Customer Reviews

Alias Smith And Jones: Seasons 2 & 3

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Updated on April 11, 2010.

I have not yet received the AS&J Seasons 2 and 3 DVD set that I ordered from Amazon (because the official release date has not yet arrived). However, I do have a copy of this set that I purchased at a brick and mortar store.

The video and audio quality is excellent! This is the first time that I've seen a bright, vivid, clear version of the second season opener "The Day They Hanged Kid Curry" since 1971! It is absolutely wonderful. The other episodes are great, too. The recordings on the DVDs appear to be the wonderfully remastered versions of the 50-minute episodes that Starz Encore Westerns aired on TV from 2005-2007.

Since the Amazon listing does not provide much detail at present, here's what the set contains. There are 35 episodes on 6 DVDs. All have 6 episodes per DVD except the first one, which include the 75-minute episode "The Day They Hanged Kid Curry." There are no "extras" on the DVDs. The DVDs are in three black plastic cases and the entire set is in a cardboard case. I think that the case graphics are gorgeous. There is a great picture of Heyes and Curry on the front (which can be seen at the website for Timeless Media Group, who was licensed from Universal Studios to put out the DVDs). On the back of the black cases, there is a short description of each episode. The descriptions are helpful, although they aren't always totally accurate (e.g., the blonde female character in "Only Three to a Bed" wasn't married as the box says). The show's description on the back on the main cardboard case also has some errors (e.g., AS&J originally aired on ABC, not NBC). But, this certainly does not take away from the wonderful DVDs.

"Alias Smith and Jones" is my favorite TV show of all time. I'm an original fan from 1971. The series is a wonderful mix of charm, action, humor, and wit. It has held up over time extremely well. I am very happy that all 50 episodes are now available on commercial DVD sets.

Thank you to Timeless Media Group and Universal Studios for this wonderful release. I'm sure that it will be a big hit with fans of "Alias Smith and Jones." I hope that this release and its availability at Amazon.com will cause new people to discover this wonderful show.

Edited on April 11, 2010: Now that I have had time to watch more of the DVDs, I have a few comments to add.

The second reviewer questioned whether these episodes were remastered. I believe that they are the remastered versions which aired on Starz Encore Westerns from 2005-2007 (except with more file compression, as I'll mention below). For example, take the scene from "Smiler with a Gun" where Heyes and Curry find Seth's body in the desert. In the original films, including the unremastered version airing online at Hulu (Hulu appears to be airing a remastered season 1, but unremastered seasons 2 and 3), there's a boom mike hanging over Heyes and Curry as they discuss the dead Seth. This boom mike is gone from the remastered episode that aired on Encore Westerns. It is also missing from the commercial DVDs, showing that they were remastered. However, even on the remastered prints, there are flaws in frames of the film in the stock desert footage; the remastering was not perfect and some episodes look better than others.

Also, it's obvious that the second season opener, "The Day They Hanged Kid Curry," was not remastered at the same time as the other episodes. This episode originally aired in a 90-minute timeslot and was not shown on Encore Westerns in 2005-2007, when they aired remastered versions of the 48 episodes that originally aired in 60-minute timeslots. "They Day They Hanged Kid Curry" that is on the commercial DVDs has very vivid colors (sometimes too vivid, which I compensated for by setting down the chroma on my TV), with more color saturation than the other episodes. It was remastered, but probably by a different person than remastered the other episodes. (By the way, I have 5 versions of this episode that were recorded from TV to VCR over the past 25 years and the version on the commercial DVD set is far better than any of them-with brighter colors and a sharper picture. For me, just getting a good version of "They Day They Hanged Kid Curry" was worth the price of the DVD set.)

In 2005, I recorded all of the 50-minute AS&J episodes at the highest quality homemade DVD mode from digital cable TV when they aired on Starz Encore Westerns. My personal recordings have a picture quality that is somewhat sharper than those on the commercial DVDs. As for the color and audio of the commercial DVDs, both are excellent, although I do occasionally see a faint purple band running vertically through the commercial versions on some episodes that I don't see in my own recordings from Encore (e.g., the initial chase scene in "The Posse That Wouldn't Quit"). This may be a compression artifact. I believe that commercial DVDs used the gorgeous remastered versions from Encore Westerns, but in order to fit 5 or 6 episodes onto a disc they compressed the file size to about 1.5 Gb. My recordings from Encore Westerns in highest quality homemade DVD mode are 3.8 Gb per 50-minute episode. On smaller screen TVs or computer screens or older lower quality TVs, the loss of sharpness is probably not obvious, but on a larger flat screen high definition TV it could be noticeable.

