I am loving this series, which for some reason, I never saw in its' original run. INSP and (I think) COZI TV only show the Judge Garth episodes over and over. I would like to see the ones before Lee J. Cobb joined the cast and after he left. The series ran for about 9 years.
shareThere aren't any before Lee J. Cobb as the Judge was the original owner of Shiloh. I think it's a shame that your channel isn't running the other episodes. The Virginian is one of those programs that never lagged in the quality department and the Grangers (both Charles Bickford and John McIntire & Jeanette Nolan) are an interesting lot. John Dehner was terrific, but for some reason they only kept him around for a handful of episodes. Well, here's hoping!
I guess I'll go through life just catching colds and missing trains.
Well, here in NY (Long Island, to be precise), they are currently showing the Charles Bickford (John Grainger) episodes on COZI TV. INSP is still showing the Lee J. Cobb episodes, however. The annoying thing about both channels is that they show most of the episodes out of sequence (forward, then back, and forward again). I'm very grateful that they are showing "The Virginian" at all, though---love the show.
As for WHY INSP is seemingly showing just the Lee J.Cobb 'sodes, could it be a sydnication package thing? For example, TVLand for years has had the "Adam" episodes (with a select number of post Adam 'sodes)of "Bonanza", but couldn't show the so-called "Lost Episodes" (currently airing somewhere---I forget who's showing them) because it's a different package (they can't have both, from what I've read). Same thing with "Gunsmoke" (Festus episodes on TVLand, not the early ones with Chester) and some other shows (ever see the first 4 seasons of "Make Room For Daddy"?---not me).
Hopefully, COZI will continue thru to the "Men Of Shiloh" (final season of THE Virginian). I just wish COZI didn't have those ugly black borders on their shows. If the shows were originally fullscreen, then why the borders? And while the show looks better on INSP, they don't show the actual ending credits with theme (they show tiny names on the bottom of the screen for the cast & crew). These (recorded episodes) will have to do---for now, at least. Eventually, I plan to start buying the DVD sets of this great series. Seasons 1-5 seem like a lock...
COZI TV is showing all the episodes now.
"The value of an idea has nothing to do with the honesty of the man expressing it."--Oscar Wilde
^^^-Yes---right now they are starting to show the Clay Grainger (John McIntire) episodes. However, they still show them out of sequence, and go back to earlier (or in one instance) or later episodes. About a week or two ago, they showed an episode with David Sutton (David Hartman), which I believe is from Season 7. That same week, they showed both Garth and John Grainger (Charles Bickford) episodes.
I prefer to to see the episodes in sequence, so it gets frustrating when they go back to earlier episodes that I've seen. I'll be getting the DVDs eventually, because I don't like the way Cozi displays a lot of these old shows. They have those annoying (and unnecessary) borders on the sides, which give some shows a squished-up look. These were shot in fullscreen for TV, so why the borders? All it does is distort the image and make the picture smaller.
daperfessa, re the borders: On Cablevision (Long Island, New Jersey, Connecticut), the shows are presented exactly as they should be, in their original 4:3 aspect ratio. That means black borders left and right on a wide-screen TV. Nothing looks at all distorted to me. The alternatives are unacceptable, i.e., stretching and distorting the width of the original picture, or cropping out part of the image top and bottom.
If you want to fill the screen, that's always (as far as I know) an option via the television set controls. Unfortunately, when the network does that for you, there's no way to reverse it via TV controls. I would not have COZI or Cablevision do anything different from what I'm seeing.
daperfessa, re the borders: On Cablevision (Long Island, New Jersey, Connecticut), the shows are presented exactly as they should be, in their original 4:3 aspect ratio. That means black borders left and right on a wide-screen TV. Nothing looks at all distorted to me. The alternatives are unacceptable, i.e., stretching and distorting the width of the original picture, or cropping out part of the image top and bottom.
If you want to fill the screen, that's always (as far as I know) an option via the television set controls. Unfortunately, when the network does that for you, there's no way to reverse it via TV controls. I would not have COZI or Cablevision do anything different from what I'm seeing.
Thank you very much for your explanation of what you're seeing, and the screen shots and adjustments to show it. I saw the same episode ("The Saddle Warmer") that you used for the examples, and the photos are dramatically different from what I remember seeing. The scene at the dance looks especially distorted in the screenshot.
I watch COZI through Cablevision on a 5-year-old Sony flat panel TV. It could be that the COZI picture is optimized for television viewing and suffers when watching on the computer. With "The Virginian," at least, there are no top/bottom black bands, only left and right. I checked my DVR and I found a portion of one "Virginian" episode that I hadn't finished watching from last March. I watched a few minutes of it. There might be a very slight compression left to right, but it is so minimal that I had to keep watching to see if I could say for certain that it is compressed, and I can't be positive yet that it is. When I get to the end of it, I'll see how the credits look. I wonder now if television manufacturers have different ways of rendering what's shown, or if Cablevision can or does modify? Cablevision doesn't offer INSP, so I can't do a comparison.
