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Post by mattpricetime on Mar 26, 2021 1:16:50 GMT -5
I've been looking into this and i haven't gotten a firm answer and i've seen some major contradictory statements by people with claimed insider information. So I'm letting everyone know that it seems the fact there is a change is happening even though i'm not sure to what extent it is.
As I talked before AT&T wants to get rid of excess divisions and in the home media department we know there was problems there, namely that there was the lazier main brand Warner Home Video that sent to stores and the seemingly ran better Warner Archive which sold online. I think it's looking apparent the corporate layout that Warner Archive existed in is something that got hit in the reorganization.
Now the main figure of question here is George Feltenstein. Sources said he got let go of in the layoffs but some were saying he was staying on in a consultant role. (aka from contract to freelance) Others are saying he's involved at all any more. I'm not entirely sure who to believe here, but the next Warner Archive podcast is supposedly going to reveal more of this.
Now bluntly as much as I and probably others here have enjoyed the Warner Archive as it exists let's not dismiss the fact the the main home video department it is attached to most certainly needed a change. I'm sad if the Warner Archive people aren't involved in that change but we have to wait and see if that's for better or for worse. And mind you the long term fate of that may not even be set in stone yet.
The WBshop (which for the record WB doesn't own it's just a license that's had three different owners in the last 12 years) is apparently going under. But WB's MOD system doesn't appear to be ending. Namely because they have April releases and this month WB had the 3d bluray for Wonder Woman 1984 and the 4K alt version of Batman v Superman come out at archive level instead of retail. Both of which would be pretty stupid things to do if they were ending the program. Why release things that are going to not exist anymore in weeks?
Also i'm going to call a spade a spade here and allude to that in practical speaking the MOD dvd level is the cheapest way for WB to make money on discs nowadays. Warner Archive has taken on many of shows and movies WHV gave up on. You might as well pull the plug on the whole physical side of the home media department instead. But there's the other issue, bluray. Warner Archive's blurays weren't made on demand, they were made in smaller numbers than WHV but they still took up space in warehouses. Under Feltenstein these last several years WA's has majorly been pumping out blurays more than first time archive stuff to dvd. I'm not going to be surprised if the major reason WB decided to rearrange their business around is because they saw them mostly as a division releasing stuff on the format most consumers passed on. If to save money they ditch a format, I doubt it's going to be dvd or digital hd that they consider ditching given they are most practical and cheap to produce.
So if the future rearrangement is to just have one division that does both in store and mod releases without separate offices and management, that may not be so bad as long as someone competent runs it. I don't think this is doomsday in terms of "we're never getting more scooby or other cartoons again on disc!" but the system by the end of the year I think is going to be rather different.
Also note so far most of the things the Warner Archive released that Warner Home Video decided to put on retail releases were nearly all Hanna Barbera cartoons. So here at Scooby Addicts I think we're probably good at least part of the way.
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Edit: On The George Feltenstein thing. I've seen another post by someone claiming insider information that says the thing about George staying on as a consultant, was considered but ended up not happening. This would be seemingly confirmed by DW Ferranti making a tweet with the hashtag #LastWacStanding meaning that he's the only one of the three staying on in some form. Mind you Matt Patterson described this upcoming podcast as "we recorded a Last Episode of the #WarnerArchive Podcast — for a while at least." Him and Ferrtani are making jokes about it, i doubt they'd be doing that if they were both done for.
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Post by Ark on Mar 27, 2021 10:32:52 GMT -5
POD discs are only DVD quality and scratch very easily. I'd be more willing to purchase them if they were blu-ray and less scratchable.
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Post by mattpricetime on Mar 31, 2021 16:05:45 GMT -5
I think someone made a goof and left an important piece of information out of the rumors. The Cartoon Network shop is literally closing today. It frankly says so right on it. WBShop is just calling it a close out sale with no disclaimer, which is usually what it's called when one management leaves and a new era starts. Obviously with the proper context that most of AT&T's choices have been to combine previously separate operations. In which case it more likely is that they are ditching some of the smaller shops in favor of one bigger WBshop in the future. Now it also may be that originally they did plan to eliminate the WBshop as a whole but some of Amazon's recent games made them change their mind. But I admit I tried being nice and just trusting the people saying WBshop was done had done their proper research and in which case they may have been wrong haha. But we should have our answer by tomorrow morning as i think the shop's contracts are all up today. If any of them simply aren't there tomorrow, we'll know who was right.
