The Escapist

I was just at my local Costco and found that they had some BBC sets I hadn't seen there before: I picked up The Shaw Collection (6 plays by George Bernard Shaw) for $30.99, as well as the new Warner Brothers Literary Classics Collection for $30.99. When I got to the register I found that $4.00 was taken off each set, so the price for each was $26.99.

Among other BBC sets I saw there were The Dickens Collection, The Jane Austen Collection, and The Anthony Trollope Collection. I believe these were the same price, and I assume you'd get $4 off each of these as well. Great prices on some nice sets.

JiM T

Were the BBC set and the WB set the same product # on the price tags?

The Escapist

Yep -- 191472.

Chris-K

Thanks for the heads up! The Clifton, NJ Costco had loads and loads of these. Picked up the Austen and Shaw sets. Also included are the newly-released five-disc George Eliot Collection and the three-disc Lord Peter Wimsey set, with Edward Petherbridge as Wimsey, from 1988 (if I remember the year correctly.)

(Seems odd to me that BBC Video had to license a Granada production of one of the Jane Austen plays, did they never dramatize Persuasion themselves?)

GBenbrook

Can anyone who bought these comment on the quality of them? I looked at them yesterday- but didn't buy them- even with knowing the low price - as I didn't know how good the transfers were or how good the productions were. It seemed like some of these are mini-series while the others are shorter tv movies.

I also noticed that on one of the sets- there were a lot of "bonus" features- and some of these were actually other complete filmed plays! - very nice.

And, anyone have any idea when this $4 discount might end?

Thanks

Chris-K

Like the majority of BBC stuff, these are mostly shot on tape. I had a quick look at the ones I bought a few days ago last night, and the quality looks rather good. The master Quad tapes have probably had some drop-out repair and manual clean-up done to them. I'm guessing the clean-up work was done in the UK as lots of these titles were available over there before they came out over here; there is also a Shaw Collection in R2 was identical content. Some of the stuff on the Dickens set is from the 1990s and these are film, IIRC Hard Times and Our Mutual Friend (though the latter has an encoding error whereby the widescreen image is scrunched together on a 4:3 TV. I've read this title suffers this problem in both regions 2 and 4 as well!) The Dickens set has four flipper discs, and I think they're all DVD18s. The Austen set has 2 or 3 double-sided discs too.

I've watched the complete Oliver Twist. It's from 1985 and is all tape, even outdoor scenes, and the transfer is flawless. There are lots of night shots too and they all look perfect to my eyes (and I do watch lots and lots of British television and can tell the difference after all these years.)

The bonus plays on the Shaw sets are technically taped, not filmed, and are as long as, if not longer than, the main feature. The bonus on the Millionairess disc, entitled The Apple Cart, is nearly two hours long. Another bonus play is also this long, while the other two are around an hour each.

inDefiance

I was planning on picking up the Classics Collection tomorrow. Anyone know if the $4 off still works?

Thanks!

Decker

No idea specifically about this sale, but most Costco promotions run Monday to Sunday.