Search - Sherlock Holmes - TV Collection on DVD

Sharp, but has compression artifacting.

Paul J. Mular | San Carlos, CA USA | 02/18/2005

(3 out of 5 stars)

"It seems that all of the Sherlock Holmes 1954-55 TV show DVDs come from the same 16mm prints, so the main difference is in the DVD authoring.
This Laserlight edition is sharp but overly compressed. There is artifacting in almost every scene. The worst example is the episode "LADY BERYL", the backgrounds in stagnent scenes are alive with artifacting movement.
Compare this Laserlight copy to the Alpha/Gotham copy on their "TV Classics" (volume 1) and you will see the difference. The film used by Alpha/Gotham has the same splices, but the artifacting is very minimal, the backgrounds are not vibrating with artifacting.

Laserlight should have kept the DVD down to 4 episodes, or used dual layer technology for better DVD compression.

On the plus side, two episodes have not yet appeared on the seven Alpha/Gotham DVDs or the twenty episode Madacy set:
# 14 "THE FRENCH INTERPRETER" 01/17/55
# 35 "THE HAUNTED GAINSBOROUGH" 07/04/55
So it is worth picking this up to help complete your collection."