Also take note of the different legal crawls on the sites:
Current WBshop WB Shop is owned and operated by Araca Merchandise L.P. under license from Warner Bros. Consumer Products Inc. Araca Merchandise L.P., United States, is solely responsible for the site's content and all aspects of your purchase. ™ & © 2018 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Current DCshop © 2021 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved.
The DC logo and all DC characters and related elements © & TM DC.
All sales are made by WBShop.com Inc.
Current CNShop
CartoonNetworkShop.com is operated under a license from Cartoon Network by Araca Merchandise L.P., United States, which is solely responsible for the site's content and all aspects of your purchase.
© 2021 All Rights Reserved.
Notice that WBshop and CNshop are having closeout sales, DCShop is not and check out this WBShop.com Inc, that's clearly new with nothing about it on current shop. Wanna bet that might change tomorrow?
Edit: for comparison here's what TCMShop has
©2021 DirectToU, LLC Direct2U logo DirectToU, LLC is the seller of all TCM merchandise and is solely responsible for all aspects of your purchase. TM & © 2021 Turner Classic Movies, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All Rights Reserved.
Obviously that shop is being ran by a different merchant than WBShop or CNShop were. I bet the DCShop contract ended first.
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Post by Ark on Mar 31, 2021 18:36:48 GMT -5
Oh dang! Great info.
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Post by mattpricetime on Apr 1, 2021 7:01:01 GMT -5
And hooo boy they did pull a switch on an unexpected shift this morning. Warner Archive apparently now has it's own "shop" on Amazon itself. That's one way to save money and ensure Amazon's games won't affect them. So if this is the case Wbshop may still go bye bye at some point today. But we will see.
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Post by Doo on Apr 1, 2021 10:12:49 GMT -5
That would be crazy if they shut down WBShop!
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Post by Doo on Apr 1, 2021 13:30:42 GMT -5
WBShop's site has now been completely deleted and just redirects to a generic page not found site.
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Post by Ark on Apr 2, 2021 0:44:10 GMT -5
mattpricetime Dang! You were right. There was stuff marked way down... it makes sense, sadly. No Scooby stuff on sale anyway though, for anybody feeling like they missed out. WB has been doing POD DVDs on Amazon and it's probably way cheaper than them doing it themselves.
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Post by mattpricetime on Apr 2, 2021 2:28:36 GMT -5
Okay, so let's just round out today's developments for everybody playing along a home.
1. Cartoon Network's shop is done for completely.
2. WBShop is down and may be done with. Some of the emails people are receiving from the skeleton crew and automated sources are still linking to it, even though it appears someone else bought the domain already....no one apparently wanted the Cartoon Network one lol.
3. Warner Archive now has an official shop setup on Amazon. Which for those confused given that Amazon is ending it's Create Space and sending independent creators out in the cold, think of it as like Amazon is the landlord. WB is running the sales, and their distributor is sending you the discs. Amazon is basically just hosting them instead of actually making them themselves.
4. Matt Patterson and DW Ferranti are both leaving Warner Archive. Technically as of today they are both departed.
5. George Feltenstein's status is still not clear. For someone who is supposedly also gone he knows alooooot and is talking alooooot about Warner releases in 2022 and 2023. If he is going he is most certainly in contact with his successor. Heck there's a letter on the podcast that said he was thankful George was sticking around and George didn't correct him. And this was recorded on March 23rd, months after George supposedly was downsized.
6. Warner Archive as of right now isn't planned to be stopped, but will obviously have a change in management.
For those unaware the previous set up was that Warner Archive was a small team that existed outside Warner Home Video, where Warner Home Video had to pass on something before Warner Archive had the option to work with it. Given that as we say over and over, AT&T wants to merge these smaller teams into a more unified companies. With this context it's not that surprising they'd want to do that there.
This is my speculation but the most logical idea here is that the new Warner Home Video is going to probably consider the Made-on-Demand idea that Warner Archive used to do, as just a normal part of their strategy. Given it is less expensive than replicating discs for stores, i wouldn't be surprised if AT&T considers the process as a way to continue to make money if the physical discs in store thing dies.
I will also caution people again to remember though that for these last several years most of Warner's blurays were through Warner Archive. WHV's bluray numbers have been declining pretty fast and I wouldn't be surprised if it was Warner Archive's management that were its primary backers. You may notice the last two months where Patterson or Ferranti's presence was still there are very bluray heavy. If Warner Home Video takes over Warner Archive's releases, let's not act surprised if all of a sudden their blurays decrease.
