Meanwhile, Timeless Media Group (a division of Shout! Factory) is releasing Gerry Anderson’s Fireball XL5 on DVD only on 3/10. The 5-disc set includes all 39 classic episodes.
PBS Distribution is releasing Masterpiece Mystery!: Grantchester on DVD and Blu-ray on 4/7.
RLJ Entertainment and Acorn are releasing Foyle’s War: Set 8 on Blu-ray and DVD on 4/14, followed by The Mystery of Lord Lucan and New Tricks: Season 11 on DVD only on 4/28.
RLJ and Athena have set the World War One: The People’s Story documentary for DVD only release on 4/14.
Virgil Films will release Irreplaceable and Give Me Shelter on DVD on 2/24.
And Vinegar Syndrome has set The Muthers (1976), Peekarama: Hot Legs/California Gigolo (both 1979), and Dixie Rat Hollywood Star (1983) for DVD release on 3/10.
In other news today, we’ve given the Shout! Factory TV Roku app a little test drive and it works pretty well. The select of available content is a bit limited at the moment, but the quality is good and it’s completely free. You just sit through about 90 seconds of commercials at the front and then your program begins playing. As they add more content, we definitely think Shout!’s got a winner with this new service.
Also today, we have word that Best Buy (in the U.S.) and Future Shop (in Canada) are going to have retail-exclusive Steelbook versions of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies on regular Blu-ray Combo. This is in addition to Target’s retail-exclusive version of the regular Blu-ray Combo that comes with Lego Mini-figures of Bard and Bain.
Speaking of which, our retail sources have provided larger versions of what we believe is the final (or near-final) cover artwork for the standard Blu-ray 3D Combo and Blu-ray Combo versions of Warner’s The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. The street date is expected to be sometime in late March – either 3/17, 3/24 or 3/31 (if we had to take a guess, we’d say 3/24). In any case, you can expect the official announcement very soon.
We’ll leave you today with a little more new BD cover artwork for other newly-announced titles as well...
Have a great weekend! Stay tuned...
- Bill Hunt