Alias Smith & Jones Seasons 2

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.

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.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 31 reviews  4.3 out of 5 stars