Foyle’s War The Complete Saga

DVD Wholesale Quick Overview:

Great series, poor DVD production. Recently purchased the complete Foyle’s War (through Amazon) as a gift for my wife. Very disappointed to discover that there are no subtitles, no closed captioning, nor audio for the hearing impaired. We watched this series originally on Amazon Prime, and there were subtitles. Since we speak American English and not English English, there are parts very difficult to understand. We are, indeed, two peoples separated by a common language. I would re-purchase the entire series if I could be sure that subtitles were included. It is not a technical equipment issue, I have tried the discs on several different DVD players (SONY, Vizio, Samsung) and different TV’s as well. Unless subtitles, closed captioning, or audio for the hearing impaired is hiding somewhere odd on the DVD, it is just not there. We have not have this problem with any of the other Britcom, or British series we have DVD’s for, Doc Martin ), Poldark, Yes Minister,… it’s a long list. Also, some others experiencing this problem have suggested pressing the CC (closed captioning) button on the TV or DVD player remote, or the Subtitle button. Good luck with that as those buttons cannot display what is not there. You will get a little circle with a line through it, as your video equipment is saying N/A. Also, it was suggested that closed captioning was available if instead of connecting your DVD player via HDMI you connected the DVD player via a “Composite” connection (the old 3 wire RGB red green blue), I tried that, it doesn’t work either, and if you have gotten used to the high definition resolution of HDMI, composite video is another disappointment.. There is a suggestion that the latter episodes, seasons 5&6 and beyond, do include either closed captioning or subtitles, haven’t gotten that far yet. Nevertheless the production technology of the DVD manufacturer should include subtitles right on the main menu of the DVD, just like the rest of the DVD media world, and not require their customers to fiddle and finagle with buttons on their TV or DVD player remotes. As an afterthought, the DVD manufacturer of Foyle’s War would greatly benefit from the simple technique of simply numbering the episodes rather that using episode titles exclusively so that customers could easily watch the shows in the sequence they were filmed, especially if they somehow got the discs out of order while transferring them to jacketed file storage case. It is a shame that these technical production issues were allowed to impair such an excellent series. Most recently, from Helen Squire, marketing maven at Acorn, via Bea Tammer, head Marketing Maven, the following reply to my email vis-a-vis, CC & subtitles:
Helen Squire <hsquire@acornmedia.com>
4:21 AM (11 hours ago)
to me
Dear Mr Rhoades,
Thank you for your email which has been passed to me.
Subtitles were only created for the Foyle’s War Series 7 and 8 DVDs. This should have been made clear by the seller of the DVDs. There are currently no plans to remaster the Series 1-5 DVDs with subtitles.

We are glad that you enjoy the show and hope that your viewing pleasure is not too diminished by the lack of subtitles on the earlier series.

– Tom Rhoades

DVD Wholesale Main Features:

Actors: Michael Kitchen, Honeysuckle Weeks
Directors: Stuart Orme, Andy Hay
Format: Closed-captioned
Language: English
Subtitles: English
Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only.)
Number of discs: 29
Rated: NR-Not Rated
Studio: ACORN MEDIA
DVD Release Date: November 10, 2015
Run Time: 2760 minutes
ASIN: B011T0C7DW