The good news is Antenna TV finally started its "Burns and Allen" reruns--only 6 months late, too! The episodes are far from pristine, but the video and audio are plenty good enough for me. There's just one thing.
The bad news is that, yep, these are hack jobs, with at least several minutes chopped out of each episode, and not always artfully edited, either. Arguably the best parts of each episode--George addressing the audience--seem to be the ones most affected.
I'll continue to watch because I haven't seen the show in years and it's not like a ton of episodes are just floating around elsewhere and because the channel is "free" (though I'd love to see my provider's reaction if I sent in a check for zero bucks this month) as part of my TV package.
Yesterday morning, Antenna debuted 3 "new-to-me" shows: "Circus Boy," "Adventures of Rin-Tin-Tin," and "The Iron Horse." Apparently, all 3 are going to air in chopped-up form on Antenna. I haven't watched the hourlong "Horse" yet, but it looks intriguing, and I enjoyed the pair of "Circus Boy" episodes. But "Rin-Tin-Tin" is almost unwatchable due to horrible redone soundtracks. I only made it through about 10 minutes of the first of two episodes aired today. It sounds like someone had or thought they had to overdub a new musical score, and it stands out as way too modern for the series' production era. Even worse, the dialogue is also redubbed in many spots. I assume this is because the butchers had to scrap the entire soundtrack to get rid of the offending music.
This is more of a kids/nostalgia show, anyway, and it wouldn't be a must-see for me under ideal circumstances, but it's a shame that the series is so screwed up in this format, as it will probably never be on anywhere else. After watching a little bit today, though, I have to wonder if it SHOULD be on with this wacky audio situation.
So overall, Antenna has a firm footing in the "better than nothing" category. I love some of the creative programming decisions, but I hate the reliance on chopped-up and altered versions of the episodes.
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6 comments:
I too found the redubbing of Rin Tin Tin REALLY annoying... fortunatly my son who I wanted to see it doesn't care :)
I've been watching Antenna TV's re-dub of Rin Tin Tin and it's horrendous editing.
It makes it easier for the new copyright owners to sell these programs as "new and improved" to affiliates and DVD distributors which is why they "improve it." It's not just because the audio and video hasn't fully survived their 40+ years of storage.
Rich R.
I don't get it though, why would they only do it in certain little parts that make it so poorly obvious? I don't think its anything to do with the audio not surviving. They just switch out the action music audio and dialogue with that horrible 80's synth drums and keyboard score. Its like bad background music from "The A-Team." I wonder what was wrong with the old music, or if it was some kind of legal issue. The worst is the vocal re-dubbing! The kid's (Rusty) voice is so obvious that it's an adult, trying to sound kid-like, "Well golly gee Rip"
Just heard the redubbing of the soundtrack music...
HORRIBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Just does not FIT! Oh well... :(
Enrique/MIAMI
I'm totally glad you pointed out the soundtrack debacle-- I was just watching this now, and yuuck-- it's a SYNTHESIZED score.
Who in their right mind though this was acceptable, or worse, an improvement?
I fear we'll be seeing more of this in the future.
I know I'm late to the party here, but I just watched the last 2 minuted of the horridly edited/dubbed "Rin Tin Tin", and Russell Johnson was one of the guest stars. Now we all know what his voice sounds like, so to hear another actor's voice come out of his mouth (not to mention the adults who were voicing the children at a birthday party) was surreal to say the least. Just horrible.
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