Twinkletoes2035

We need help. We have purchased at least 5 HD DVD copies of season 5 of Smallville over the last few yrs. looking for a clean set. Does anyone have one they are willing to sell? We've been able to cobble together discs 1 thru 4, by mixing and matching sets, but disc 5 has one file that is corrupt on all 5 of our copies. The name of the corrupt file is Ep3_1.EVO located in the HVDVD_TS Folder. We are trying to make backups of our HD DVD's because of this disc rotting issue, and that is the one file we are missing. Does anyone have a working/uncorrupted copy of that file? We don't want to pirate anything, but getting ONE completed working set, when we have paid for 5, should be fair use.

Alan Smithee

Welcome to my world. I know at least part of my season 6 set has gone bad. I picked up nearly every US HD-DVD title when they went on clearance, THEN found out about the rot problem. I replaced all the ones that went bad and those played fine but now many of THOSE have also rotted! I gave up after that. I've logged 33 titles that have gone bad so far, either not loading at all or freezing up at some point during the movie.

Twinkletoes2035

At least season 6 is available on Blu Ray. If Warner would release season 5 on Blu Ray, I would just buy that.

PhantomStranger

Warner has more or less said they will never issue the complete Smallville on Blu-ray. That ship has sailed. Your best bet would be archiving them via a TIVO and then extracting the digital files. I'm sure HD files trade on bittorrent and the like as an easier option.

Twinkletoes2035

I can understand Warner not releasing seasons 1-4 on Blu Ray, but season 5 already has an HD release (on HD DVD). There is no excuse for not releasing season 5 on BD, especially since the HD DVD release in known to suffer from disc rot! I only need half an episode because I already have Ep3_2.EVO.

b2net

I agree that Season 5 could get a BD release. It is most likely an issue with how they project sales on that BD.

What I at first didn't get was how the series could be streaming HD and not be mastered for BD as well till I read an article on the subject (which I cannot find at this time). Turns out that Seasons 1-4 were only created in 720p. As BD is 1080p (or 1080i depending on the content), they didn't want to put out S1-4 and have consumers be disappointed in the lack of quality. Somehow they can offer it streaming in "HD" and not have that concern.

I recognize 720p and 1080i are the 2 main OTA formats and most customers who consume content that way are less likely to have a quality issue with the content. I for one wouldn't care if the BD was 720p and labeled as such. It would be far superior to the 480p content of the DVDs.

Josh Z

This sounds fishy to me. Even if the network broadcast the program at 720p (and IIRC, the WB network broadcast everything in 1080i), the original studio master should be at least 1080p resolution, if not 2k.

b2net

Agree. It was quite a number of years ago I read the article. I will see if I can find it via Google at some point.

davidlynchfan

Jim Patterson

that is so true, here some more info on that


https://www.hometheaterforum.com/com...l-play.351260/

Alan Smithee

b2net

Some of the seasons were more soap opera than others. I noticed some of that. That did seem to keep many people's interest. Super hero drama.