Strong Bad E-mail DVD

[Swonker]

Now I'm big fan of Homestar Runner and earlier today I surfed their site and found out their selling a Strong Bad e-mail DVD! It's called strongbad_email.exe and it's a 3 disc set. It contains the first one hundred Strong Bad e-mails with all the special features and easter eggs intact. It also contains new special features, which include three unreleased Strong Bad e-mails, over an hour of puppet stuff, and over 40 creator commentaries. It's also region free so it'll play in any DVD player. Being the big fan of Homestar that I am, I really want this DVD and hope to have it in my home by the holidays.

Find out more about this DVD set and purchase it here (http://store.yahoo.com/homestarrunner/dvddvddvd.html).

[Sketch]

I probably wont buy that online but if it ends up at Best Buy like Happy Tree Friends did then I'll pick it up in a heart beat.

[kaine23]

Love the box art!

[TnAdct1]

As soon as it became ready to be ordered (aka yesterday), I went online and ordered my copy. Now all I have to do is wait until it comes in the mail.

[Speedy Boris]

I'm not a big enough fan of Strong Bad E-mail to want to purchase the DVD, especially since I already have most of the 100 shorts anyway. :shrug: Glad they included lots of special features, though.

[The Koopinator]

This sounds great, and I'll probably get it, but why not normal HSR toons? I've always wanted those on DVD.

[TnAdct1]

With my copy of the DVD arriving at my house today, here's an idea on what the DVD's are going to be like.

The E-Mails in general: In the video category, all the videos are in fullscreen, save for Flashback (due to the e-mail's "widescreen" bit). Grip-wise, there's a problem in that you can't rewind and fast forward each e-mail in order to see the funny parts again (although you can rewind and fast forward the extras). Finally, when it comes to the Easter eggs, there's three ways that they are handled on the DVD.

1. Brief pop-up eggs are accessed via the alternate angles.
2. For easter eggs that appear at the end of the e-mail, they are accessed via pressing down on the DVD remote at the end of each e-mail (when the options to either watch the e-mail again, watch the next e-mail, or go back into main menu appear on screen) until you see a black/white outline of Strong Bad's face
3. For hidden scenes, those scenes appear on the e-mail along with the regular scenes, thus no need for clicking.

Menus: The discs' menu feature 3-D CGI versions of Strong Bad and the rest of HR characters, with each disc having its own CGI scene. As for the extras menu, it is accompanied with a CGI shot of the Cheat and Strong Mad watching TV, with the extras menu appearing on the Trogdor video game machine.

The Audio Commentaries: The commentaries are accessable via pressing the sound options button on the DVD remote. Of the ones that I've heard so far, here's the ones worth listening to:
1. Comic: Which includes an interesting origin of the this episode's e-mail and some audio commentary involving the record store Easter Egg
2. Anything: Which features Strong Bad commentating on how HR violated his computer and explaining why he didn't appear in this e-mail.

Extras: Along with the hidden commentaries, each DVD has it's own set of extras:

Disc 1:
1. Three unreleased e-mails: -Greeting Cards: Strong Bad promotes a line of greeting cards that are used to tell people who are trying to live their dreams to "don't quit your day job".
-E-Mail Birds: similar to Spring Cleaning and 50th E-mail, in which Strong Bad reads various e-mails
-Videro Games: Strong Bad talks about how video games can actually help children learn
2. All the E-mail intro songs that Strong Bad sing in the first 100 e-mails.
3. All of the scroll button songs that Strong Bad has sung.

Disc 2:
1. Karaoke versions of four songs from the Strong Bad Sings album (with each song acompanied with some live-action footage that is supposed to be a spoof of those videos that appear on some karaoke discs.
2. A music video where Puppet HR sings "Secret Song"
3. A Taranchula music video.

Disc 3:
1. Various bits featuring the HR Puppet.
2. Behind the sceens footage clips (including footage of the making of the 100th e-mail and the Cheatar).
3. 3-D tests for the DVD's menu screens, with multiple angles and commentary by Strong Bad. Major highlight: Test Strong Bad kicking a yellow brick (test Cheat), which knocks out a grey Fisher-Price person (test Strong Sad).

In short: it's definitely worth picking up if you're a HR fan.

[Donald Duck 12]

Top of my Christmas list. :D

[Swonker]

Thanks for reviewing the set for us, TnAdct1. Now I know I have to own this.

