Extreme Ghostbusters Complete Series Coming to DVD

News and Announcements Ghostbusters News
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Those of us outside the US have a real problem here! When it comes to the crunch, the item refuses to ship to the UK, and I imagine anywhere else. I was advised to enter an alternate address (not the most sensible suggestion, but I thought I’d see what happened if I tried a relative’s address, with every confidence I could tell the chat agent it didn’t work), and all it will accept is US zip codes. The poor agent is trying very hard, but of course, this is above their pay grade.

Hmm, I am being transferred…

Edit: This agent is adamant I will get my order, and I am not being allowed to re-order because of a one-per-customer limit. I am very sceptical about this. We shall see. Can anyone else outside the US please share your experiences? I am going mad!

Edit 2: I shall stop the blow-by-blow account after this. As things stand, this agent seems to be beginning to realise that their confidence is misplaced… :expressionless:

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Was there even an official announcement on this?

Seems dodgy.

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I’ve seen photos of the DVD set that someone had posted on Facebook, and for those wondering if the set is definitely encoded for Region 1, rather than Region-0 or Region-Free, you will need to have a multi-region DVD player if you live outside the United States.

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Yeah what the hey is going on with this set. I preordered mine the first day I could. Hasn’t shipped. I have yet to hear of anyone getting this yet. What is going on?

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USA, are you getting your EGB DVDs okay?

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I just received my set today. I’m not sure what’s going on with these.

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I’m in Louisiana USA and my set was delivered today, just about an Hour before I went to see Frozen Empire and the DVD case was all broken on the bottom.

It wasn’t just a crack in the case either, it looked as if someone crushed it as there was large broken pieces of the case in the shipping envelope.

The DVDs and amazingly the cover wasn’t damaged so I decided not to return it as I’m not taking a risk on sending it back and them possibly being out of stock.

I’ll probably pick up another set just to keep sealed and find a donor case for the ones I have.

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I’m in the US. I pre-ordered when it first showed up in January. Mine came today. No damage on the case. Hopefully the discs are all good.

Nice to see they have the episode titles printed on each disc. It’s the same kind of clear plastic case the later versions of the 2017 RGB series DVD set uses.

Can confirm it does say Region 1 on the back so that is US and Canada only, if you’re outside these 2 countries you’ll need a multi-region player.

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Edit: This post does not contain an affiliate link, in case you’re getting the suggestion that it might. :roll:

For the third morning/lunchtime in a row, I have been live-chatting with Amazon customer services. These people are wonderful. If Amazon allowed you to pre-order a phial of unicorn tears, they would keep looking for ways to get one to you until you told them to forget it.

The original listing yesterday evening (UK time) was described as ‘temporarily unavailable’. By that point, I was pretty certain I’d have to order it from an alternative seller anyway, at a much(?) greater price than I ordered it for. This morning, the listing has totally vanished. There were three sellers offering the item at a very similar, marked-up price (around $45.00). Now there are two; evidently I ordered the only one from the seller charging a reasonable shipping price.* Both agents I’ve talked to today assure me that this order is about to be shipped.

I am now seeking an explanation for why the item I originally ordered first would not ship to the UK, and now has become unavailable. The dear things have both got the two orders confused and told me not to worry, it’s definitely shipping soon. I am going to do my best to make them understand and put me in touch with someone who can give me an explanation.

If you pre-ordered and need to re-order at a marked-up price, you can, like me, get a refund for the difference in Amazon credit. When I explained to my first friend today that Amazon.com credit was no use to me, and could it possibly be Amazon.co.uk, he transferred me to someone else who says she has sorted this out. As I say, they do everything they can for you. I am now pursuing this explanation from someone who probably (and very reasonably) doesn’t have a clue what’s happened here…

*Edit: Scratch that. The listing did disappear after I placed my order, but now it’s back. I did have the horrible thought that maybe these sellers have got the item confused with that useless 13-episode DVD (I mean, given how unavailable this complete series seems to be), but if that were the case, why charge between 44 and 46USD? Ah, let us be optimistic! :expressionless:

Unsurprisingly, I couldn’t get an explanation for the item being largely unavailable within three days of release, or why it hasn’t shipped to anyone in the UK no matter how early they ordered it (I’m pretty sure I can count myself among the first). The supervisor I was transferred to said he would pass on my feedback, and made sure to get the clear details from me. If a few other people would give the same feedback, perhaps… I don’t know… something might happen? Like, someone will at least try to figure out what went wrong? I don’t know.