Thanks for the article link. There's a lot I don't know. I'll watch COZI more critically, and see if the aberrations appear for the way I receive the channel. As I'm writing, COZI is showing a movie, "To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday" made in 1996, so it looks full-screen as it would on any other channel. Commercials go anywhere: a low-def commercial may have borders all around ("postage stamp"?), others are full-screen or right/left borders. It seems that COZI uses every way of presenting programming at one time or another. None have been objectionable to me to this point.
I agree with the article on the obnoxious program rating logo at the beginning of each program. It's much too large. If I had to pick something else to change in COZI, it would be to drop the news scroll that occasionally appears along the bottom of the screen.
I haven't figured out the COZI method for "The Virginian" episode sequence. I've sometimes thought that they select episodes that feature guest stars, either well-known at the time or who later had successful careers. "The Saddle Warmer" was probably selected for Ralph Bellamy's appearance. I had to look up Quentin Dean, who looked familiar, and it would be for a small part in "In the Heat of the Night" made the year before this "Virginian" episode. I agree that David Hartman seemed out of place here.
I think they were running some Season 8 episodes not long ago. I don't bother to track, since I don't know what will show next (other than looking at the schedule), but am grateful that any shows like this are run at all.
Hello-
I think it may have to do with the different types of TVs we all have. That writer talked about the "postage stamp" effect, but I don't really get that---I just get the black bars on the sides. Mine is an old (over 10 years) Magnavox 25", so maybe it's very limited in display options. And yes---that logo and news scroll are annoying. I find the news scroll most annoying.
I can't figure out their episode sequence either. Sometimes it just seems random, but I remember one day they showed two different episodes that featured the late Pete Duel/Deuel. Those episodes were from different seasons, so it definitely was done to showcase Pete Duel. They have done this with some other shows on Cozi, so at least sometimes they show certain episodes because of a certain guest star.
Like you though, I'm grateful that the show is on TV at all. In this day and age of one reality show after another, it's great to have quality, vintage TV shows to watch as an alternative. Here's hoping for Season 9...
I wanted to reply after I had a chance to look at "The Virginian" on a low definition cable box in my house. I did that this morning, and the picture quality is poorer then on the hi-def cable box. There appears to be some minor left-right compression, but not exaggerated as in your examples. The credits didn't look distorted. The picture is still a rectangle, while in your uncorrected images it looked square, or maybe even slightly taller than wide. The whole picture is also very small, with black borders all around. When I switch to another channel with old content, Turner Classic Movies, for example, Turner's picture fills the screen top to bottom and the quality is fine.
After my last post, I watched about 10 minutes more of the movie "To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday," and it did not look right, so I wanted to take back what I said earlier. The composition looked off. The people and objects didn't look distorted, but I'm convinced that the top and bottom (at least) had been cropped from the picture. It looked like everything was zoomed in, and information is lost. That said, I don't know if COZI is at fault, or if the studio provides a television version of a movie to COZI in that way.
I don't know that this helps anyone, but I wanted to add to the discussion what I've learned. It's too bad that "The Virginian" and other programs aren't the greatest watching experience on every TV or viewing option, but we're all in agreement that it's wonderful to have it at all and hope they keep running it.
Update: Well, it appears that COZI won't be showing "The Men From Shiloh" episodes, as they have gone back to Season One episodes. I love the early seasons with Steve, Betsy, Judge Garth, etc., but I was hoping that they would show The Men From Shiloh episodes. I guess they aren't a part of the sydnication package?
I guess I'll see if any episodes are on Youtube or somewhere.
Also, INSP channel FINALLY got past the Judge Garth episodes, as they are now showing the Season 5 episodes where we first meet the Graingers: grandfather John (Charles Bickford), grandson Stacy (Don Quine), and granddaughter Elizabeth (Sara Lane). I doubt if INSP will show TMFS either, but one can hope...
I began watching The Virginian on COZI TV myself and COZI TV has shown seasons 1-8 since it's inception in early 2013. They are have since started back to the Lee J Cobb episodes again (it's currently at season 3) so if you're still watching and depending on where you have COZI TV (I'm in NYC) STAY TUNED! you should soon be watching the following seasons presumably up to season 8 (COZI didn't show the last season "9")
shareYeah, it's too bad they don't show season 9 (AKA "The Men From Shiloh"). But, The Men From Shiloh is on DVD, and is priced fairly, so I'll grab that one. As I said in a previous post, "The Men From Shiloh" is probably not part of "The Virginian" syndication package.
But,I'm actually kinda glad that they are showing the earlier seasons again, as I actually have seen a few episodes that I missed before (No doubt due to COZI showing episodes out of sequence). I finally caught one of the Steve (Gary Clarke) "guest-star" episodes that I hadn't seen from Season 3. It's too bad he didn't stay on longer, but that's another topic of discussion...