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Post by Ark on Apr 2, 2021 12:43:55 GMT -5
Dang. I hope POD blurays become a thing then. Are POD DVDs encryption-protected? If not, it's fully legal to rip them to the computer before they get all scratched up, and that gives you a licensed DRM-free copy. Dang... never thought of that before.
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Post by mattpricetime on Apr 2, 2021 12:59:51 GMT -5
There is BD-R format but Warner has never officially released anything on BD-R. Every Warner Archive bluray was replicated. They don't make as many as they would for stores, but they still make an inventory. If they care about bluray enough maybe they'd make that shift. The MOD dvds just have a small store in case of accidents. It's probably only like less than ten of each. I know because once when the machines were sticking out the wrong disc on one item, they sent me one of those copies of the title from that stock.
I believe Warner Archive's MOD dvds have always been on a propriety disc, and some people had problems ripping from them. I'm not sure if the ones when Amazon burned them by themselves were on those same discs but the ones from WBShop were. But according to the guys who run TVShowsOnDvd.com, Amazon hadn't actually been doing their burning for studio MODs for quite a while and all those discs were made by AlliedVaugh, the same people who were doing the WBShop discs. At least in terms of manufacturing. WBshop and Amazon would send you different type of cases though.
Personally so far I have yet to see any Warner Archive disc that worked when I got it stop working or show deterioration. My oldest was made in 2010. I've had to replace a lot of store bought pressed dvds by Warner over the years. As it appears they were using one model of disc a lot in the 2000s, that rot after so many years.
I stopped ordering from WBShop because this latest distributor seemed to send them in ways that didn't always make it to my house safe and sound. I've been using Amazon and not had any faulty discs arrive so far at least.
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Post by mattpricetime on Apr 2, 2021 13:14:02 GMT -5
Also for the record, the TCM site still has all the Archive releases on it too. In their case though I think they order a stock from the distributor rather than making them as ordered. You can often find several at any time being listed as "backorder" over there. They probably just have scheduled times to order new copies of whatever sold out.
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Post by Ark on Apr 2, 2021 13:35:11 GMT -5
Amazon ships cheaply (sometimes without air pockets even), but never statistically risky. It's annoying, but their return and replacement policies are unmatched if something does come even dented a bit. The impression I have of MOD/POD discs is an old impression and it's very possible that the technology has gotten better. That said, I'd be far more excited about it if I knew I had or could make a digital copy too. I don't have many qualms about breaking CSS encryption for making an otherwise legal copy of a disc I own, but it would be a nice bonus if that even weren't a roadblock.
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Post by mattpricetime on Apr 2, 2021 13:52:11 GMT -5
Back when the program started a lot of people were skeptical of them expecting them all to just stop working after a few years. Obviously cheaper dvd-r like you buy on a Walmart or Target shelf have issues like that, but they at least did pay for a customized disc format for it, and so far it seems to hold up. Will that always be the case? I don't know. But some people fear mongered there was going to be a massive failure event since 2009, and in 2021 it still hasn't happened. That's not to say some discs were no doubt sent out bad over those years. But that can happen with any disc.
Personally i think someone on the track from WBshop left a lot of packages in too hot of an environment that probably wrecked some of them. Books and other dvds had a tendency to arrive feeling pretty hot at that house. I moved since my last WBshop order, but now there's no WBshop to order from to compare to lol.
WHV did put out some cartoon announcements this week. The New Animaniacs and Primal are getting first season releases. Primal is getting a blu, Animaniacs isn't. Hopefully they get a rythem eventually for the stuff that got stalled. With Scooby Doo and Guess Who and New Animaniacs getting first season releases I hope the new shows are going to come to disc at a decent pace. But when and how will they finish out the likes of Be Cool Scooby Doo, New Looney Tunes, The Tom and Jerry Show, Bunnicula, etc? And will some of them be in stores by the time they do? We will see.
Sadly no one asked any animation questions on the last Warner Archive podcast. So nothing to speculate on there Hanna Barbera or otherwise.
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Post by Ark on Apr 2, 2021 19:31:01 GMT -5
Come to think of it, even studio-produced DVDs were never supposed to last forever. Just by their construction, they do a lot better than tape and such though. They do fine in normal climates, stored vertically. I've only heard of disc rot with discs in very poor conditions.
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