Incidentally, the AS&J season 1 DVDs, produced by Universal Playback and released in 2007, were 4 episodes per DVD, meaning less compression. I suspect that this is why the second reviewer observed them to have better picture quality than the seasons 2 and 3 DVD set.

When I learned that season 2 and 3 of Alias Smith and Jones was coming out on DVD, I was ecstatic!! I grabbed my credit card and went straight to Amazon to put in a pre-order. When I recieved my DVD set yesterday..........well......I was a bit disappointed. Although I am happy to have the shows on DVD, the packaging and treatment of this timelss Western classic is horrible.
First of all, the packaging is terrible! ASJ aired on ABC not NBC. There does not need to be a peacock on the top of the box--that is not the Universal Studios Logo, it is the NBC logo and although Universal and NBC are now part of the same company, the logos are definitely different. The notes on the dvds are not much better. Mistakes are made constantly. Possibly the worst mistake is not knowing which actor played which part. Pete Duel was not Kid Curry and to say that Roger Davis took over the role of Curry shows how little work and editing went into this project.
The menu does play the ASJ theme(the one used with the end credits), but instead of ending it at the end of the music, the track includes the Universal trademark music. When I heard this, I honestly thought that I had purchased a bootleg copy.
In fact, the entire set seems like a bootleg. It is definitely not up to the DVD set Universal produced in 2007.
The quality of "The Day They Hanged Kid Curry" was almost unwatchable. It looked as if they quickly transferred it from film to DVD, without any thought to re-mastering. The other episodes seem like the ones that aired on the Western Channel in 2005.
Although I am happy to have this series on DVD, I am extremely disappointed with both the packaging and the quality of the episodes. No one should pay over $20 for this set. If you taped the shows previously, you probably have better quality copies.

3.5 stars. While I'm glad to have the rest of this series, and while the episodes are watchable in terms of sound and picture quality, they were not cleaned up much, if at all (I am watching on a 42 inch LCD). I got my set for less than $20 at Sam's and so feel like I got a good deal in terms of what I paid. But I am disappointed in the picture quality overall. Though they cram a lot of episodes on each disc (and it is strange that the discs are not numbered), compression doesn't seem the big problem (slow drifting smoke doesn't present a lot of artifacts)--the problem is less-than-pristine prints. If you're a fan of the series, I'd recommend paying no more than $20 because the picture quality doesn't warrant more. But great to have these wonderful shows. This set isn't bad, and it's certainly better than having nothing, it's just hard to go from the season one set to this for me personally.

Treat this box set with caution despite the other (good) review. Firstly Season 2 was out in GB on Universal in 2006 when I bought Season 1. Unfortunately I didn't bother to buy Season 2 as I knew Pete Duel died part-way through shooting it. I wish I had as it was soon going for ridiculous prices as do lots of items in both film and music that sell poorly and are quickly deleted.

I bought this 2010-issued Region 1 set via Amazon Marketplace (from a supplier no longer advertising it here) as soon as I saw it. Though I know it's an official release, apart from the packaging and proper DVDs (as opposed to DVD-Rs), it has the quality of dodgy boot copies with no subtitles and only the original mono sound. It even has that boot smell (the boxes and ink on the labels it appears) which I've only ever come across of "Dark Skies" (which had never been out on DVD at the time) and "Land of the Giants" both of which were not legit. As an other reviewer says, when I first got it I thought it was a boot!

It's the picure quality that really lets it down though. The quality of the "lost" episode is appalling and almost unwatchable, being very blurred/soft with vastly over-saturated colours and brightness variations around the edges. It's sub-VHS and sub-TV broadcast quality. The other episodes, whilst better and watchable, do not compare with Series 1 quality, being still often too soft/blurred, sometimes with oversaturated colours and quite a bit of damage and sparklies evident. Even the picture and titles are a tad unsteady. Not much better than VHS-quality.

Episodes 2 onwards would not actually play on my decent quality multi-region upscaling Yamaha player (one episode went into a menu loop, whilst the picture on the others seized and broke up) but played on my Blu Ray deck which is not multi-region. The "interactive menus" stated on the box amount to a simple still menu (unlike Series 1 which had decent moving ones).

