I received two copies of THE MAGICIAN from the Warner Archive, one for me and one for a mate, and both copies appear to suffer from weird combing and motion-blurring artifacts. I tried them on my Samsung Blu-ray player with LCD, and also on a plain vanilla DVD player on a CRT, and they play funky on both setups. I've seen a copy of the TCM broadcast, and it plays just fine, so it ain't the telecine, it's gotta be the authoring of the DVD files. Changing the progressive settings doesn't help; it plays messed up on both settings. If you play it at 1/8th slow-mo speed, every few frames it does the chow-chow-chow, like the cats in the old commercials, back a frame and forward again. It is not my setup that is causing the problem; the authoring of this DVD is defective.

Don Freed at the Home Theater Forum has noticed this problem as well, and apparently more titles are affected than just THE MAGICIAN:

"Mike*HTF" on the same thread says BEAU BRUMMELL is likewise affected, and that the WA didn't respond to his emails about the problem.

Bethany Harrison on the same thread said:

That is just BLOODY EFFING WONDERFUL.

I've emailed the WA with a detailed description of the problem and the affected titles so far, and that others besides me have reported this problem on multiple titles. Hopefully they'll fix these titles and nip this particular quality control problem in the bud before it affects any more titles. Until then (if then ever comes), caveat emptor, and mucho disappointment; I've been wanting to own THE MAGICIAN in nice remastered video quality ever since I read about it in Bill Everson's Classics Of The Horror Film book when I was a kid about 32 years ago. :-(

Please repost this on any other applicable forums you wish; let's get the word out.

What other titles are affected? The only WB titles I've bought so far are DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK and BAD RONALD. Haven't watched them yet though.

That bites. I'd imagine that this would have happened if it was released on DVD too. Sounds like the studios just don't care about the older films and are rushing them through as quickly and cheaply as they can and not caring about quality. But, hey, at least you get to own a copy of the movie, nevermind that it is unwatchable. Sad times in home video.
I'd be curious to know what other titles are affected also.

As much as I hate the concept of the Archives, I will say that this is not the first time a transfer has been bungled and, to Warner's credit, they fixed the issues and shipped replacement discs free of charge. Considering it costs them maybe a buck to burn another disc, it's not like it's going to be cutting into their profits or anything.

Yeah, but it's doubly frustrating to get a bad transfer on a crappy format for which you paid way too much. This whole "archive" thing sounds like a trip to a dollar store bargain bin.

There's nothing wrong with the archives.

Apparently except for "The Magician," at least going by the title on this thread.

You'd best be pulling our leg.

Do you work for Warner Bros. pressing the button that burns these discs?

I swear, anytime these threads come up you are the first to take up for the program. Even in a thread like this, where the OP and apparently many other people are experiencing problems with the title, you cling to the notion that there's nothing wrong with the program.

Yep. A pressed dvd would have had the same problems. To be fair the studios have fucked up and had to make replacement discs for even the biggest A list movies since dvd started.

Good post!

There may be hope...

I sent the following email to the WAC:

And received the following reply today:

And in response to my separate refund request, I got:

I must say that's a bit more encouraging of a response than I anticipated.

I'm just saying that there are no more problems with the Warner Archives than with traditional dvd producers. Problems with encoding happen all the time. I've had commercially produced dvds that have had to be replaced because of encoding problems, faulty audio/picture, and other problems. Just because a dvd isn't store available doesn't make it a horrible release.

But in addition to all the problems that can affect regular DVDs, DVD-Rs have the additional problem of a shorter shelf-life, among other things.

There's not much point in bothering, he doesn't seem to understand that there's a difference. The only way he'll figure it out is when one of his magically craps out for no apparent reason.

I haven't had any dvd-rs crap out on me. And I've had them almost as long as dvds themselves. This is just people looking for a problem where none really exist. When they're well made, there's no difference.

Congratulations. Unfortunately there are already a number of accounts of users who have purchased Archive discs which played fine initially, stored on shelves and months later wouldn't play in any player. It certainly doesn't appear to be the rule, however it has happened and is most definitely a possibility. You can either assume that you're just lucky or that your personal experience is the norm and everyone else is simply doing something wrong. Even this wouldn't matter if you could simply get your disc replaced like you could with the old pressed discs, but Warner policy at this point is to stick to the 30 day return window.

Just putting all that aside for a moment, it is not at all unusual to receive a bad burn from Warner right out of the gate. So it would seem that there's some question as to just how "well made" these things are when so many faulty discs are shipped.

The software they are using could be the culprit if they are experience a lot of bad burns. That or the quality of the media. It's possible thay are using more than one kind of blank media. Don't know. I haven't received any bad burns from them yet. Haven't had any quit on me either.
Any properly burned disc should not be quitting (yet). We don't know yet how long a properly manufactured dvd-r will last, but we know it's at least 10 years.
For a disc to play fine and then quit playing at a later date means the disc has somehow become corrupted.
Poorly manufactured blank discs could breakdown prematurely and quit playing even if the burn was successful and the disc played fine initially. Quality blank media won't do this.
The discs themselves are more fragile than a pressed dvd. You cannot touch the surface. A fingerprint will cause them to not play correctly. You can wipe them clean. A little speck of dust will cause them to freeze at the spot on the disc. You can simply remove the dust. Any scratches can permanently damage them. Do not let them get scratched. You should handle them as you would a vinyl record. Heat, humidity, moisture and light will cause them to break down. You cannot expect them to last if you don't have air conditioning and live in a humid climate, store them in a storage facility, garage or humid basement. They cannot get wet. In short, if you want to inveat in dvd-rs you have to take a "preservation" stance toward collecting.
I have no problem with the Archive so far but do not trust them as much as the discs I burn myself. I know everything there is to know about those and am confident in their longetivity. They should change the copyright law allowing buyers to back up their purchased burned media.

I'm glad to see they're refunding your money. Good to know there's nothing wrong with the Warner Archives customer service.

Does anyone know what brand dvd-r Warner uses for their archive titles?