the film in a few weeks, but this has done Arrow considerable harm and I'm disappointed that this release which ended up rubbing shoulders with the best of Criterion and MOC for Releases of the Year is now tainted. And that the dude who posted that early reveiw on Amazon is most likely grinning now saying "What did I tell ya"

[SilverGunnar Hansen]

So glad, becuase I do still really want them to stay in business, for my own selfish reasons of loving the physical love they put into their releases! No-one else is consistently doing that right now (even though they're understandably downgrading - no more slipcases / posters / art-cards etc), so I'm willing to forgive and forget.

One thing I hope they do is stop releasing so many different editions of the same title - the fact you can only get posters with the individual Demons Blus and the LE ZFE is the reason I plumped for them, but I like the Steelbooks too and would also like having the DVDs to play at other people's houses who don't have Blu Ray yet. If there's multiple options on future releases I'll probably stick with the dual format, so as to avoid being stuck with botched Blus straight out the box as well, at least then I'd also have the DVD!

[Roughale]

I can live with the postage cost for the return of the faulty disc - but I did not know of the 5 pound exchange program, is that still valid? I might consider getting the replacement disc for that cost and keep the old disc - any hints on where to get to that?

[fuzzymctiger]

Originally Posted by Wes

Morally, they had to replace-for-free, but the whole business has been deeply disappointing. I was lucky - I usually wait and see when it comes to discs, so I'll grab a copy of the film in a few weeks, but this has done Arrow considerable harm and I'm disappointed that this release which ended up rubbing shoulders with the best of Criterion and MOC for Releases of the Year is now tainted. And that the dude who posted that early reveiw on Amazon is most likely grinning now saying "What did I tell ya"

I feel the same about The Beyond. It's a fantastic transfer, and a truly superb set, which I would say was there best before ZFE, but it's been tainted by the B&W opening.

[PaulD]

Originally Posted by Mentasm

Still, one has to wonder how this was missed after three rounds of QC. Were the people checking the disc unfamiliar with the film? If so, why? Shouldn't someone with intimate knowledge of the work be A/B checking it against another source? I appreciate that mistakes do happen, but they seem to happen with alarming regularity at Arrow.

You wouldn't even need to be familiar with the film for this; all you'd have to do would be to check the total running time/no of frames on the bluray against the original running time/no of frames!

[Hawkmonger]

We all know Stephen was hiding lewid pictures of every staff member as black mail.