I would seriously suggest that unless you are desperate you do not buy this shoddy collection and instead await a proper Region 1 or 2 issue of Series 2 and 3. Perhaps all 3 series will be released in a box or on BD. Certainly do not pay any of the fancier prices asked on Marketplace for it. The 20GBP and I paid a few weeks ago was more than enough.

I was so excited to get this package. This is a wonderful old show and I can't stop watching it. The quality is pretty good, not as good as season one, but I was very satisfied. One thing I was hoping for were extras, interviews and possibly a tribute or a mention of Pete Duel's enormous talent and tragic death. No such luck, but the episodes are very entertaining. I still am not able to watch the Roger Davis episodes even though I appreciate the difficult situation he was placed in.
All and all this is highly recommended. Such fine fine television. Peter Duel is still as fresh and exciting today as he was back then. He MADE this show. Buy it and ENJOY!
IGNORE the mistakes on the sleeve of the disc set. I wish someone would have double checked and proof read this. Kind of adds insult to injury. This was the perfect time for Universal to make ammends regarding the callous treatment and insensitive way his death was handled by the network. That is my biggest complaint.

Five stars for the television show; 1 star for the packaging! Alias Smith and Jones is my favorite television show of all time and has been since I was 15. I haven't seen any of the episodes since they originally aired in 1971 so it was wonderful to view them all over again. Since I was a teenager at the time, I didn't realize how many stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood appeared on the show (Rudy Vallee, George Montgomery, Walter Brennan, Craig Stevens, Don Ameche, Cesar Romero, etc... - each a delight to see). I could go on and on with my thoughts about the program but I think this space is better used to say a few things about the DVD product itself. First: the print used of "The Day They Hanged Kid Curry" is not up to snuff. It's faded, has bad color balance and a lot of dirt and scratches. However, you have to bear in mind that this episode was probably supposed to air twice and, due to length, probably not in syndication. Therefore, the original print was probably not maintained as pristine as the rest of the series. Second: whoever wrote the liner notes on the back of the DVDs obviously never watched the show, nor did the person who proofread the liner prior to going to print. If they had watched the show, they would know that Roger Davis replaced Pete Duel as the Hannibal Heyes character (NOT Kid Curry), as written on the liner notes of Disc 4, episode 2 (The Biggest Game in the West). Third: the packaging itself is very bare bones - no extras, no fun photos, no interviews and the box itself is flimsy. It would've made the DVD set a little extra special if there was an interview with Ben Murphy and Roger Davis. What a missed opportunity! Forth: Academy Award winner Anne Baxter is NOT in the episode Shootout at Diablo Station as indicated on the liner notes - it is Anne Archer. Timeless Video/ Universal Studios/ NBC - you ought to be embarrassed! That liner notes writer and proofreader need to be reassigned to different jobs - or maybe even fired.

I am extremely disappointed that this DVD was rushed to market w/o the extras needed by many people to enjoy the shows. There are no closed caption or subtitles which were included in the first season videos. Many people NEED CC in order to follow the dialogue. Very disappointing, as Smith and Jones was one of the best western series produced IMO. Lots of action and humor.

I loved Alias Smith and Jones very much at the time, but the death of Pete Duel was a real blow. The Men That Corrupted Hadleyburg (Episode 18 of Season 2) was Pete Duel's last episode. The show was never the same after that. Roger Davis tried his best to replace Pete but to no avail. It is nice to have all the series available on disc now, but Season One is the set to get, which has 15 great episodes with Pete Duel and Ben Murphy as one of the most appealing pair of robbers since Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Finally, seasons 2 & 3 are out, but it was worth the wait. The quality is great given these shows are 40 years old (with the exception of "The day the hanged Kid Curry", it's just mediocre). I like how they listed the episodes on the front of each disc so there is no guessing involved. Reasonable price. Why can't they make good shows like this anymore?

I am also very happy they finally released the rest of the series. It is great to have them on dvd. I wanted to respond to one reviewer who said "The Day They Hanged Kid Curry" may not have a cleaned up print like the rest of the series that ran on encore a few years back. I have a beautiful copy of that extended episode taped off encore westerns about 15 to 20 years ago. Believe me it is far superior to what was released on this dvd set. Also the episodes while not bad quality are not as good as the ones I have taped off encore. I applaud timeless for releasing this gem to the fans but lets face it they are not the best at remastering old tv shows to dvd. Look at some of the "Checkmate" and "Riverboat" shows they have released and you will see what I mean. AS&J was such a great show probably the last really good tv western to come from the networks and it deserved a top notch release.