Hoby on DVD

If any of you guys internet boogie over to iOffer.com, you'll see that a small number of vendors are selling DVD sets of the complete TRACKDOWN. Not meaning to rhyme (despite being a theatre lyricist), but since the eBay crackdown on unauthorized videos, iOffer is the place to go for sets of things that haven't yet had a commercial release, or (like I SPY) are slipping out of print. The majority of these sets are offered fairly cheaply. In most cases, the originating "complete set" of any such video is the source all the bootleg vendors use (since the disks are not copy protected, they're easily duplicated; and since the preservation is digital, there's no generation loss from copy to copy), so look for the cheapest price and/or the best deal.

The I SPY set of course is bootlegged from the official box set releases most of us have.

However, TRACKDOWN, like most of the never-released sets, is taken from recordings made of broadcasts and perhaps second and third generation dubs of studio or affiliate masters.

In most cases, the more recent the series, the better the video quality -- though there are some surprisingly excellent vids of obscure, older things out there, owing to their having been rebroadcast on specialty cable stations.

I've only sampled a few eps of the TRACKDOWN set (mine, like a lot of such sets, came merely as numbered disks, no episode title listing except on each disk's menu, no casing) -- but the quality is not horrible, considering that there's been no rebroadcast in recent memory and the source videos (which seem to be tape) are likely quite old. Sharpness and degree of generation loss vary from episode to episode, but so far none of it's unwatchable. The bad news, sort of, is that it really doesn't transcend its era. I have to assume that Hoby Gilman's character (and our Bob's performance) got richer as it went on, but the few early episodes I sampled render Hoby a very generic hero, and I haven't (yet) seen in Culp the dash and the spark that would be evident in the OUTER LIMITS eps. and the feature films he did in the gap between TRACKDOWN and I SPY.

Then again, I have a LONG way to go before I can offer an opinion that's genuinely informed. And you can't binge on this stuff or your brain will leak out of your ears AND you'll go to hell for neglecting your neglectables. So stay tuned ...