Pre-Order Baseball: A Film By Ken Burns Fully Restored in High Definition Blu-ray Available for Preorder (1 Viewer)

[Ronald Epstein]

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[Robert Crawford]

Finally on Blu-ray! Instant buy for this Yankee fan.

 

[The Obsolete Man]

I've been meaning to give this a rewatch, now I'll have an excuse.

 

[Robert Crawford]

I've been meaning to give this a rewatch, now I'll have an excuse.

I wonder if PBS will re-broadcast it like they did with 'The Civil War'?

 

[Robert Harris]

Finally on Blu-ray! Instant buy for this Yankee fan.

You and Kubrick!

 

[The Obsolete Man]

I wonder if PBS will re-broadcast it like they did with 'The Civil War'?

Wouldn't surprise me. Isn't the release date close to the beginning of baseball season, when interest would be at its peak?

 

[Josh Steinberg]

This is a nice surprise!

 

[Cranston37+]

Just in time for what has become my annual viewing.

 

[The Obsolete Man]

First off, this was delayed until June, so adjust your calendars accordingly.

Second, apparently this restoration already aired in HD on the MLB network.

And, it was a crop and chop job. To be fair, the Blu specs did list "Widescreen", but many people were hoping that was just a usual pre-release screw-up. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to be.

That dampens my enthusiasm considerably. This fell from a day 1 purchase to "Meh, if it's cheap".

I don't care how much even Burns himself tries to sell and minimize crop and chop in the attached video, you're still losing information that was already there and (presumably) screwing up the framing of the live video footage.





Well, at least they did Civil War correctly before succumbing to the crop and chop devil. I hate to think what's going to happen to Jazz, though.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Last week, I changed the release date on our Pre-Order Listing to June 8th.

 

[Robert Crawford]

First off, this was delayed until June, so adjust your calendars accordingly.

Second, apparently this restoration already aired in HD on the MLB network.

And, it was a crop and chop job. To be fair, the Blu specs did list "Widescreen", but many people were hoping that was just a usual pre-release screw-up. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to be.

That dampens my enthusiasm considerably. This fell from a day 1 purchase to "Meh, if it's cheap".

I don't care how much even Burns himself tries to sell and minimize crop and chop in the attached video, you're still losing information that was already there and (presumably) screwing up the framing of the live video footage.





Well, at least they did Civil War correctly before succumbing to the crop and chop devil. I hate to think what's going to happen to Jazz, though.

Isn't Civil War in 1.78 ratio? So is Baseball going to be the same?

 

[Lord Dalek]

Baseball's a bit more problematic since its largely old film and pre-1989 videotape (IIRC it ends with Eckersley's blown save) output to film instead of still photos that were zoomed in already.

 

[phurren]

It may be a silly question, but will this be of interest if you don't know anything about baseball?

 

[The Obsolete Man]

Isn't Civil War in 1.78 ratio? So is Baseball going to be the same?

Civil War, IIRC (and I checked with some screencaps) still had the evil soul stealing black bars on the sides. So it was still somewhere in the neighborhood of the original 4x3.

 

[Mike Frezon]

It may be a silly question, but will this be of interest if you don't know anything about baseball?

Tough question to answer, Peter. Welcome to the forum!

But if you have any interest in American history from the mid-1800s to the present, Burns always keeps his subjects in context with what was going on in the country politic, culture, etc.

I would think it would certainly help to have a knowledge and appreciation of the game but, who knows, maybe you would after viewing this excellent documentary! It is wonderful storytelling.

 

[Osato]

Tough question to answer, Peter. Welcome to the forum!

But if you have any interest in American history from the mid-1800s to the present, Burns always keeps his subjects in context with what was going on in the country politic, culture, etc.

I would think it would certainly help to have a knowledge and appreciation of the game but, who knows, maybe you would after viewing this excellent documentary! It is wonderful storytelling.

100% agreed!

 

[The 1960's]

First off, this was delayed until June, so adjust your calendars accordingly.

Second, apparently this restoration already aired in HD on the MLB network.

And, it was a crop and chop job. To be fair, the Blu specs did list "Widescreen", but many people were hoping that was just a usual pre-release screw-up. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to be.

That dampens my enthusiasm considerably. This fell from a day 1 purchase to "Meh, if it's cheap".

I don't care how much even Burns himself tries to sell and minimize crop and chop in the attached video, you're still losing information that was already there and (presumably) screwing up the framing of the live video footage.





Well, at least they did Civil War correctly before succumbing to the crop and chop devil. I hate to think what's going to happen to Jazz, though.

I recorded Baseball: A Film By Ken Burns Fully Restored in High Definition off the MLB Network when it first aired on November 4, 2020 and I thought it looked fabulous. It didn't look like a crop and chop job to me though I'm not certain about what you mean when you use that term. When I watch classic tv series on METV and many other retro networks that upconvert 4:3 aspect ration to partial 16:9 some of that to me is crop and chop. You know, when the tops of people's heads appear to be chopped off. The worst example of that are the old Ed Sullivan DVD sets. Just awful. I didn't see that on the MLB Network's airing of Baseball. I don't claim to understand all the tech talk and specs about this but it is a definitive improvement over the original. I can tell you that I couldn't get more than halfway through Part 1 'Our Game' (1840-1900) because even though it was DVR'ed, it seemed as if there was a commercial every 8 to 11 minutes rendering it unwatchable for me. That's why I'm so excited to purchase this. I too am curious if PBS will air it.

It is currently at $73.63 from DeepDiscount compared to close to 90 bucks at Amazon.

 

[Angelo Colombus]

My local PBS station has recently shown some of the episodes and I watched them for the first time and liked it. Not a sports person so I never did watch the series when it first came out but now that I have seen a few plus a big fan of Ken Burns I might get the set.

 

[The 1960's]

As Mike Frezon wrote above it is wonderful storytelling. How could anything by Ken Burns not be? I hope that folks who are not baseball fans assume this will be of little interest to them. Baseball is a culture of our national pastime.

 

[Lord Dalek]

I'm still waiting for Eleventh Inning just to see how hard my Giants get shafted again =/.