Right, that’s all I have to say, at least until my order arrives or gets lost. I’m exhausted!

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Mine is saying it’ll be shipped eventually, but they don’t know when. Good being in the UK, innit?

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Has anyone actually watched their copies yet? If so, how’s the quality?

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Mine said exactly the same thing, and it still does. If you get onto the live chat and persevere with the agent (they’re likely to believe the system at first), you’ll discover it isn’t true. (That’s assuming you don’t just want to take my word for it, of course.) The listing from which we pre-ordered isn’t even there anymore; now it’s just those three sellers charging c. $45 (plus tax and UK delivery).

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Is this a dodgy release, then?

I’ve ordered plenty from amazon US to the UK and never had an issue - and why would it have sold already and just be private sellers?

The fact it was NTSC only reusing existing art assets is maybe a red flag - surely there would be no benefit to region-locking a dvd release like this in 2024?

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I got my two copies in the mail on Thursday. My 4 year old and I watched the first four episodes. He was scared but loved them.

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Is it just episodes or are there any bonus features?

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It’s just episodes.image

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Got an email yesterday giving an expected delivery of April 5th to April 10th, so we shall see.

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After all that, I got the email too (and rightly so, if you did). I was about to launch into details about whether I’m going to be able to cancel my other order, but really, that interests no one else. Every live-chat I did came to the conclusion that my original order wouldn’t ship… it’s all just too ridiculous.

Concerning legitimacy of the item, if there’s nothing wrong the quality (as no one has suggested there is), I see no reason to think the release isn’t official - just crazy in terms of distribution. Everything Amazon.com recommends off the back of the purchase (80s cartoons and, for some reason, Hallmark mystery movies) is Region 1 encoded, just as every DVD in the few shops round the corner from me that still sell them is Region 2 encoded. That’s just standard, isn’t it?

I see the original listing is available once again, at the price of $39.99 that showed up within it hours of it becoming available (the fastest of us were able to get it cheaper). That’s reassuring. My older posts must look a bit silly now, or at least they will when those overseas orders ship, which I now believe that they will. Honestly, if you (that is, anyone, no one in particular) had participated in those live chats, and you’d wanted to relay helpful information, you’d have posted the same.

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I was comparing the first episodes of this new set to the Australian PAL release from a few years back. Most episodes of the US version look blurry.

Unfortunately, the Australian set only included episodes 1 to 13 and, as far as I know, no more sets were released.

Comparison:

US DVD:

image

PAL DVD:

image

US DVD:

image

PAL DVD:

image

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A full two weeks after release, and after a period of it being unavailable, my item has finally shipped. I would hope this means other international pre-orders are now being fulfilled.

I didn’t pay any attention to the Amazon reviews before the question of quality came up here, but now I see that there are comments about poor quality over there. ‘Disappointing but all we got’ just about sums up a lot of things these days, really. :expressionless: Opinions of the precise level of poorness vary somewhat, perhaps depending at least partly on the quality of the viewer’s TV. It’s a half-baked release which has had the minimum effort put into it, just to make a few extra bucks alongside the movie release (comparatively few, anyway - it’s massively overpriced for what it is). The blurb (re-used, like the artwork) is written for people who want any old thing that seems to belong in their Ghostbusters collection, mentioning Egon twice, Slimer once, and ‘an all-new [nameless] Ghostbusters team’ only in the last couple of lines when they hope to have won over the potential buyer (to put the most sceptical spin possible on it :wink:). I don’t really like that, but it’s not worth getting upset over. All you ever really see of the case anyway is the spine, which blu-ray.com shows me is nice enough.

Meanwhile, my opinion of Amazon customer services has changed somewhat. I still think they’re dedicated people who try to help as much as they possibly can. The trouble is that they don’t know the answers to anything complicated, which is not their fault - they should have access to the right information and don’t - so they might well end up looking for solutions to a problem they don’t fully understand. I was reminded, on my last outing there, of a time years ago when I got into a situation of being passed on to more and more agents for something that only needed passing on to some kind of IT department and/or superior decision-maker. Having forgotten all about that, I used the service this time in the hope of getting, and sharing, the kind of answers I’d have liked to see here myself. Ah well, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. :roll:

In the end, I’ll be happy to have any full series DVD. It’ll look much nicer on my shelf than the bootleg edition, and some episodes might even look a little nicer on my not-super-modern TV. :stuck_out_tongue: