RoboCop: The Series (Liberation Hall) Blu-ray Review
By Paul Rudoff on May. 29, 2022 at 6:10 PM in Home Video

Liberation Hall recently released RoboCop: The Series (1994) on Blu-ray. Read on to find out more about it...
[ SYNOPSIS ]
"Delta City" (the project OCP is trying to complete in the theatrical films) is now complete. Robocop/Alex Murphy (Richard Eden) is now working for the Metro South Police Precinct along with his partner, Lisa Madigan (Yvette Nipar), and a new set of supporting characters, including precinct head Sgt. Stan Parks (Blu Mankuma), technician Charlie Lippencott (Ed Sahely), an adopted orphan named Gadget (Sarah Campbell), and literal cybergirl Diana Powers/NeuroBrain (Andrea Roth). Starting with pilot episode (which uses an early script for RoboCop 2 as its basis), the series sees Robocop running into several new enemies including "Pudface" Morgan (James Kidnie), Dr. Cray Z. Mallardo (Cliff De Young), Commander Cash (Roddy Piper) and corrupt corporate executive Chip Chayken (John Rubinstein).
[ EPISODE INFORMATION ]
The five-disc set includes all 21 episodes (22, if the first episode is split into a two-parter) that aired in syndication from March 14th to November 21st, 1994. There is 10-seconds of blackness in the commercial break spots. The episodes appear to be unedited with all of the original music.
Disc 1:
01. "The Future of Law Enforcement" (1:30:17)
02. "Prime Suspect" (44:55)
Disc 2:
03. "Trouble in Delta City" (44:45)
04. "Officer Missing" (44:45)
05. "What Money Can't Buy" (44:34)
06. "Ghosts of War" (44:41)
07. "Zone Five" (44:44)
Disc 3:
08. "Provision 22" (44:30)
09. "Faces of Eve" (44:39)
10. "When Justice Fails" (44:38)
11. "The Human Factor" (44:39)
12. "Inside Crime" (44:33)
Disc 4:
13. "RoboCop vs Commander Cash" (44:57)
14. "Illusions" (44:43)
15. "Tin Man" (44:34)
16. "Sisters in Crime" (44:36)
17. "Heartbreakers" (44:45)
Disc 5:
18. "Mother's Day" (44:34)
19. "Nano" (44:44)
20. "Corporate Raiders" (44:53)
21. "Midnight Minus One" (44:43)
22. "Public Enemies" (44:36)
[ SPECIFICATIONS ]
The episodes have been cropped from 1.33:1 (4:3) to the 1.78:1 (16:9) aspect ratio. Audio languages include English (in uncompressed LPCM 2.0 Stereo). There are no subtitles.
The original aspect ratio for this show when it aired in 1994 was 1.33:1 (aka 4:3), which was the format of televisions at the time. There are, generally, two ways of reformatting a 4:3 TV show into 16:9 to fit modern TVs. (1) If it was shot on video, the top and bottom of the image will be cut off. I've seen this WAY too often on, ironically enough, "classic TV" stations. It's horrible and I can't stand it. (2) If it was shot on film, the picture could be re-matted. Without getting too technical (and getting out of my frame of knowledge; pun intended), the complete film frame is in an aspect ratio that is neither 4:3 or 16:9. The original 4:3 composition of the show cuts off the sides of the film frame, showing only the area of the filmed image that the show creators intended to be seen. If the original camera negatives exist, the studio could go back and re-frame the image to show more on the sides and less on the top and bottom, thus re-framing it into a 16:9 aspect ratio. On the positive side, they're not giving an incomplete image by just cutting off the top and bottom of the picture. On the negative side, they are still cutting off some of the original image at the top and bottom, so some shots may look a little cramped; and the new picture on the sides may show crew members, the edges of sets, and other things that were meant to be "hidden". The re-framing on Buffy the Vampire the Slayer (for HD streaming), and Friends (examples here and here), are prime examples of this. (The studios never learned from when they revealed the top and bottoms of the filmed image in "matted widescreen" movies on VHS, thus showing boom mics, clothes on supposedly naked characters, and all those infamous "goofs" in Pee-Wee's Big Adventure.)
Care to guess which option is at play on this Blu-ray? If you said "Option #1", you would be correct. Liberation Hall took the 4:3 broadcast masters, cropped off the top and bottom, and then presented the "zoomed in" middle part in 1920x1080. Moreover, zooming in like this means that the picture's resolution is much lower than the native high definition. So, the entire series has the quality of being upscaled from something close to standard definition. In short, not only are you NOT seeing the entire image, but you're NOT even getting high definition quality. The kick in the pants is that the end credits of EVERY episode is in the proper 4:3 aspect ratio (close to it), and shows us what the quality could have been like. It's like Liberation Hall is teasing us saying, "See, we could have done this properly, but we chose not to!"
Let's look at a few comparison framegrabs, starting with the show opening, which was pulled from the second episode, "Prime Suspect". The first image is the original television broadcast. (It can not be enlarged, as it is being used solely to demonstrate the original framing.) The second image is a direct Blu-ray framegrab, which can be enlarged for the original 1920x1080 image. The enlargement will show you that the Blu-ray quality is not HD. Supposedly, the DVD is in the properly 1.33:1 (4:3) aspect ratio, though pillarboxed into a 16:9 frame (blackness added to the sides). I don't have a DVD copy to evaluate, but the A Dangerous Man Blu-ray includes the show opening repurposed as a "trailer" in 4:3 (close to it) framed at 16:9 in 720x480 DVD resolution, so it should be a perfect representation of the DVD of the series. The third image comes from this "trailer".
ORIGINAL TELEVISION


