I'm interested in buying the old Superman cartoons from the 40's on DVD. There are 2 of them at BigStar" "Max Fleischer's Superman" ans "The Superman Cartoons Of Max and Dave Fleischer." The first one is longer (and more expensive), but I wanted to know if there were any differences in quality or extras. Has anyone seen these?

jim

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http://www.dvdtracker.com/~gamblor187.asp

The longer version comes with more episodes, but it offers only a PCM audio track, not the remixed DD 5.1 track on the DVD that offers only 9 Superman cartoon episodes. I was disappointed in the sound on the expensive DVD, but I haven't made my way through the DVD, so I can' give a better review. You may want to get the cheaper DVD, and then the other DVD that has the later episodes.

The longer one contains the later episodes? Does that mean that both discs have the same earlier episodes....or are they completely different?

jim

This is off the top of my head, I've not bothered to research it but:

The longer of the DVDs has all 18 of the Fleisher Superman cartoons. The shorter "Lost Episodes" disc has the only last 9. I bought this disc for my sons and have not really watched it. From what I saw, the picture quality is what is expected from old masters. The sound is okay. Some gun shots sound pretty good.

Well, I came here hoping to answer the same question you had Gamblor187. It seems that the more exspensive collection has all 17 cartoons. In the less exspensive set, they broke released the 17 toons ion two DVDs avalible sepreately or in a set together. I'm still triing to determine which set has the better picture.

-Videophile

There was a fairly detailed discussion of these DVDs a few days ago in the DVD Talk forum. Here's the link:
http://talk.dvdtalk.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/006641.html

It should come as no surprise to those familiar with Fox Lorber releases that Image's "The Superman Cartoons Of Max and Dave Fleischer" has better picture quality if that's your number one concern. I would say much, much better picture quality in fact. No one disputed that point in the thread referred to by mugwump. It only has PCM mono sound, though. I don't have a problem with that since it sounds how the 60 year old films were originally recorded. The Fox Lorbers on the other hand, spread the content over two separate DVDs with dubbed-in 5.1 sound effects. I don't like the sound personally, because the symphony music from the era still has that old-fashioned tinny sound and then to put modern sound effects over it is jarring. It's the Anchor Bay Night of the Living Dead version, if I dare be so insulting.