Topic: Public-Domain DVDs Question

[ILMM]

I hope this is the right place to ask this, but what I want to know is where do Public-Domain DVD companys get their material?
Regular dvds come from the owner's masters; and some more upscale companys say authorized by such-and-such; but where do
other places get the movies, tv shows, and shorts that they sell? And could I buy from the same source?

[shemps#1]

Well nowadays you can download and burn PD films and then sell them. I'd imagine that's what these companies do (on a mass scale).

[BeAStooge]

The initial sources were primarily 16mm prints, from libraries and television syndication packages.

In some cases, pd distibutors bootlegged official releases of pd titles. For example, when good quality copies of Abbott & Costello's AFRICA SREAMS (1949) and JACK AND THE BEANSTALK (1952) started turning up in the late 1990s, they were obviously duped from the restorations Image Entertainment released on laser discs produced by Bob Furmanek.

Over the past 10 years, there've been a lot of pd distributors bootleging from each other.

[ILMM]

Thanks! I've been wondering about this for a while and haven't been able find out anything on-line.
I've been thinking that considering that everyone complains about their quality, that if someone
took the time to restore their stuff that they would make a lot of money.

[Smaug]

Before the Colombia collections came out, I bought "The Three Stooges in Color", which was the 4 PD films restored (and colorized). They looked great (the restore, not so much the color), but I haven't looked at it since the "official" releases. Which is exactly what you're talking about, I guess. The thing I didn't like was the unnessesary "hosts" picking on our man Shemp. Here it is at Amazon-http://www.amazon.com/Three-Stooges-Color-Nick-Baskovitch/dp/B0007IO76S/ref=sr_1_50?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1302376006&sr=1-50
Your mileage may vary....



Edit: Can't spell for shit....

[Final Shemp]

Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett make a living out of mocking just about anything in sight.  I never took their ribbing on Shemp all that seriously because often their jabs at such things are very tongue in cheek.  In their RiffTrax for the film Daredevil, the trio pretty much tear Kevin Smith a new one in his cameo in the film, yet in an interview afterward, Kevin Murphy claimed it was nothing personal, just mocking him for a laugh.  Murphy also claimed Smith's Dogma was one of his all-time favorite films.  And Kevin Smith himself is an outed fan of Nelson, Murphy, and Corbett's previous television series Mystery Science Theater 3000.

However, using them as bumpers for Legend's Three Stooges DVD was a little out of place.  But Mike Nelson was under contract to Legend Films to use his cult status to boost sales of their colorized line by recording mocking commentaries for the films they released, so it's understandable why they used them.