Comments on: IT Crowd third season DVD up for pre-order

By: kiltreiser

kiltreiser — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

“Best of all were the shots of the densely decorated set, which was dressed by Boing Boing readers and fans of the show, who sent their favorite nerd memorabilia to the show for inclusion.”

This is NOT a good thing, it ruins the show for me ’cause I miss all the action while trying to see what a particular tiny sticker says or move around my living room vainly trying to get a better angle for viewing a clever t-shirt slogan. Curse you readers and fans! Curse you all to heck!

By: ArkansasProgressive

ArkansasProgressive — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Ah, good news. Â Thanks, Cory. Â Will be adding this latest series/season to my DVD collection, as well…

“Geek chic!?! I want to tear my eyes out!”

Maybe they shoulda gone with Tina Fey…

By: Lemon

Lemon — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

IMO the episode with the male on male kissing was the best.

By: kfw

kfw — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

thanks #34 – I’ve been holding off until I could find out for sure. Guess I should break down and buy a region free player /K

By: sebFlyte

sebFlyte — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I am slowly warming to The IT Crowd. The first series and much of the second left me rather cold, and the reaction to them seemed to be driven much more by people fooling themselves into thinking it was funny simply because they got the references…

It did pick up towards the end of series two, and much of season three did actually make me laugh… so I am grateful for my flatmate’s quiet obsession with the show!

By: BennyMcBenBen

BennyMcBenBen — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Are you sure it’s Region free. It’s looks like Region 2. I would love to own the IT Crowd in the US.

By: Scary_UK

Scary_UK — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Are region-free DVD players not that common in the US?

It’s not a consideration this side of the pond and hasn’t been for years

By: Chris Tucker

Chris Tucker — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Internet, Transmission, Mac the Ripper, Handbrake, the .avi format and Roxio’s Toast are proof that FSM loves us, and wants us to be happy.

As for DVD players, you’d have to search far and wide to find a modern player that can’t display .avi or Divx/Xvid files. Players that are hackable to a region free/Macrovision OFF state, are SLIGHTLY less easy to find. I.E., you’ll have to type a few more characters into the Google Shopping search field.

Indeed, the newest ones have USB ports and SD card slots on the front, so that we don’t have to burn a DVD or CD just to watch a movie or TV episode.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Anyone know when series 2 will be release in North America (region 1). I’ve been waiting with baited breath for this release.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Am I the only one who can’t stand the laugh track on this show? Even if it is a live audience, the results are the same. I don’t like a show telling me when to laugh. Sorry.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Not only are region free players not common in the US (coupled with the fact that they can be prohibitively expensive) the discs are being released in PAL format while we’re saddled with good ol’ NTSC (Never Twice the Same Color). Once again the consumer loses…

By: error404

error404 — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I have a friend from childhood who is, not looks like or is quite like, but IS Moss.

Half English , half West Indian distracted super nerd.

By: Master Gracey

Master Gracey — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Amazon.co.uk shows this as Region 2.

This is a clever show, I’ve caught it a few times on BBC America, and I too would love to own this in USA.

Even my non-nerd wife enjoys the show, especially the reel-to-reel answering machine! (I think she enjoys it from the outside looking in – she works with Corp. IT at her job, and this reinforces user suspicions and stereotypes)

By: decius

decius — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I second #5, where are you getting that these DVDs are region free?

The Amazon pages linked indicate that these disks are region 2.

Furthermore, there is a separate page on Amazon.com offering that the first season will FINALLY be made available in region 1 encoding on March 31st, 2009, some 3 years after its original airing.

http://www.amazon.com/Crowd-Complete-Season-One/dp/B001NOMOS8/ref=pd_sxp_f_pt

Wikipedia indicates that this Region 1 release has been announced and delayed again and again over the past 3 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_IT_Crowd#Series_1

I wish that I could pay to watch this program but unfortunately I have no choice but to steal it if I want to watch it while the jokes are still funny.

By: johnny_action

johnny_action — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The IT Crowd is really funny. I work in IT and I see some of these types of people every day. Personality wise I have a bit of Moss, Richmond and Roy in me.

I would just like to point out that http://www.friendface.org is a real open source powered social networking site ala facebook powered by http://www.elgg.org

You can join and become fans of Jen, Richmond (who has the scurvy), Roy and Moss.d

By: Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Huh. Graham Linehan told me they were region free, but I’ll confirm it with him.

By: LB

LB — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I wasn’t a big fan of the set decoration this year, as everything was so obscure that nothing stood out (except for the Coop painting) and it just looked like a normal mundane’s office.

By: ArkansasProgressive

ArkansasProgressive — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Yep, I loves me some IT Crowd, too. Â Have seen all of the first two seasons/series a while back. Â Then more recently saw a couple eps of the last season/series online (and am missing Richmond). Â A few of the episodes have been a little disappointing, but for the most part I’ve had a good laugh from almost all of them.

