Friends Videos series two

Hi i am new but ive loved Friends for ages.
Can any one help!! i have aquired 2 videos from series two that have black writting on the spin of the case instead of the traditional black rectangle with white writting on them.Can you buy the whole of series two in this style? Are they misprints?
Any information would be great!
Thanks

A couple of mine are like that, I have this mix and match from Series 2 and the only difference is that they are older editions and you can tell this as they have older trailers for older series of Friends or different trailers for Films.

thanks for the information if ive got ne more questions i know where to come

Yup, the original release were black text on white, and they have been rereleased so many times...

Season 2 rerun begins Thursday morning Channel 4

I suppose this is as good a thread as any to put this in:

I think it's time that this practice of UK broadcasters lagging behind US broadcasters so much needs to end.

One of the main reasons of course are two different strategies being employed; US broadcasters like to run a season for about 40 weeks, with 24 or 25 new episodes, and the rest of the slots padded out with repeats. UK broadcasters like to run a season in an unbroken continuous unit. This means that, in order to avoid overtaking the US broadcast (I think the finale of season 9 of Friends aired here only 2 weeks after it did in the US) they must start a long while after them.

For years, it's been fine to do things this way, with only the most serious of fans being bothered to go down the (quite difficult) ways of getting episodes earlier. Today, that situation is fast changing, and I think UK broadcasters have to change their thinking.

Today I saw a general Sky trailer which included amongst other things a trail for the 'new' season 10 of Friends (and on another note, does that mean that Friends has gone back to Sky One for it's final season) but the trail was lost on me (and not just because I can't get Sky One atm - fingers crossed for the new pay DTT service) - I have seen the 'new' episode trailed over 5 months ago. Yes that's by illegal means, but I wanted to see it, and no UK broadcaster gave me the option of seeing it.

And I'm now 10 episodes into the new season (with the 11th being shown this week) and have no incentive to go back to a UK broadcaster which, as far as I am concerned, is just showing old episodes which I've seen months ago). The problem becomes even more compounded when you think how long it will take to get these episodes on Channel 4 (a repeat of last season's 'new episode on E4, shown the next day on C4' approach doesn't look likely).

This can ring true for other programmes, and whilst it's still fairly uncommon atm, the number of people doing this is rising and rising, and with the increase in takeup of broadband (especially now that Tiscali have a 'midband' 160kbps service available for the same price as most unmetered 56k dialup deals), it can only increase.

When a new episode of a TV show is aired in the US and appears on IRC within hours for the whole world to download, UK (and other international) broadcasters must respond to this by changing their policy accordingly - that means that they must aspire to air top rated US shows the day after their original American airing - which means Friends series 10 should have started here in September 2003, not February 2004.

I know it will introduce a new concept with the introduction of 40 week seasons with new episodes padded out amongst repeats (although for series like Friends, each series finale is usually followed by a rerun of an older season in the same or similar timeslot, so it's not like they'd have to schedule Friends more often than they would anyway), but I really believe it's essential if they want to retain the value of those pay TV deals.

Once a significant number of people realise they can download US series almost half a year before they officially debut here, the value of pay TV rights will plummet - the broadcasters will be paying for something which everyone has allready got. I can't believe that the broadcasters haven't seriously thought about this allready, but in 2-3 years time, if the status quo remains, I seriously believe that the majority of people who saw a new episode of a top US show will have illegally downloaded it from the internet and thus will have seen it many months before it sees the light of day on a UK channel. This surely can't be a desirable situation for UK broadcasters.

They must act now. This practice that because something is imported it means we can wait months for it must end. If a new episode of Friends airs on a Thursday on NBC, it must air on Friday on E4 (or maybe Sky One now?). And aswell as that, the significant delay between pay TV airings and FTA airings must end too. People without Sky no longer need to be envious that Sky-endowed people see things way before they do; they can now do something about it and get the episode down for free.

The way Friends ran on E4 and C4 last season must be adopted as the model, and in general, something which airs on thursday in the US must air on Friday in the UK on pay TV, and on Saturday in the UK on FTA TV.

Witholding new series from people may have worked in the past, but the time for doing this is fast running out, and broadcasters must adapt to the changing climate. Internet piracy of TV shows isn't a minor blip, it's here to stay as long as this 1970's attitude to imports continues to exist, and the only way of countering it is to give viewers what they want and get things on the air here with due haste.

cwathen, Friends series 10 is on E4 (not Sky One) on Thursday and on Channel 4 on Friday, so they are doing the same thing as last year.

I don't know about the Sky trailer, it wasn't just a trailer for Sky Digital on one of the Freeview channels was it? I came across a Sky Digital promo leaflet recently that included the new series on E4, even though it's on C4 a day later.

Re: cwathen (I won't quote all that); it's certainly true that downloading of favourite programmes is more commonplace these days. Those who partake must surely measure in the hundreds of thousands. It would be hyperbole to suggest however that this is a significant issue for UK broadcasters.

40 week seasons are commonplace in the States as a matter of practicality. US series are shot and broadcast concurrently. Packing them out with reruns is essential as they may only be 3 weeks ahead in the studio (never mind post production).

The UK has typically had a culture of producing a series to completion (6-8 eps a series?) before broadcast begins. Theres no reason why that shouldnt continue with overseas programmes.

Until programme delivery changes radically (global broadband broadcasting or on-demand) then I think the *majority* of the audience can live with it.

Indeed not, but it's an ever rising figure. 5 years ago this was going on, but then through a combination of slower connection speeds, the lack of user friendly software like KazaA (it was pretty much universally done on the less than friendly IRC, and although that's still the best way for getting things quickly, it's not the easiest), and indeed larger file sizes with lower quality (no DIVX then) the number of people doing it must have number only in the hundreds. Now there are hundreds of thousands.

Availability of the software to get this stuff, better compression technologies that can bring fairly good quality (admittedly DVD quality rips are uncommon) in a viable filesize and faster internet connections becoming more affordable, has pushed this on.

It's naieve to believe that the current situation will remain forever. Broadband will get cheaper, filesharing software will mature (KaZaA is now starting to enjoy the near ubiquity that Napster had), compression technology will improve again driving up the quality of rips and driving down filesizes, and home DVD authoring will increase meaning that more and more people aren't stuck at their computer to watch their downloads. It will of course be completely illegal, but just like copying a tape, I doubt many people will find anything morally wrong with it and won't let that stand in the way.


Some are artificially padded out though; Friends has now ceased production, yet it will take until May for them to get to the end of this season. And since this season has less episodes (18 rather than the usual 24), they are just increasing the repeat count to make it run to the same length; I can see this happening allready with them only having shown 2 new episodes in the last 2 months.


Indeed, there *is* no reason why that shouldn't continue, but there *will be* a reason before very much longer. To take Friends as an example again, once a season finishes on Channel 4 the first thing they do is schedule a repeat season in the same or similar primetime slot; I don't think there is ever a time when a significant amount of time goes buy without Friends in primetime. Since they are prepared to have it on for 40 weeks of the year or more, it wouldn't alter things too much if they start going for a US approach with a padded out season to enable them to broadcast closer to US transmission dates.


Oh indeed, but it will happen, and it won't be that far off. But UK broadcasters seem totally unprepared for it, still content to maintain a culture when US programmes can start a new season here many months after their original debut. Surely it's better to change things whilst illegal aquisition still is a minor problem, rather than to let it happen and then seek to correct it.

It's not just new episodes of programmes the broadcasters need to be wary about, IRC fileservers often contain every single episode of a given programme. People just seeking to see a new episode earlier soon realise that they could over time download the whole lot and then they've got no reason ever to watch it on a channel ever again.