ORIGINAL TELEVISION


ORIGINAL TELEVISION


As I previously stated, the end credits of every episode on the Blu-ray is in the proper aspect ratio. Well, close to it, as it's technically 1.44:1 instead of 1.33:1. Here are some shots from the end credits of the first episode, "The Future of Law Enforcement", which are different than all of the other episodes in that they contain an epilogue to the story. Click to see the original 1920x1080 Blu-ray framegrabs. By the way, the lower left corner of the building in the second image was previously used as Curious Goods in Friday the 13th: The Series (1987-1990). It's actually located at 19 Trinity Street in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and has also appeared in a few episodes of Goosebumps and other Canadian productions.
Ideally, the original aspect ratio should always be the preferred viewing option because that's how the show was intended to be seen; even if it means adding blackness to the sides of the image.
[ SPECIAL FEATURES ]
All of the content listed below can be found on EVERY one of the five Blu-ray discs. Yes, the same material is repeated on every disc.
- Behind The Scenes (5:44) - Vintage EPK featuring cast and crew interviews and on-set footage.
- Toy Commercial (0:21) - A vintage television commercial, provided by RoboCopArchive.com, as per the credit at the end.
- Photo Gallery - A total of 76 images presented in 1920x1080. Some images are clearly flipped (text reversed, RoboCop's vent on the wrong breastplate) and some dirt and hairs from the source photo slides/negatives were not cleaned out.
- Cast Profiles - Brief text biographies for the six main cast members: Richard Eden, Yvette Nipar, Blu Mankuma, Andrea Roth, Sarah Campbell, and David Gardner.
- From Cinema to the Small Screen - THIS FEATURE IS BROKEN! It is five or more screens of text, but it does not work on all players. On my Panasonic 4K player, all I get is the blank background image. On my PlayStation 3, I get the first five pages of text, but when I go to the sixth, I get the blank background image again. It is like this on all five discs.
- The Future of Law Enforcement: The History of RoboCop - Three screens of text information.
- Fun Facts & Info - Three screens of text information.
- Put Down Your Weapon: The Auto 9 Gun - Two screens of text information.
- The Car - One screen of text information.
- The Suit - Two screens of text information.
As you can see from that list, the majority of the content is text-based (incorrectly called "featurettes" on the packaging), just like the early days of DVDs, where "Production Notes" and "Biographies & Filmographies" were the norm (usually sourced from the movie's original press kit materials). The information presented here is interesting, though most of it is very similar to what you'll find at the RoboCop Archive, which also has pages for Fun Facts and The Car.
While I am not an expert on the show - I remember it best for introducing me to the dreamy Andrea Roth, who was also in Crossworlds (1996) and The Stepdaughter (2000), though you may know her best as Janet Gavin on Rescue Me (2004-2011) - I do know that there is something missing here. The end credits for the last three episodes of the series include a clip from the music video for "Future to this Life" by Joe Walsh and Lita Ford. It would have been nice to have the whole music video on here as a bonus feature. An assembly of it using part of the end credits can be found on YouTube. The song comes from the RoboCop: The Series Soundtrack Album, which was released in 1995 on Pyramid Records.
[ ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ]
The set is packaged in a standard five-disc clear Blu-ray case, with each disc on its own page. The first print run includes a slipcover. There is no digital copy code voucher. An episode guide is printed on the reverse of the case liner, so it's visible from inside the case. The synopsis for each episode is easily readable, though the names of the directors and writers are printed in light blue on a dark blue background, so they're near-impossible to read. I do commend Liberation Hall for including the episode guide, which had seemingly gone the way of the Dodo.
There's nothing much to be said about the front and back cover. They get the job done. Die-hard fans have told me of two errors that I didn't notice. The cityscape behind RoboCop on the front cover is really Los Angeles, not Detroit. "Lisa Madigan", the name of the character portrayed by Yvette Nipar, is listed as an actor twice on the back cover: first in the list of cast profiles in the Bonus Features section, and second in the credits block at the bottom. Nothing major, and the least of this set's problems.
[ NOTES ]
OY VEY! I really wanted to hope that the rumors were wrong. I really wanted to have the entire series I watched as a teenager in HD in its complete form. Unfortunately, someone at Liberation Hall had the mistaken believe that the people who still buy physical media want an image that fits their screen. I thought we, as a society, had left that line of thinking behind in the VHS era. I thought DVDs made the general public aware of how great it is to have shows and movies in their proper aspect ratios. I thought wrong :-( It's one thing to see television shows from the Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) TV era cropped into widescreen when aired on cable TV today - though it still annoys me and makes me change the channel - but it's another thing to crop the picture on a physical media release that you want people to PAY to own a copy of. To quote the Angry Video Game Nerd, "What were they thinking?!?"
RoboCop: The Series (1994) is available on Blu-ray and DVD. I can NOT recommend the Blu-ray due to the cropped picture. From what I've read, the DVD retains the original aspect ratio, but adds blackness to the sides so as to reformat the image into widescreen. Besides that, from what Cereal At Midnight said in his review, the DVD has interlacing and jaggie issues. So, neither release is ideal, and the choice is up to you.
For information on what RoboCop movie and television show releases are available, see my review of the recently-released RoboCop 4K UHD from Arrow Video. If you'd like to view the entire series in its original 4:3 aspect ratio, the complete series (excluding Episode #22 "Public Enemies") is up on Youtube, though the quality is not the greatest. This playlist includes the Honest Trailer for the movie and an extra show opening before the episodes, and an extra end credits and clip montage after the episodes. This playlist just includes the episodes, but places a charity ad after episode four and a thank you video after all episodes.
This item has been provided by Liberation Hall for review on this site.
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