Product Description

The amazing comeback victory over the New York Yankees and World Series sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals requires an equally incredible collection of memories. This unprecedented 12-DVD Collector’s Edition preserves all of the remarkable drama for your viewing now and forever.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23379 in DVD
• Brand: Team Marketing
• Released on: 2005-07-26
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Box set, Collector's Edition, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 12
• Dimensions: .0" h x .0" w x .0" l, 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 2290 minutes

Features

• Officially Licensed
• Highest Quality Recording

Amazon.com
For Red Sox Nation, this boxed set may be a book out of their own personal bible: the tale of their deliverance from decades of wandering through baseball's metaphorical desert. Forget the Pharaohs--the curse of the Bambino had been enough to keep Red Sox fans dying of thirst while their nemeses, the New York Yankees, seemed to waltz right into the Promised Land again and again. And then, finally, after 86 years, the Red Sox are champions, and here's their chronicle: The Boston Red Sox 2004 World Series Collector's Edition DVD boxed set, the first collection of complete, unedited MLB games on DVD.

For the devoted fan, this is your holy grail: all seven games of the incredible American League Championship Series against the Yankees, and the four World Series games against the St. Louis Cardinals. The material is fresh out of the broadcast booth: it's pure footage of the full games, unedited, and complete (minus the commercials), so you don't miss a single pitch. Forget the endless narratives and annoying camera cuts of the average sports highlight DVD; this is nothing but the games.

MLB wisely configured the discs so you can navigate by the half-inning, moving straight to your favorite highlights without sacrificing anything from the game. Watch only the at-bats you want and set up your own personal highlight reel out of the moments you choose. Going one better than TiVO, the boxed set also includes a generously packed bonus disc, featuring the 2004 World Series Film, narrated by Denis Leary, as well as 13 other extra features including footage of the post-victory celebrations and the 2005 Ring & Banner Ceremony. Even the packaging is custom-made for fans, featuring "SleeveStats" that contain complete inning-by-inning line scores, detailed box scores, team trivia, and much more at a glance on the DVD cover. It's like a baseball card on steroids. For baseball fans, this is the complete package and then some. --Dan Vancini

Customer Reviews

Obsessive-Compulsive Red Sox Fan Nirvana (almost. . .)
Bad News First: No games from the series against Anaheim (which were on ESPN rather than Fox), in which David Ortiz put on a hitting clinic--a one-disc overview would have been really nice. Really nice. . . . Thanks, ESPN, for helping out with copyright stuff. . . . That knocks it down to 4 1/2 stars right there. But the real drama came with the Yankees series, though, so I'll survive. I don't have a good enough system to notice some of the more technical picture/color/resolution issues that have been mentioned, so I'm fine with that, too, even though some others have voiced valid criticisms. That's pretty good for bad news. . . .

The Good News: Everything (and I mean everything!) is on these discs. This set of DVDs is a spectacular collection of the most important ALCS in Red Sox history, some of the most exciting baseball to be played in October, and then the World Series, which seemed terribly anti-climactic somehow after Games 4 & 5 against the Yankees and a nice partial comeback by the Cardinals in Game 1 of the World Series. Whatever I might be missing from the Anaheim series, I get back twofold from this set--back up to 5 stars. Easy.
The Games: Aside from a disastrous Game 3 (which might be good to watch just to keep the comeback in even better perspective), the games were close, competitive, and dramatic. Some pretty good drama unfolded in Games 1 & 2, despite the Red Sox losses. Game 4 showcased a classic display of determination (by both teams) within a back-and-forth struggle, "the steal" by Dave Roberts, and the ultimate vintage walk-off home run by Ortiz in the bottom of the 12th inning. Game 5 followed in those big footsteps and provided possibly even more drama, with the Red Sox tying the game in the 8th inning and the two teams playing five more scoreless innings--each team with multiple opportunities to win the game, with the dramatic finish in the bottom of the 14th. That game went close to six hours, and we missed a great game between St. Louis and Houston, because by the time this game was over, the other game was well into the 8th inning. . . . Games 6 & 7 seemed less "exciting," simply because it seemed that the Sox had all of the momentum: Schilling pitched great in Game 6, and Lowe pitched a one-hitter through six innings in Game 7. Every time the Yankees made a move, the Red Sox made a bigger one in response. All of those moments are there, however, to relive in whatever fashion you choose--watch the complete games, skip around, whatever. . . .
The Setup: The games are all there in their entirety. However, half-inning chapter breaks make it very easy to negotiate your way through a whole bunch of baseball (Games 4 and 5 went forever. . .) in much less time than the original games took.
The Packaging: Beautiful. Hitting statistics, pitching stats, box scores, and inning-by-inning summaries make it easy to find a particular at-bat or half-inning (some of our memories are failing, so this feature is particularly helpful. . .). Trivia, attendance, weather info, umpires, quotes from players, pictures of memorabilia, and a host of other things are on the cover of each DVD, making it good reading material, as well. It's all there. All of it. If you need a piece of information regarding these games that is not on the cases, then you need very professional help. . .
The Bonus Features: Some of us love them, and this set includes one disc devoted to just "stuff," most importantly the 2005 Ring & Banner Ceremony, which was not included on any of the other World Series DVDs. Interviews, player bios/features, trip to the White House, celebrity interviews, post-game celebrations, etc. are all included. Complete postseason batting and pitching stats are on the inside of the case, also--Nice bonus. . . !
The Price: Can you beat it. . . ? MLB online was offering each game, but it would have ended up costing more than this set (which I bought for less than $80 at my local Bull Moose store) and would not have had any of the nice packaging offered on this set. I could have pictured really bare-bones discs and cases, but MLB and A&E did a tremendous job putting together a quality package for a very reasonable amount of money.

