Just a quick question - do DVD special features count? Example - I just got Season 1 of Dallas 2012 which has got quite a few special features on it. I'd like to watch them - will they count towards the challenge?

I will be participating in this

I'm in the middle of a couple seasons that I just jumped away from, one goal is to get at least those seasons finished up.
Buffy S5
Batman Beyond S1
SNL S1
Star Trek S1
Secondary goal is to watch at least one season of a total blind buy (as in, a dvd purchase of a series I had never seen before, or had seen only 1 or 2 eps). Last couple TBBs I encountered went real well with Reaper and Big Bang Theory.

I would definitely think special features count.

I was about to tell myself I've never bought a TV series box set as a TBB (I like that), but then I remembered that I've done that quite a few times with Japanese series in the genres I like: samurai/ninja (SHADOW WARRIORS), tokusatsu/live-action sci-fi (ULTRAMAN, IRON KING SUPER ROBOT RED BARON, etc.), and sentai (Power Rangers): GEKIRANGER, GOSEIGER, GOKAIGER, etc. And a million anime series.

That *is* a cool acronym! Why haven't any of us thought of it before?

I have *several* TBB, a few of which I've yet to open and watch. I just picked up another with a recent free shipping offer from VEI: Only When I Laugh, a British series ranked #74 on the BBC "Britain's Best Sitcom" poll from a few years back. I'm currently looking at starting with that one as it stars several British TV actors whose other work I've enjoyed.

I've purchased *several* from that list as TBB one of which was Only Fools and Horses. I'd never heard of the series prior to that poll but purchased the S1/S2 set to test the waters (a somewhat expensive test for me as it was a bit over $40 when I made that purchase). I wound up purchasing the entire series.

I wish British series were priced more affordably with their R1 releases! I have trouble paying the same for a 6 episode British series that I typically pay for a 22-36 episode US series. It makes the aquisition of those significantly slower. Yeah, I know I could purchase from Amazon UK and get them for less as R2/PAL releases, but I'd then have to purchase a new DVD player, hack the system for region free, and hope something similar is still available at a cost I'm willing to pay when it inevitably breaks. As I'll eventually "upgrade" to Blu-ray my fear is there'll be no hacks for such systems in the not to distant future or a required system upgrade would disable the ability.

One of my goals is to watch more of the Buffy I started last TV challenge and continued in the July and October challenges. Yeah, it's slow going, but I'm close to finishing season 2 and there's really no rush. I've even watched a few episodes (gasp) without getting any challenge credit.

That plus my regular TV watching and hopefully a new series or two.

The standard rule of thumb is that standard bonus features don't count toward view totals in a challenge. The exceptions are commentary tracks and bonus content originally produced independent of the disc such as short films or the stray documentary that was released on its own but included in a given disc to add value.

I would encourage you to watch the bonus content anyway, as it certainly speaks to the spirit of this challenge. In our original discussions, a major point was to recognize and celebrate the way that the DVD format has impacted how we consume the TV medium. Certainly, bonus featurettes are a part of this new means of consumption.

If you check out my 2011 list (link in sig), you'll see that I made note of bonus features I watched without counting them toward my episode totals.

The small fine print on this is that for this challenge, you're welcome to count pretty much however you want. There will be prizes, but they won't be distributed based on viewing total so it's up to you to decide what counting method you prefer to use.

Thanks for the info. I think that that's a good idea - listing without counting. As I'm only counting for myself, to give myself a target for next year, I may do 2 counts - one including special features, one without.

Can I just say that I'm really looking for to this challenge!! :-) (I think my wife may despair though!).

So, uh, the prizes are now announced. We owe GoldenWheels a tremendous round of applause for his generosity in wrangling these for us on behalf of Hamilton Book.



That's seven prizes in all. I tried to focus as much as possible on complete series prizes because I know how many of us are completists. Also, I went for variety and specifically for prizes that each fit with other challenges throughout the year. I'm still working out how to award the prizes, but I'll go ahead and state now that there will be a limit of one prize per person, so if you win one, let that be it. There was some confusion about that the first time I hosted and while I wasn't smart enough to anticipate it, I'm at least smart enough to have learned from my mistake! :P

Ooooh, prizes, that's even more than I expected. I was just looking forward to the challenge, but now I have something else to aim for! A bit difficult without knowing the criteria but fun nonetheless!

