Just to let folks know...Doug and I have gotten into the situation, and have
been working with both WB and SFC to straighten the situation out. WB has
finally backtracked the problem, and will be taking steps shortly, as in the
coming week or two, to fix it and begin the process of providing new (and
proper) widescreen copies.

There will be some delay on the physical delivery of the tapes, because the
original prints are all in cold storage, and you literally have to allow them
time to defrost before you can run them through, and then there's the
duplication time involved...and we haven't yet determined if new copies will be
provided from S2 ep 1 and on in that order, or if they'll try to nail the next
ones up in the airing schedule to get the corrected versions on the air
sooner...but either way, we have been given assurances that the problem is now
being dealt with.

SFC has been very helpful and patient in this situation, and it looks as if
there was an error at the duplicating lab contracted by WB, literally a case of
loading the wrong prints into the system, because the S5 eps are in proper
widescreen, so we're looking at errors in S2-4 only.

To further assure that these errors are not perpetuated, we will have teams of
Democratic and Republican observers present to...oh, wait, sorry, wrong crisis.


jms

(jmsatb5@aol.com)
(all message content (c) 2000 by
synthetic worlds, ltd., permission
to reprint specifically denied to
SFX Magazine)

>*60%* of the series, they screwed up!?!?!?!
>
>I would ask if this would affect the non-existent DVDs...

No. Let me repeat: they chose the wrong versions from which to make the
transfers. They stuck the regular prints rather than the lbs copies *that
exist already*. It's not nothing to do with the dvd situation, because the
original widescreen are in the vault, they just pulled the wrong ones for the
SFC transfer (as I understand it).

jms

(jmsatb5@aol.com)
(all message content (c) 2000 by
synthetic worlds, ltd., permission
to reprint specifically denied to
SFX Magazine)

>Does this mean that the loss of picture and sound quality will also be
>addressed for the corrected eps? S1, while technically might have
>been proper widescreen, didn't have the picture and audio quality of
>the 4:3 copies that TNT ran.

I had that conversation today. They know my feelings about it.

jms

(jmsatb5@aol.com)
(all message content (c) 2000 by
synthetic worlds, ltd., permission
to reprint specifically denied to
SFX Magazine)