Bottom Line: If you are a fan of baseball and, in particular, a Red Sox fan, then this set is a virtual "must-have" for your collection. It is the first time that MLB has done such a project, and I hope it is successful. Who wouldn't like to have some past great World Series and playoff series to see in their entirety? This is an invaluable resource for future generations of Red Sox fans and for baseball fans in general--hopefully a trend has been started. The NESN DVD (Faith Rewarded) is a great summary, with some nice local insights and perspectives. The official MLB World Series DVD (one disc) is nice, too, if you want just a summary and a few highlights. Neither can compare to this set, though. Some of us want the whole enchilada, and this set provides it, with a nice salsa on the side. . . .

Great Games, Poor Quality/Editing
Aside from the Fox/NY logo that shows up on every game -- couldn't they have rendered this set from a network master, and not a copy owned by some Fox affiliate? -- there are definite quality issues...

ALCS Games 4 & 5 have been squeezed onto 1 DVD each. A 4+ hour game on 1 DVD? Terrible. By definition, this means that the team that made these DVD's had to compress the video, thereby lowering the overall quality. That is a disservice to anyone buying this set - especially since these 2 games are among the most likely to be watched by happy Sox fans.

Interestingly, A&E/MLB seems to have acknowledged this in a unique way. Take a look at the first 8.5 innings of Game 4. Fuzzy, murky, dark picture quality with lots of digital artifacts. Then take a look at the bottom on the 9th inning, with Boston's comeback. Suddenly the video is nice. Sharper, clearer and brighter.

What does this mean? It means that A&E/MLB decided to use different quality settings WITHIN a single game. Poor quality for the first 8.5 innings of Game 4 (to squeeze the full game onto the disc), then suddenly nice quality for those innings most likely to be watched, such as the bottom of the ninth.

I find this incredibly annoying. I feel that each game should have the same high quality throughout. If some games were too long to have consistent high quality - put the darn game on 2 discs! It is not that hard to figure out.

Aside from the inconsistent video quality within single discs, nearly all of the games are missing the Fox intro. The lone exception is World Series Game 1, where they have kept the Fox intro showing the return of the World Series to New England.

All of the other games literally start with the first batter (after hearing about the game's commercial sponsors).

I find this extremely disappointing. I think the network introduction adds some context to each game. I feel like there is something missing without seeing the opening video.

Why no games from the Angels series? Maybe there were rights issues. The Angels games were aired by ESPN. All of the ALCS and World Series games were aired by Fox. And, all of the video used for this set came from a New York Fox affiliate. Maybe it was a hassle for A&E/MLB to figure out how to do the Angels games. Who knows.

Since this box set is the only (official) way to obtain these games, we have to live with them. Well worth the price if you have no other source. However, I wish that A&E/MLB could have put a little more effort and forethought into this set. Nice set, but it could have been spectacular with the right quality and editing.

Baffling
~~~
Irrespective of the lack of HD, Surround Sound, etc., my instantaneous immpression was that the picture resolution was perfectly acceptable, particularly given the fact that a Complete Package was actually available for this type of event for the fanatics out there. (Shades of the tremendous NASA collections of the Apollo missions...)

On further inspection -- within about a half a minute -- I noticed that although most all of the colors look good, (the green grass -- the Yankee Navy -- the colors of the walls in the parks, etc.), the Red Sox colors on the uniforms are not True. They're not even Red. They look pink -- washed out.
It's odd, in that most everything else is fairly vibrant looking.

Now I am torn over whether I will even keep this package. If I knew for certain that this will be the only release of this set, I would indeed keep it. But if it turns out that this problem is rectified in the near future, and re-released, I'll go nuts. (I hate this type of torment with a product that could be perfect, but just doesn't quite make it...)

I honestly don't expect that this will be re-issued due to spectacular sales -- or for admitted production flaws -- so I suspect that I won't pass on this package.

But I just don't understand how this happened.

Can anyone with some technical expertise explain this?
Or can anyone else at least verify that they see the same flaw?

I love this set. I hate this set.