`Moss and the German` and `Smoke and Mirrors` were some personal favorites, but I think `The Work Outing` takes the cake. Â I hadn’t laughed that hard in a long time.

As to PAL/NTSC and DVD Region issues, I have a `good friend` here in the States that likes a lot of older BBC shows that have been difficult to get in Region 1 in the past (e.g., Robin of Sherwood, etc.), but `he` found AnyDVD from SlySoft (Google it for more info) to be a good solution — albeit a for pay one — since `he` watches almost all DVDs on laptops or PCs now, but YMMV.

By: Scary_UK

Scary_UK — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

#18 regional coding is different to Macrovision though isn’t it?

#17 most of the players here are sold as region 2 but the remote key press combinations to remove that are easy to find.

I think the issue is that normally the situation is the other way around – there are loads of DVD titles that are available in the US that we don’t get here hence all our DVD players are region free and our TVs accept signals from an NTSC disc

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

A previous (different) anonny-mous poster incorrectly posted that region-free DVD players are not common in the US. This is completely false. You can buy a Philips or LG or Samsung player (amongst many others, but not Sony or Pana or JVC) that will play any DVD from ANY region ANY time. They are extremly cheap, too. Usually between US$35 to US$100. They will also likely play Divx files and some even have USB ports to allow a flash-drive or external HD connection. The postage from the amazon.co.uk for a DVD is about US$3 to 5 bucks per DVD package. Cheaper if you buy more than one. They usually discount DVDs by about 15% because we don’t have to pay the VAT (tax) that Europeans do. As for those DVD players, you can buy them at Target, W*lM*rt, Sears, amazon.com and many other stores. If you are unsure about a particular players ability, go to http://www.videohelp.com where you can look up brand/model # and see if they are region-free & if you have to press some code on the remote to make it so. The Philips players I’ve bought do not require any remote control code entry.
Do yourselves a favor & buy a player & go to amazon.co.uk or http://www.hmv.co.uk or http://www.sendit.com. They are completey legal to buy, to own & to use!!! No special cables are needed either, just a regular old NTSC TV, but on an HDTV they will look much better :)

By: starbreiz

starbreiz — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Scary_UK: see Macrovision laws on Wikipedia. It is the suck.

By: fiXedd

fiXedd — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Since when was 6 episodes a season? I’ll wait till the “Seasons” 1-4 box set comes out so I can have a whole season’s worth of episodes.

By: decius

decius — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks everyone for the advice about technical means of getting these disks to play. However, at the risk of being cynical, if I’m going to go to all the trouble reripping them then why not just download the episodes instead of buying the DVD set? AFAIK, its illegal either way (something about circumventing an “effective” technical protection measure), and although paying for the DVDs would give me the satisfaction of supporting a show I enjoy, the producers of that show are perpetuating a system that I oppose, and piracy is really the only thing that encourages that system to change – money is the only thing they understand.

The bottom line is that staged international releases of movies are not necessary “to promote… the useful arts.” In fact, in a highly connected society like ours they have a negative effect on cultural development by preventing certain kinds of cross border exchange. These things help keep us different, and that’s wrong.

By: zuzu

zuzu — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I second #5, where are you getting that these DVDs are region free?

Or use Mac The Ripper 3.0 to make backups that set the region to 0 or 1 (if RCE is included). I thought the need for region-free players was obsolete because of this.

By: decius

decius — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Cory, thanks for following up. Thats great news!

By: annoyingmouse

annoyingmouse — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

So this release has been approved by The Elders Of The Internet on the top of Big Ben and demagnetised by The Hawk? Otherwise I’m not sure I’d want it near any player of mine!

By: deckard68

deckard68 — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Season 1 of the IT Crowd is finally being released in the United States on DVD on March 31st from MPI Home Video. The delay was caused by a change in ownership of the title. Cover art and details at: http://tvshowsondvd.com/news/Crowd-Season-1/11169

By: GaryG

GaryG — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

@25 Fixedd:

Since forever in the UK, everything is packaged in six episode seasons/series (the Office, Mighty Boosh, Young Ones, Blackadders…..)

Strange that something like the Office US has, what, four or five seasons of 24 episodes against the UKs twelve. Ever…

Bigger country? More writers that can support more episodes?

By: annoyingmouse

annoyingmouse — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I can’t believe it. I just discovered the really cool “Internet in a box” release of the first three series of The IT Crowd and decided to google “the it crowd” “box set” “the internet to find out more about it and ended up just finding that the 9th result was my own comment (#14 above). OK so I admit it. I just wanted to see if the box actually works. It looks cool. It might work like in the programme. I’m just that sad. And the first thing I find is myself. I feel like the nerdiest person alive at this moment in time.

By: StretchArm

StretchArm — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

For those who don’t already know some of the tees that Roy wore in series 3 were from the truly fabulous Genki Gear.

Check them out here http://www.genkigear.co.uk/

I think they deserve their own post for their original designs.