[Neil Jones]

The most unusual DVD of theirs I've got is The Animals of Farthing Wood, because it's literally the most basic commercial DVD I've ever seen- to the extent it doesn't even have a copyright notice or Network ident when you first put the discs in, it just goes straight to the menu (which is itself just a plain, static affair with the episode names, no chapter selection or anything). All the other Network releases I own have them, so it's strange that one doesn't.

The 90s BBC VHS releases of the show were bizarre enough, with each series split into 3 volumes, each volume of which combined several episodes into one omnibus edition, with around 20-25 minutes worth of content removed across each series (not to mention the volumes ending and starting in what was the middle of an episode). Why they didn't release them as the original episodes (even if it would mean a differing number of episodes per tape), or just made each volume the extra 7 or 8 minutes longer needed to keep all the content is beyond me. Admittedly it was bizarre watching the DVDs and seeing the cut content since probably the first time since the original broadcasts in 1993/94, as I'd got so used to the VHS releases (and off-airs of the second half of series 2, which has the beginnings or ends of some episodes missing, the wonders of using VideoPlus without giving a few extra minutes either side).

Yeah this probably isn't unique to that show, as its probably a cost revenue ratio thing. since you can buy blank DVDS for home use in bulk at relatively cheap prices which works out at somewhere around 20-25p a disc, imagine what they cost to buy wholesale and then to actually make - pennies.

Video on the other hand would have been a higher initial cost I would have thought, due to all the parts, the plastic, the tape itself, some method of threading it on the cogs and what not and then mass duplicating from the tape master you've put together (I remember reading the BBC learnt from a Dr Who home video release saga that duplication in real time was the only acceptable solution for mass duplicating of video tape and not whatever they were using before which was quicker, cheaper but poorer picture quality) ... If you can shave the cost off by cutting a show by an episodes worth, that's probably cheaper than coughing up for another master and another tape.

As mentioned above a lot of 80s and probably early 90s VHS releases would have had the episodes stitched together in one long run. We had the complete Fawlty Towers collection from I think 1986, which had three episodes together on each tape that all ran into each other, with the credits at the end in a cobbled together fashion. Its probably good fortune there are only 12 episodes of Fawlty Towers as it slotted nicely into that ideology (13th episode rumours not withstanding).