Does anyone know if the season one release of 3rd Rock from the Sun is the full episodes or syndicated cuts? They seem a little short, and some have bad edits I don't remember seeing when it ran on NBC. Other Carsey-Werner productions have been released edited, so this wouldn't surprise me. Thanks in advance.

Doubtful. The set has been out fora month, others would have noticed by now for sure.

I would lay my money on that they're syndicated episodes. It's just that no one on here (at least not yet) has the original broadcast to compare and confirm.

Since its put out by Anchor Bay that is probably a safe bet.

They are the syndicated cuts. Anchor Bay just won't issue a statement, or answer an email, confirming it.

Isn't anyone else disturbed by this trend? And is there anything we can do about it?

Tvshowsondvd says the 3rd Rock cuts are the syndie ones http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/newsitem.cfm?NewsID=3975

Just as I suspected... Oh well, I guess that means that mine will be going on Ebay immediately. I'm glad that I didn't pay but $18.99 for it...

What about the region two sets? I am sure the running times are automatically shorter because of PAL speedup but does anybody know if they contain the syndicated cuts as well?

This is an insanely old thread, but I saw my dad watching a 3rd Rock episode the other day and I remembered how much I enjoyed watching the show. I looked it up on Amazon and saw this business about syndicated cuts.

I was wondering if Anchor Bay ever was able to obtain the original broadcast episodes, or at least did so for future seasons past the first one, or did the trend continue through all six seasons?

Despite seasons 3-6 claiming "uncut episodes" on the boxes, they contain the syndication cuts just as the first two season box sets did. This does not seem to be common knowledge however, as the complaints surrounding the first two season box sets were much louder. But as someone who watched the later seasons in their original run (I even have VHS recordings of many of the original broadcasts to compare) the cuts are definitely still there on the DVDs.

I was just upgrading my DVD Aficionado page and there's an "Out Of Print" notation next to 3rd Rock season one. Has anyone heard if the set is to finally be replaced with an unsyndicated one?

I never heard that about seasons 3-6. I got the region 2 sets of season 1 and 2 because of the cuts, but I only got those two because I thought 3-6 were ok. I do remember watching the first episode side by side of the region 1 and region 2 sets and what was interesting is the cuts were very minor (an entrance or exit from a room, etc). It was a few years ago so I don't remember exactly, but something made me think the region 1 set is also time compressed (which would account for the minimal edits). Maybe I did a side by side with one of my VHS recordings from NBC.

Anybody else have specific cuts they know about?

Geez, I forgot all about this...I went ahead and picked up all the season sets in region 1 (though I was contemplating region 2) and forgot about this. I didn't even notice the cuts.

So the UK versions are uncut then?

Looks like the UK DVDs are the winners in most cases here...

http://www.dvdcompare.net/comparisons/search.php

However, I noted that the later seasons show longer running times on the US versions than on the UK versions.

I don't know...shoot...I am just glad we got the series on DVD. Why they choose syndication versions over original broadcast versions bugs me but I am still glad to have the show.

HOWEVER, if I realized all this before I bought them, I would have gladly paid a few bucks more to get the region two editions. So if you're somebody shopping around for them, you know more about these than I did when I bought them (As far as I can recall, I couldn't find any info online about the differences from region one and region two when I decided to just by the US versions.)

I guess it depends. Is anything really huge cut out or are they all as mentioned here, just little minor trims like people entering and exiting a room?

does that take the pal speedup into account

That would not account for two PLUS minutes per episode.

Did your read the reviews of each set at the link I provided above? Your question would have been answered there.

Sorry to bump this topic again, but I was just watching some of my 3rd Rock DVDs, and the later seasons seem to be complete, based on running times being consistent with shows from that era (about 22:07 in seasons 3 and 4, and 21:38 in seasons 5 and 6). Not that I have statistics about that, of course, and I did check around online, but couldn't easily locate a resource. It's just that 22 minutes seems about right for that era. And suddenly there was a change of about 30 seconds, so it seems that NBC decided to throw in one more commercial spot that year.

Looking at DVDCompare, they claim there are no cuts on the episodes, and show the same running times as my region 1 DVDs do.

"cuzzin," in this thread above, claimed there were cuts. calhoun07, you say there are "two plus" minutes difference between the region 1 and the UK releases, but the difference is only about 49 seconds. Since the PAL speedup is 4%, a 22:07 episode should come out to about 21:14, which is just about exactly what the PAL episodes are listed at on DVDCompare.

So it does look like, according to DVDCompare and my DVDs that the episodes in seasons 3-6 are complete.