I read Bill Gibron's DVD review of Hamlet at http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=42285 and...

This is bullshit. The reason for coming here to read Blu-ray reviews, is to get a reasonably reliable (though opinions sometimes vary) assessment of audio/video quality. For this information to be left out of one of your reviews is absolutely pointless.

The internet does not need ANOTHER film reviewer, most of whom are scarcely competent anyway. It also matters that I've been reading film reviews of this title, virtually since the theatrical release. I do NOT need or want another one. The issue here is the Blu-ray release, is it not?

Another point of absurdity, is the stated reason for no video or audio assessment. Screener copies that are mailed virtually short weeks before mass pressing, are the end result. They're not going to remaster the thing in two weeks. Again, this is bullshit. Find another reviewer. Much more of this, and I will depend upon other review sites. You have at the three or four quality competitors.

Really? You've never heard of this? I've known for years about studios that do this and reviewers that do this right back at them. There have been instances of discs changing from screener to retail, and the reviewer is spot on to withhold judgment.

And frankly, the studio's are only hurting themselves when they do this. There are folks that base their preorders on reviews, and if there's no a/v comments, then they don't preorder and are less likely to pick it up down the road even after reading a favorable technical review.

No, I haven't, and if it has indeed happened, the instances are rare enough to not warrant mentioning...certainly not to the extent of refusing to render an opinion on a site that exists in part for that very reason.

I've belonged to reputable sites and blogs since near the initial existence of the medium, and I'm not familiar with this practice; In fact, off the top of my head, without researching, I don't recall it happening on this site before now. However, I'm less familiar with your site than some others, such as Home Theater Forum or AVS Forum. They have never practiced this method to the best of my knowledge.

I don't see why you would want a review of a product that may be fundamentally different than what you are able to purchase in stores. Some studios send advance screeners to us. The main reason for those is to get a rough copy of the movie to print critics (especially those writing for magazines) who sometimes have to get their review in a month or more before the disc actually hits the street. I've received screener discs for TV series that are missing episodes, ones with "Property of XXXX" burned into the image, and horribly compressed. These are flaws that (most often) don't appear in the final product. Would you really want Bill to evaluate the disc and then buy something that's materially different? What if they added a lot of edge enhancement to the retail version that isn't present on the screener disc? It's for those reasons that I don't have a problem at all with reviewers noting that they didn't receive the final version of the disc they're reviewing and then skip the A/V section. I'd rather the site be accurate.

A "rough copy" of a movie to put in the hands of print critics, for a new release, is more readily believable, but a title that's been in the pipeline for as long as this one...seems highly unlikely.

Have any of your other reviewers held off rendering an assessment on A/V before now?

It seems peculiar that in all the time I've been frequenting online resources, I haven't encountered examples where this problem has been mentioned. If there have been occasions on other forums where reviewers have received suspect screeners...maybe it would explain the absence of a review for that particular title, which to me seems a more appropriate course, considering the nature of the site, and the intended audience.

What do you mean "highly unlikely"? Are you implying that we received the retail version and just didn't feel like doing the A/V portion of the review? That's just ludicrous since, as you pointed out, that's what many readers come to the site for.

Yes, there are dozens of reviews on DVDTalk that were done from screener discs where the A/v sections are not complete. We've been doing it for years now. I know that Fox does not send out retail copies of DVDs before the street date, so any review you see up before the title is released is from a screener copy. They may rationalize it by saying that "it's very similar to the retail version" or something but the fact of the matter is that there is no guarantee that check discs (many times on DVD-Rs) are the same as the retail version.

As for not reviewing a screener disc, I'd love to be able to do that, but the reality is that if we don't review them, the reps cut us off. So when a screener copy comes in we review it, and then try to get the retail version from the studio to complete the review.

Well, jeez...

Let's just disregard the entire exchange. I'm not even a "letters to the editor" kind of guy, and did not realize when I clicked the response link near the review, that I would be posting to a public forum, but rather sending a one-off private opinion. By the end of the process, I didn't want to toss my effort. So here we are.

Whatever...

It's just a bit unusual that I would even be inspired to take the time to respond at all, which implies that your review and editorial procedures are unlike others I've encountered in my years of web travel. That's all.

Most of my time has been spent at highly regarded forums staffed and contributed to, by respected, knowledgeable people. I'm not saying yours is not in the same league...just that it strikes me as peculiar that this entire scenario inspired me to respond at all. It's that simple. Now I'm fading back into online oblivion. Good day.

We hope you enjoyed your time here at our lovely dive bar.