Kildare films There were also themed collections of film shorts, animation, TV movies and entire seasons of long-sought TV shows. And the torrent of releases exceeded all expectations, including dozens of uber-obscure films released between 1914 straight through the early 1990s.Īnd it wasn’t just the feature films, which came to includes sets feature entire runs of detective film series, beginning with Torchy Blane, as well as series collections of the Andy Hardy, Maisie and Dr. WAC’s customer service promptly addressed the relatively few complaints about defective discs. Within a year, the WAC was successful enough that an ambitious remastering programming was launched, along with frequent sales and promotions. And worries by some potential customers that burned discs might not be as durable as their pressed counterparts - which, when bought as part of WHV’s fabled box sets, were substantially less expensive than WAC’s initial twenty dollars a pop for bare-bones releases, with many containing substantial new and archival special features.

To show they meant business, Warner Archive offered 150 titles on its opening day,many of them older movies that might not have justified a regular commercial release even during the mid-2000’s heyday of deep catalogue titles on pressed DVDs.Īlong with praise for Warners’ vow to deeply mine its huge catalogue, there were concerns at first over the quality of the transfers, some of which had been prepared years earlier for TV broadcast. Without any advance fanfare, Warners rebooted the digital classic-film landscape by introducing a new DVD business model: burned discs manufactured on demand (MOD) when customers placed orders, eliminating the substantial costs of shipping and storing substantial runs of pressed discs that might or might not do enough business to justify the investment. The one-time torrent of classic-era films being released on DVD by the major Hollywood studios, which begun slowing even before the 2007 stock market crash and the subsequent disappearance of retail outlets (like Tower Records) devoting large amount of shelf space to pressed (replicated) discs of deep catalogue titles, had become more like a trickle by March 2009. It’s hard to believe the Warner Archive Collection launched five years ago this month.

1935 dante inferno torrent