Monday, June 4, 2012

Maverick is Here! :)



Maverick - The Complete First Season, that is! :)

My 7-DVD set arrived today. I popped the second DVD into the player and was greeted with the menu, scored with the jaunty Maverick theme song.

Naturally, I selected the "Hostage!" episode (since it's the first one in which Jack Kelly appeared) and JK appeared on the screen. But, I couldn't hear him. 

Actually, I could sort of hear something, a bunch of faint "waa waa waa waa" noises that made everyone in the scene sound like Charlie Brown's unseen teacher on the Peanuts cartoons.

I wanted to see and hear JK. I couldn't figure out what was going on. The menu music played okay--why couldn't I hear the episode?

I tried the disc in my computer and the sound worked fine. So, I played with the DVD player set-up menu and discovered that the "waa waas" were coming from the sub-woofer (I've always wondered what that is). I simply had to change the sound from "stereo" to "mono". Voila! I could hear JK speak.

I'm not sure why the Maverick DVDs had this aural quirk. I have  several other classic TV shows on DVDs and none of them have acted like this. Well, I'm just glad I didn't have to return Maverick as defective. 


Aside from that little hiccup, I give this set a big thumb's up. The only real extra is a booklet--well, a pamphlet really--with some small pictures, episode details, and thumbnail plot descriptions. But, it's a thrill just to finally have the first season of Maverick on DVD. I may start spending the dinner hour with Bart and Bret again, just as I did when I began watching the show on the Encore Westerns channel back in 2009.  :)