Don't waste your time. That's exactly what I did. I regret doing that because it took a lot of time and money and all of that will go down the drain once all 12 sets are out.
I would agree with XRaffle. When I tried to set up a high-end digital videography station several years back, it took a lot of time and didn't provide particularly rewarding results. I went to the extent of purchasing an old high-rez, low-noise, studio quality VHS playback system (real cheap even 4 years ago) and constructed the most high-performance media workstation from components that could be purchased 4 years ago. Despite having wonderful hardware, the software available for under $1000 (much of it free, actually) was just not up to the job. It took a lot of fiddling with video ADC/multimedia drivers even to get a reasonably clear, moderately well synchronized transfer. The synchronized part comes in, because to get optimal digitization on the video and audio - at least at that time - they had to be digitized separately, modified with a variety of filters to optimize the signal, then recombined. All-in-all - it was much more work than it was worth, especially since when starting with a commercial VHS tape, the resolution is very low in comparison to an even moderately well preserved archival film positive. My hope had been to get all the pieces working, then create an automation script so I could pop in a tape of 3 shorts and a blank DVD-R, then return an hour later with a finished DVD-R. Given all the custom fiddling required depending on the quality of a given VHS short, there was no way to come close to this level of automation.
To close out the year, here are the current standings in the Amazon sales stats:
Amazon.com Sales Rank: #383 in DVD (See Bestsellers in DVD)
Popular in these categories: (What's this?)
#1 in DVD > Comedy > Parody & Spoof > Three Stooges
#16 in DVD > Comedy > Series & Sequels
#35 in DVD > Comedy > Television
Clearly, its on its downhill side of its sales peak when compared to the stats from 3 weeks ago:
http://threestooges.net/forums/index.php?topic=2013.msg12862#msg12862DVD Set 1 is holding its own in the "Three Stooges" and "Series & Sequels" categories (big surprise), but its standings in "Television" and the general listing are now roughly twice what they were 3 weeks ago. Clearly, at this point, the new DVD Set release (coming at the earliest possible time - say early Feb) is unlikely to significantly effect the general sales figures for DVD Set 1.
Of course, the sales metrics most likely to influence the decision of when - and IF - the next sets are to come are the unit sales and net profit per unit. These sales standings don't really tell us much about that. If their margins are big (lots of profit/unit), then the profit making potential of the product is very long-lasting, even for relatively low but persistent unit sales (think Apple, Inc. computers). If the margins are slim (likely given how low they've priced these sets), then the bulk of the profits are confined to those times when unit sales are high. Given nearly all corporations now-a-days run off accumulated debt, getting profits sooner rather than later is very important (Apple's high cash-on-hand enables them to bail themselves out, when necessary to preserve profits). Unless Sony has some special sales campaign in the works, it's likely DVD Set 1 has already completed most of its peak sales time. This means the bulk of the 1st year profits to be had on this set will have been had within the next few weeks. Acting before the interest in this first set has receded is more likely to ensure the next set will be able to reach a peak rapidly to help them more quickly recoup the cost of production. It's also possible a new release will bring more attention to the series in general and help to provide a brief boost in sales of DVD Set 1 as well.
I don't know how Amazon's sales figures relate to brick-n-mortar DVD resellers like WalMart and Best Buys. I assume Sony is getting a significant revenue stream via these venues. It's hard to know how Internet sales patterns for something like this Stooge DVD Set relate to sales in these other outlets. I'd guess the sales peaks tend to be less steep and a little more spread out, because most events tend to move more quickly on the net.
I say "IF" above, because all this is predicated on their earned profit on DVD Set 1 being sufficiently large to motivate continuing the series. I certainly hope it has been, as I'll be really bummed out if Set 1 is the one and only issue of this new, beautifully re-mastered Stooge collection.
I most certainly could be wrong given I have no idea what internal issues inside Sony caused the the protracted delay in the actual release of DVD Set 1, but I'm assuming a significant portion consisted of the time it took either to finish off the licensing arrangements with the Stooge heirs and/or adjust internal production staffing to handle this "new" series. Hopefully, those were one-time tasks, and a schedule was worked out to more expediently turn out the follow-on sets. Perhaps they even assigned staff to continue the transfer, clean-up, and DVD mastering process, so the DVDs would be ready for release, once the marketing department determined what the optimal release schedule would be based on sales figures of set 1. My guess from other pre-90's TV and film serials is they will likely release a new set every 4 - 6 months. That would put us in a late Feb - late April 2008 release time for the next set. Release announcements can precede the actual release date by a very broad time range, but the average is generally 1 - 2 months. Even if the release turns out to be on the long end of the typical range (6 months), then its possible we'll not see the release of set 2 announced before March.
If we get to mid-February and still have not even heard RUMORS of when the next remastered DVD Set will be released, then its time to despair this series may not be a series at all.
If we can eventually expect 3 DVD sets/year, that will mean all 12 should be out before manufacturer's stop turning out DVD players, as locoboymakesgood points out. It was 6 years between the introduction of the first home DVD players (very late 1996) and end of the reign of VHS as the primary pre-recorded format (mid-2003 - DVD rentals first outstrip VHS rentals - resellers stop selling pre-recorded VHS tapes). Given how information technology trends continue to accelerate, it won't surprise me if that time drops to 3 - 4 years. With the move to HD-DVD/BluRay having started in earnest last year, that means we have until about 2010. This is likely to be accelerated by the over-the-top popularity of large, flat-screen, HD-capable TVs over the last year or so. If Sony doesn't get a move on, they'll not be able to put out even half of the 12 DVD Sets before retail stores stop carrying pre-recorded DVDs.
