I was browsing through best buy looking at the dvd section for any possible bargains the other day. As I went by the dvd collections area I couldn't help but notice all the nice looking tins they had for documentaries. Turning them around I saw they were Madacy titles. No wonder they were so cheap. I imagine it's the same crap they've always sold dressed up to draw in the suckers. BOO!

Yeah, Best Buy used to have a good (if overpriced) selection of Warner and Fox boxsets, but now half the section is made up of these tins.

For all I know, some of these could be really good sets, but whenever I see the word "Madacy", I vomit a little bit in my mouth.

Word. A few of them look pretty interesting... But I'm not buying them to find out.

I was thinking the same thing. Someone should buy one and let us know how they are, though, just not me

If all the DVDs in the world were Madacy, VHS would stage a resurgence.

I've never heard of Madacy, why are they such a bad company? What DVDs do they put out r do they have any sites?

They put out horrible quality versions of a lot of public domain stuff. Simply think not of them again.

Ah, so i should go back to never hearing of them.

That's the spirit!

i was wondering what they heck they were too. noticed the tins before, but had no idea where they came from.

I actually bought one of those Madacy tins at Best Buy. I didn't notice until I got it home that it was a Madacy release, or I would have put it back on the shelf. The title of the set is "Route 66: Marathon Tour Chicago to L. A.", and I'm glad I didn't put it back, because it is very good.

It is a five-disc set, consisting of 14 episodes that run about 25 minutes each. All of the episodes were filmed in high definition and look spectacular in anamorphic widescreen on my SD widescreen monitor (thanks, I suppose, to the high bitrate with only 75 minutes of content per disc). The tin contains the five discs in a fold-out digipack, along with a fold-out map of the entire route, and six post cards of custom paintings by Route 66 historian/artist Jerry McClanahan. The only flaws I found in the set were some minor problems navigating the menus, and the fact that the chapters on the discs don't quite match the listing on the digipack.

Because of my interest in Route 66, I would rate this set a terrific bargain at only $16. This is the only Madacy Tin I bought, so I can't speak for the others.

I have the original version of the "Laughing Out Loud" set, and for the most part it's pretty good. They actually made a sequel, but that had way too much stuff repeated from the first, and the new stuff was mostly crap, with a few exceptions. The version I have was a boxed set of five keepcases, which is helpful for me if I want to ditch a few volumes, like I did with the "Live at the Improv" set, which contains very similar material. The second version was a fold-out Digipak, and now of course they're offering this tin. I still have all five volumes, so the tin seems worth buying if you really like stand-up comedy and don't mind a few clunkers and a "bargain DVD" look to everything, which is what Madacy is all about.

I can see how some of the other sets might indeed be crap, but as long as you're getting a good price, they could be worth a look if you're interested in the subject matter.

Another company to watch out for (if only to avoid their products) is Passport Video. I wasted $15 in store credit and another 15 bucks of my own on their awful "Dick Van Dyke Show Collection". I had spent an hour looking for something to spend the credit on, so I was kind of desperate. I was also enticed by the last two discs of the five-disc set, that each contained documentaries and interviews relating to the show. The "documentaries" turned out to be mostly strung-together trailers (a la GoodTimes Video, which to be fair isn't always a bad thing), and the "behind-the-scenes" featurettes would actually be fantastic gems for older viewers who were really into the films covered (it was like the making-of featurettes you find on DVDs today, but these were movies from the '50s and '60s -- if you like that kind of stuff, you'd probably love these little films), but they weren't of much interest to me. The interviews were also god-awful, coming from what looked like public-access cable shows -- just dreadful.

Anyway, "bargain DVD" doesn't always mean it's complete and utter crap -- I've picked up a few $1 titles that were quite good, and aren't offered by the major DVD companies. I guess the best rule of thumb is before you plunk down money for one of these "bargain" DVDs or boxed sets, make sure you're getting a really good price, like $5 per disc or so. That way you can just look at it as if it were a rental if the content just absolutely sucks.


...by the way, if I wanted to trade the $29.99 "Dick Van Dyke Show Collection" back in at the same store, I'd get a whopping $3. Woo. Hoo.