WB Archive Collection: Discs On Demand!

[EricJ]

Awwwww yeah, Warner Archive!! That's the stuff:

101 Porky Pig cartoons, in chronological release order .. and even some commentaries!

Yeah, now that all those H-B sets have given them confidence about complete toon sets again, Warner's getting back to their old Chronological Popeye licks, from back in the retail days before all their old traumas set in--
Now, if only they could have held off and done that Complete Sniffles/Hubie & Bert set for the Archive instead, we might not have all this neurotic "They've forgotten the Looneys" nonsense to begin with. I realize there were many misinterpreted factors, but I still blame THAT one for causing it.

[Ben]

I'm...lost?

[Dacey]

I read it four times and I'm still confused.

[EricJ]

I'm...lost?

Evidently some folks here don't have the historic grudge against Warner's home-video neuroses that, ahem, SOME here have--
Let's take it a step at a time for the naives and noobs:

1) Warner has always had a bit of a trauma-bug that makes them whimper and crawl into a fetal position at the idea of a mass-market "4-disk collectors' edition" of classic toons, ever since they couldn't sell enough classic Yogi Bear sets on retail.
2) That's why their their retail classic Chronological Fleischer-Popeye sets were eventually reduced to three disks, and then two, and then they pretty much stopped bothering with it, except for releasing the 60's toons to the Archive.
3) It didn't help that not enough "collector fans" bought "The Mouse Chronicles" on 2-disk Blu-ray, https://www.amazon.com/Looney-Tunes-Mou ... 0081LTBR8/, a too-niche collectors' title coming too soon on the heels of their first mass Golden Collection Blu boxsets (and which even I wouldn't have bothered with if it hadn't had "Hush My Mouse" and "Cheese Chasers" in hi-def),
4) Which, along with not selling as many retail Looney Golden Collection Blu's as they imagined they would, created the new studio mindset that "Audiences have forgotten Bugs! " (As at Warner, it's always the fault of ungrateful audiences' whims, not bad marketing, heaven forbid)
5) Which, as usual, causes Warner to resent their "ungrateful" collectors' audience, sell them down the river, and try to sell the mass market instead on cheap one-disk DVD "kids" collections for the Target and supermarket shelves, which don't really move now that Target barely sells DVD's anymore except for the checkout lines, and few Blu-enabled parents still buy DVD's "for their kids" now anyway, now that kids in the backseat watch streaming,
6) And creates a vicious spiral when Warner tries to franchise-jumpstart the Looney label with obnoxious new CN series that fans STILL don't watch, and by trying to reduce the entire house-franchise brand to just 90's-legacy mass-crossover reissues of "Space Jam" and "Back In Action", two movies of which most true collector Looney fans want to see every print burned and the ashes fed to wolves.

7) So now, they're back in Popeye/Hanna-Barbera's court of "exiling" good exhaustively academic chronological-complete boxsets to the "limited niche" Archive, even if it is just for DVD and we haven't gotten the Blu upgrades yet. At least getting chronological sets at all again is one more breakthrough step in their therapy.
And don't ask me to go into why Warner's been giving us so many danged "Collector figurine" Blu boxsets of Batman or Tolkien in the retail market lately, or I could rant for thirteen more paragraphs that would completely confuse the folks' poor little studio-naive minds.

[Ben]

(I love how he thinks he knows this is how it all works.)

[gaastra]

Land before time--oops I mean dink is coming to dvd.

http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/Dink-L ... ries/23676

[gaastra]

Static shock season 3 out in a few weeks.

http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/Static ... on-3/23910

[gaastra]

Anyone order some Biskitts?

http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/Biskit ... ries/23939

[Randall]

Forget The Biskitts--- I had no idea that a new Wacky Races show had been produced!!!

http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/Wacky- ... me-1/23937

[gaastra]

RIP Warner archive.

https://www.avclub.com/filmstruck-adds- ... 1823339497

[Ben]

Phew...it’s only the streaming side. And I’ve given up on most DVD purchases from them, too, since a lot of them have come back as Blu-rays. As long as they keep their BDs coming along at three or four a month then that’ll be fine, shame as it is, be it through discs or streaming, that the studios' library content seems doomed to sit on storage shelves (and not, it seems, *ours*)!

[Randall]

Yes, WA clarified this week that this has no effect on their disc business. Basically, it's ending some redundancy among two Warner Bros. interests in the streaming field.

Non-USA residents get shut out of most non-Netflix streaming services anyhow, otherwise I'd love to get Filmstruck--- even before the Archive absorption.

I wonder how many titles the WA streaming service kept going? Just 600 titles to Filmstruck sounds a little small, considering the Warner library. They have over 2700 WA titles on disc alone.

Meanwhile, a Batman: Subzero Blu-ray got announced today! Plus, last week saw Willis O'Brien's Black Scorpion get announced for Blu-ray.

[EricJ]

There's a LOT of interesting things going on with Warner, digital and streaming, atm:
Yes, Warner is only folding Instant Archive in with Filmstruck (which was originally supposed to be a Turner Classics/Criterion collaboration, but the Turner half never quite showed up)--
Curiously enough, though, it's also happening on the same March 1 as Disney officially folded its own Disney Movies Anywhere digital-movie service, and moved it into their larger Movies Anywhere service that was going to join all the non-Ultraviolet "refugees" of digital-purchase video (Amazon, iTunes, Google, DMA).
(Ultraviolet had its own troubles last August, when two of its last three digital-store services went out of business in the same month, and the third defected to Disney.)

That's two studio-owned services folding in one day, and that's a bit interesting--Particularly to the folks who a year ago were looking at the possibility that every studio would have its own in-house streaming service to try and get folks to subscribe and send the money directly, and it's looking less and less like that's going to happen.
Betting pool's open for when CBS All Access will be next, or just try to merge with Hulu.

I wonder how many titles the WA streaming service kept going? Just 600 titles to Filmstruck sounds a little small, considering the Warner library. They have over 2700 WA titles on disc alone.)

Warner had a few classics they could send, but on their own service, it came up against the reality that they just didn't have streaming rights for many of their classics: For a while, it seemed like the only WIA titles that could be streamed--as opposed to the disk riches--were either the ancient pre-codes, the B-movies, the 60's-70's MGM/UA titles including the B-movie acquisitions, and the 70's TV-movies.
Meaning, like every other streaming service, the ones that had fallen into public domain.

[gaastra]

Glad they are still there. They can't end without giving us mighty orbots and yogi's treasure hunt.

[gaastra]

Mighty Orbots!!!!!

http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/Mighty ... ries/24073

the mask cartoon
http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/Mask-Season-1/24074

static shock s4
http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/Static ... on-4/24075