Topic: Best quality sliders DVDs ?
With sliders leaving Netflix I'm gonna pick up the DVDs which ones have the highest picture quality?
Re: Best quality sliders DVDs ?
I think the verdict was the ones released by Universal Home Video (starting in 2005 with the dual dimension season 1 & 2 release... ending in a release of all seasons individually in recent years) had the best quality. The quality I believe was said to be the same for the DVD re-releases of seasons in recent years as it was in the original releases.
The Mill Creek release in October of this year was lower quality (at a more affordable price). The file sizes are more compressed than they are on the Universal Home Video releases.
As an FYI, it doesn't appear that Sliders is leaving Netflix, but I guess we will know on Jan. 1. It is no longer listed in the "leaving netflix" articles that have come out lately.
- Jim_Hall
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Re: Best quality sliders DVDs ?
Yeah every release looks the same except the Mill Creek release from this year. I have a side by side screenshot comparison of the Mill Creek release vs the Dual Dimension set. You can see that here (middle of the review) http://slidecage.com/dvd/series/. Even the 2014 complete set looks just as good as the dual dimension set too.
Re: Best quality sliders DVDs ?
Thank you kindly, back to the foam if Netflix removes it
Re: Best quality sliders DVDs ?
In my opinion, every DVD set is equally terrible. The Universal box set's transfers are riddled with deinterlacing errors causing scanlines to appear throughout the image and that's in addition to a low bit rate where the master tapes were converted and compressed badly to fit on the discs, so under the scanlines are a blurry, indistinct image. (That said, I've only seen the Season 1 - 2 box set for Universal, but the latter releases just split the Season 1 - 2 box set into two separate releases and I doubt Season 3 and onward are any better.) That, in addition to having the episodes in the wrong order makes the entire product an insult to the fans.
The Mill Creek DVD set has even higher compression to fit the entire series onto fewer discs, resulting in an even blurrier, undetailed image and there's slight cropping of the image -- why, I can't fathom. But there aren't any deinterlacing errors, so the randomness of the scanlines is one less distraction and at least the episodes are in the right order.
The frustrating thing is this: the Pilot in the Universal DVD set looks good and looks even better when upscaled to 720p for an HDTV. Which means that the master tapes all the episodes of SLIDERS are in good shape and it's the compression to fit more episodes on fewer discs that's causing a decent 480p image to lose half its detail and clarity.
The best solution for SLIDERS would be to put put fewer episodes on more DVD discs or have the same number of episodes on blu-ray discs, using the higher storage capacity of blu-ray to avoid all the compression problems.
An alternate solution, and the one I currently use now, is to really lower the backlight on my HDTV so that the lack of detail is less glaring while watching the episodes. Another solution is to watch the episodes on a cathode ray tube TV where the low-res image will look just fine on a low-res CRT screen.
Since there is no good solution, I would just go with whatever is cheapest or whatever you already have.
Re: Best quality sliders DVDs ?
Just looked at "Rules of the Game" for some research and a popup made it very clear it will not be available after December 31.
Earth Prime | The Definitive Source for Sliders™
Re: Best quality sliders DVDs ?
Transmodiar wrote:
Just looked at "Rules of the Game" for some research and a popup made it very clear it will not be available after December 31.
Ugh, looks like you are right.
- Grizzlor
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Re: Best quality sliders DVDs ?
I would assume the best quality remains the first issue Universal DVDs, which are dirt cheap on Ebay. Granted they will take up a lot of shelf space, but if you're on this forum, odds are this is a key show for you.
Re: Best quality sliders DVDs ?
Good thing I have the full series ripped to ISOs for that rare occasion when I need to refer to the source material! 
Earth Prime | The Definitive Source for Sliders™
Re: Best quality sliders DVDs ?
It's back on Hulu, by the way.
Earth Prime | The Definitive Source for Sliders™
Re: Best quality sliders DVDs ?
Transmodiar wrote:
It's back on Hulu, by the way.
It never left 
Re: Best quality sliders DVDs ?
I bought the German blu-ray collection a few months ago. It's pretty good. The quality is standard definition, but comparable to the DVD versions. The episodes are also encoded in their correct order for seasons 1, 2 and 3. It's probably a bit expensive to import, but I'd recommend if you can find it for a reasonable price.
Re: Best quality sliders DVDs ?
I'm really surprised that people are ragging on the Mill Creek set. Yes, the quality is a bit lower, but I'm thrilled that someone finally cared enough to put the episodes into actual production order! None of the other methods of viewing the series -- other DVDs, streaming, broadcast reruns -- got this absolutely essential detail right.
Re: Best quality sliders DVDs ?
Thanks guys. I was trying to figure out if i should buy either the Universal or the mill creek dvd set. I own the original released dvd sets, (in the strange packages) and i got conserned that i was either missing episodes, or my quality was lower then the other sets. I also considered getting the mill creek since the box was smaller and selling the older sets.
Now im just going to keep the older sets as id rather have the quality, and i can deal with the out of order stuff. As long as they have all the episodes and the best quality i can get so far, i think im good.
thanks again.