Anyone who wrangles me a date with Melody Gardot can have all the prizes.

Great prizes, and the only one I already own is Super robot Red baron

Yancy Derringer--I haven't seen that since I was a kid.

Never seen Route 66--as famous and iconic as it is.

Okay, those are my goals.

wow cool prizes...Route 66 would be sooo cool.

*Very* cool prizes! Thanks GoldenWheels!

If you've not yet done so you need to check out the recently redesigned hamiltonbook.com site. No, I do not work for nor am I associated with anyone at Hamilton Book. I just think Rich goes out of his way to support us and we should return the favor when we can. I have ordered from them, am impressed with the great CS, enjoy looking through the periodic print catalogs (who does *that* any more?), and throw out a plug now and again. They don't have a deep DVD/Blu-ray catalog but they *do* usually have a few surprises.

I've seen the redesigned site, and was very impressed. At first I thought I had navigated to the wrong site, since it had looked so different.

Wow! Great prizes!

Thanks again, GoldenWheels!
What?!? Never? Not on local reruns? Nick-at-Nite?
What he said.

This too. If you're looking for something to watch in April for the Drive-In Challenge, they have some good deals on Something Weird/Image DVDs. I was able to fill in some holes in my collection (early discs I thought were OOP and a few that I had never seen have price reductions before).

Here's what I'm thinking as regards the prize distribution:

Prizes to be awarded for being the first to correctly answer trivia questions. The first respondent with all answers gets to pick a prize.

Once someone has won a prize, that person is ineligible to win any other prizes.

What I'm trying to decide is whether to have answers PMd to me or posted in the discussion thread. The problem with PMs is that they add up in a hurry. Also, I prefer the transparency of answers being posted in a thread. That way, there's no question who replied in what order. It can get clunky, though, having a flurry of trivia answer posts.

Thoughts?

Though I'm not in it for the cool prizes, I think transperency is best. I don't think the tread will get too clunkyand if it does, hey, it's for prizes, we'll deal with it.

PMs are not a good process on here especially if you're close to your limit

PMs are spawn of Satan. Trivia questions with timed answers winning are fun, but reward people (like me) who are on DVDTalk 24/7. I think prizes should be completely random for active participants, perhaps with bonus chances given to checklist finishers and trivia answerers. Perhaps make a Facebook group for trivia stuff?

Hmm. I don't like the idea of a Facebook group because that takes part of the participation off-site. Plus, I know there are at least a couple of DVD Talkers who refuse to create a Facebook account because of issues with their privacy settings, etc.

I do, however, like the idea of randomness. It does seem to balance the chances of winning somewhat.

There are seven prizes. Four will be trivia-based and three will be random. The schedule:

• Prize #1 - Trivia based
• Prize #2 - Random
• Prize #3 - Trivia based
• Prize #4 - Random
• Prize #5 - Trivia based
• Prize #6 - Trivia based
• Prize #7 - Random

Trivia questions will be answered in the discussion thread for the sake of transparency (and ease on me).

For the random selection, I'll use the Math Goodies randomizer and enter values from 5 through whatever the final number of posts in the list thread turns out to be. Whoever has the corresponding post number wins, unless that person has already won a prize.

You could combine the trivia/random nature of the prize-giveaways by posting a question, having folks PM their answers to you over a 2-3 day timeframe, then randomly selecting from the correct responses. Just a thought...

I know I've never run one of the challenges, and the awarding/organizing of the giveaways could potentially be a headache to those who do. My personal preference would be the random method all the way. The only stipulation would be active participation meaning that at the end of the month, your list was completely updated (eliminating someone who last posted the 11th of the month, for example). Every other method seems to give an advantage to someone over another.

But in the end, it doesn't matter to me. I continue to be thankful for the challenge hosts and the sponsors who continually step up in a big way.

I think randomness would definitely be the way to go, and I agree with cardsfan111 that only those of us with a completely updated list at the end of the month should be counted. However, as he says:

This. Doing a random draw from all *active* participants at the end of the challenge seems to be the most fair method. I'm not a fan of trivia questions as they tend to be either obvious or obscure depending on individual tastes and/or knowlege. That method also throws up the issues of "open" or "closed" answers.

But yeah... whatever. I'm here to watch product and talk about what I, and others, have seen. Prizes are DVDTalk lagniappe.