egarcia

Big fan of the show and hope a 2nd movie comes out

Hope to get some help

I need to know what should be a good price range for the collector's set <per season> for the series of the X-Files

The way it looks now its form the $ 40-100 range.

And if I can find out this I hope to own seasons 1-9 very soon.

The new slim rereleases dont interest me

Any help is greatly appreciated


thank in advance

egarcia

Sweet Baby James

Welcome to the board. I believe that Costco has the old Collector sets for $30 a pop. I'm not positive about the price, but it was around $30(you can check the different Costco threads to see if anyone posted the prices for these sets).

Sabrett

Don't ask me...I paid $135 EACH when they first came out... lol

DVD Josh

Why? The content with very few exceptions is exactly the same (is it not?)

stingermck

I got the mythology set

darthdelegate

Me too. I don't care for the standalone episodes.

By the way, thanks for posting this great bargain!

shaka

I saw the first 3 seasons at Sam's Club at $17.99 each

FeelingGreat

got the X-files slim set in the last DVDPlanet sale. Frankly, I don't understand why people prefer the set where it fold out. It is just a box and the foldout set I think is more expensive. The slim set takes up less space, which makes a big difference on your shelf space if you have all 9 seasons.

looks like seasons 1-4 are in fullscreen and season 5-9 are in widescreen. Is this because seasons 1-4 were originally shot in full frame format? It would be nice if they were all widescreen to fit my widescreen tv

John Sinnott

Wasn't there a disc of extras that were included in the old versions that were missing from the slimline release?

Filmmaker

Precisely, so everyone supporting the slimline version can stop asking silly questions now.

FangsFirst

Yes they are originally fullframe.
Blech, you want a cropped WS? :S

pagansoul

Yes, the fold out box set of the seasons came with an extra disc of special features and booklets. I don't know if this applies with season 9 because I didn't get it.

Lecithin

I've got a mish-mash of full-size collector sets (1, 7,8, 9) and slim case sets (2, 3, 4, 5, 6) just due to the fact that I got them at different times and from different places (Amazon for season 1 for $15, the rest at Best Buy during one of their "buy three seasons, get $30 off" promotions and they had the full-size in stock for the same price on the last three sets so I got them instead).

As for price, I think the best one recently was the buy one, get one free sale at DVD Planet. You may get a good deal if you can wait on a full series set release (if one is planned) and get it at a DDD bi-annual or similar sale.

I know that I have still only gotten two-thirds of the way through season one so far, so there was no reason I had to jump on getting them all right away and I could have saved even more by waiting.

GuruTwo

Actually you do in this case because the entire series was composed for fullframe (except for "Triangle") and unfortunately the ones that were shot in widescreen (everything from season 5 on) are presented in widescreen instead of it's OAR.

It's unfortunate but it's not a total deal-breaker. You see quite a few gaffes that were rendered visible due to removing the side mattes and even when you don't see stuff specifically what you're getting is dead space but hey, it's the only way you can get the show on DVD.

It's just another one of those instances where people erroneously assume "widescreen is better" or "more picture is better" when that's not the case at all.

DVDMagic

Season 9 does come complete with a disc with bonus features and also the booklet.

Personally, I prefer having the old version. I started getting the first couple of seasons as birthday and christmas gifts up until season 5 I believe and then I was able to finish off the collection when Costco dropped the prices to about $43 at the time.

I honestly haven't seen the new versions out of the shrink wrap so can't comment too much on them.

But, if you find somewhere like Costco that has the older versions for around the $35-$40 then I would say you are better off getting those than the newer versions in store because they cost about the same. However, if you don't care about either version then keep your eyes open because inevitably the new ones crop up on sale somewhere. I believe it was DVDPlanet that had them as part of their BOGO offer but I'm not sure if that is still running.

DVDMagic

Check the thread about WalMart TV on DVD sets for under $20. They lost seasons 4-9 as $19.88 with 97c shipping I believe

highclassrob

Any talks of releasing a series box set (ala Buffy and Alias)? I sure would pick that up in a heartbeat.