[FredNash]

With my copy of the DVD arriving at my house today...Did you get your set yet? I just got my order confirmation email and along with the dvd set, apparently I'm also getting "BIG FREEBIE B"... did you get this in your email or package? Or perhaps " BIG FREEBIE A"?

[TnAdct1]

Did you get your set yet? I just got my order confirmation email and along with the dvd set, apparently I'm also getting "BIG FREEBIE B"... did you get this in your email or package? Or perhaps " BIG FREEBIE A"? I got my set on Monday (hence my comments about the DVD on Monday night).

As for the BIG FREEBIE that I got, it consisted of two Strongbadia "stop sign" keychains.

[FredNash]

I got my set on Monday (hence my comments about the DVD on Monday night).

As for the BIG FREEBIE that I got, it consisted of two Strongbadia "stop sign" keychains.
Awesome, thanks.

[Space Kitty]

I just got the DVDs.

Very disappointed :( They could have actually put everything on 1 commercial DVD, rather than barely using half each of three DVD-Rs.

Since it was a 3 disc set, they should have put the rest of the HSR stuff. At the very least, the stuff with Strongbad in it (Everybody to the Limit, In Jail, etc.)

[Swonker]

They could have actually put everything on 1 commercial DVD, rather than barely using half each of three DVD-Rs.

Huh? There are 100 Strong Bad e-mails on this DVD set, and each Strong Bad e-mail is roughly 5 minutes long. That equals out to 500 minutes of content! The last time I checked, that much content requires AT LEAST 3 discs.

[Space Kitty]

Flash animation doesn't require the high quality encoding of live action to transfer to DVD. Each Strongbad DVD is about 2.5Gigs (7.5 total), easily able to fit on one commercial dual layer DVD (8-8.5Gig).

Also, it is very rare to have a (pre-100) SB email that is over 2 minutes. Some of the shorts were about 5 minutes, but there are probably less than 10 emails over 3 minutes (especially in the first 50). Post-100 emails average 3-3.5 minutes.

[FredNash]

Flash animation doesn't require the high quality encoding of live action to transfer to DVD. Each Strongbad DVD is about 2.5Gigs (7.5 total), easily able to fit on one commercial dual layer DVD (8-8.5Gig).Ok, first off that's really strange about why they would only use half of the disks capacity, but that doesn't mean they aren't using commercial dvds. The set I got certainly weren't dvd- or + Rs.

Also, the source for the video really doesn't matter, since once you get it on dvd, there is a certain minimum encoding rate that can't be exceeded. Flash animations are small because the Flash program on your computer renders them on the fly, according to the positions of the layers, while dvd video is, well, video. About the only way you can skimp on dvd video is by reducing the bit rate, but the quality is still directly proportional to the size of the video...

Are you suggesting that the emails on this set are stored in flash on the dvd, or that flash animation is somehow smaller than any other type of animation when transfered to dvd?

[Space Kitty]

Ok, first off that's really strange about why they would only use half of the disks capacity, but that doesn't mean they aren't using commercial dvds. The set I got certainly weren't dvd- or + Rs.
No, I meant "commercial" and DVD-R" as more of a size rather than type (8.5G vs. 4.7), since most of the commercial discs produced now are dual layer (8.5G). On the other hand, they are using only half the capacity of each (4.7G) disc.


Also, the source for the video really doesn't matter, since once you get it on dvd, there is a certain minimum encoding rate that can't be exceeded. Flash animations are...
Yes, I know the difference between Flash animations and all the various video formats.
About the "minimum" recording rate: I've gotten about 112 emails on one DVD and still had a little bit of room left. They were a bit better quality than the Official discs (compared split screen, side-by-side, WS plasma). Lowering the quality just a tad, I could have gotten more on there. You can actually go down as low as (better-than) VCD quality and still maintain the DVD standard, and be able to put 6 hours on a 4.7G disc.


Are you suggesting that the emails on this set...that flash animation is somehow smaller than any other type of animation when transfered to dvd?For the most part, yes. Especially with the stuff on H*R, the animation is very limited, so the bitrate can be much, much lower than say a high-motion, live action film. Most of the rendering will be almost like still images.


Also, there is NO WAY that there is "over an hour of puppet stuff". It's actually over an hour of Bonus Stuff total, including the puppet stuff.