Goodtimes Home Video does not guarantee a good time

As a rule growing up for someone like myself who lived off of old movies, if you rented a video and it started with this logo, you knew you were in for a troublesome experience:

Goodtimes Home Video...the king of public domain and obscure home video releases at cheap quality rates. From the KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park TV special to clip videos such as A Tribute To Lucy and classic features such as Charade and Royal Wedding, Goodtimes was one of those home video companies that always made me scratch my head and wonder how they always stuck around. Their transfers were usually analog from old analog video sources from old public domain prints. Every Goodtimes VHS I have seen has been recorded on LP mode. Most tapes are recorded on SP mode, which allow 2 hours of program on an average size cassette, allowing for superior video quality. By recording in LP mode, which allows 4 hours of program, about half of the amount of physical tape needs to be used. This had its downfalls. It meant low frequency sound and a much softer image, not to mention thick lines during seek mode on your VCR that made it difficult to scan through. Also, LP tapes have a higher rate of video dropout.

Through 2007, when the company finally folded, Goodtimes seemed to nudge its way into the DVD era, by releasing their older titles on DVD using the same video sources they used for their VHS. I was taken aback the other day when I went to the public library and decided to rent an old film for the evening. There on the rack was the DVD of "Royal Wedding", a public domain film that every video company and their Nanna has tried to release. Official releases from MGM exist as well, but the film is commonly seen on internet streaming sites, public television, VHS and DVD because anyone has the right to profit from it. I saw the Goodtimes Home Video logo before I saw anything else and decided that I was going to tolerate whatever transfer I received as it was a free rental. There on the front cover though, my friends, were the words used so liberally: Digitally Restored. "This I have to see" I told myself and popped it into my machine the minute I got home. Before the feature even started came a white text on black background disclaimer, and I'm paraphrasing here: "This film has been restored using the best possible elements."

The first frame came on, and my inner voice flipped into Claire Huxtable sternly saying "What have you done?" to the makers of this DVD. Spending many years in the film and video archive world, I have been able to identify analog video sources based on grain pattern, dropout quality, and video overhead quality. What I was seeing, based on the video line on the right and the grain pattern of the image, appeared to be a DVD of a D2 of a 1" C video source. The 1" soundtrack had not been calibrated before being transferred to the D2 and the result was a lot of pops and clicks on the DVD. Now I have not seen the official DVD of this film, but SURELY there exists a better "element" of the film than a D2 or 1". This is what we were looking at:

This opens my third eye. I don't mind people releasing films on home video and them being sub par quality if there are other versions available. If you can make a buck, and there are people willing to pay a few bucks as opposed to more than 10, go for it! But why lie? Blatantly, at that. Nothing was digitally restored for this film. There wasn't a computer used to color correct the image. Scratches weren't removed, the soundtrack wasn't cleaned. What exactly was done to fix this? And on top of that, why is the company claiming that they used the 'best elements' for this, as if it had accomplished some great feat by releasing a D2 of a public domain film on DVD!!! The people who would buy a film like this would know when they are being fed a bowl of doo-doo in the form of a home video. Shame on you Goodtimes Home Video! It's no wonder you folded!!!

Signed,
The Celluloid Avenger