FangsFirst

Wow, you just really confused me, heh

I was under the impression that 5+ were shot FOR widescreen, not IN widescreen to be matted to fullscreen. Actually, that makes no sense. Film cells are 1.33:1. Filming "in" WS to move down to FF would be a waste of like half the cell...a picture inside a black border ALL the way around...
Anyway, you say they were shot in widescreen, then say they are presented in widescreen. Huh?

Unless we're talking...I dunno, shot anamorphically, then you could get a widescreen image out of normal film without any matting, but that would be a strange thing to matte...

It's just another one of those instances where people erroneously assume "widescreen is better" or "more picture is better" when that's not the case at all.[/QUOTE]

Wayne Klein

From what I recall the show was shot in widescreen and wasn't matted after the fact.

Wayne Klein

Personally I like the packaging for the new slimline editions of "The X-Files" but I kinda like having the booklet and extras discs (although I don't end up watching that all that much any more).

I've found that the slimline packaging tends to take wear and tear better than the other style of holder. I realize that's what was available at the time but would have preferred it if Fox had changed just the packaging and not excised some of the content.

GuruTwo

Fact: Seasons 5-9 were SHOT as presented on the DVD: in 16x9/1.78:1

Fact: Seasons 5-9 were AIRED as a matted 4x3/1.33:1 versions (with the exception of "Triangle", the only episode actually intended to be seen this way)

Fact: Watching the widescreen versions of Seasons 5-9 only adds a bunch of useless dead space on the sides, dead space that often includes crewmembers, equipment, clothing on supposedly nude characters etc.

The simple fact of the matter is that the studios began the move from 4x3 to pave the way for 16x9 broadcasts but that doesn't mean that the crews actually designed the episodes to be seen that way.

If you watch the "Millennium" episode "Somehow Satan Got Behind Me" there's an "X-Files" spoof scene where you can see a camera crew filming a faux Mulder & Scully doing an alien autopsy. You can see the camera crew's video monitor and it shows the full 16x9 frame and within that frame you can see the 4x3 "safe area" where the director and director of photography would include all the visual information necessary for the intended 4x3 broadcast.

This is an excellent example because "Millennium" was the sister show of "The X-Files" and made the switch from 4x3 to 16x9 at the exact same time (that show's second season, which aired alongside season 5 of "X-Files") from the same production company with much of the same crew, etc.

Like I said, it's not a deal-breaker. 99% of the time it just amounts to dead space. The other 1% can be pretty distracting, though. In "Bad Blood" when Mulder smashes the chair to get a wooden stake to kill the vampire you can see a hand place the wooden stake prop atop the broken chair for Duchovny. In both "Christmas Carol" and "Alpha" you can see supposedly nude characters wearing clothes and on one of the "Triangle" episodes you can see a boom operator completely unobscured on the side of the screen.

All of these are plain as day but pose no problem in the original 4x3 versions. They're visible in the 16x9 frame but no effort was ever made to obscure them because they were matted out of the 4x3 frame for broadcast.

Jay G.

Traditional film frames are 1.33:1. However, 3-perf Super35, which many shows shoot in, has a film frame of 1.78:1. I know that the later seasons of Buffy and Angel were both shot in this method, with Buffy being matted on the sides for 4:3 presentation, while Angel was letterboxed for standard TV.

Most FOX shows nowadays are shot in WS and presented that way in HDTV, while being cropped to 4:3 for SDTV. Show producers now know this and shoot with both aspect ratios in mind.

rfduncan

Except on My Name Is Earl where apparently they have been sneaking stuff into the "dead space" on the sides as jokes for the HDTV viewers (e.g. Ethan Suplee holding up a sign that says "High Def Rocks!!!").

FangsFirst

There IS a 1.78:1 frame then? Huh! Well, cheers to you, I was not aware. One more bit of random information to file in my stores of ws/ff/fs/p&s/etc memory banks.

Jay G.

I don't see how that contradicts what I wrote, since they clearly understand that certain things that are visible in the 16:9 frame will not be visible when cropped to 4:3, and are shooting accordingly.