About the Third Season for other Regions:
We heard from Alex who told us: "I'm a fan of kung fu from the UK and was very dissapointed when Warner Bro didn't release the third season in region 2. I emailed them asking when they were likely to release it on region 2 and was informed that they had no intentions of doing so. This meant that I had to bite the bullet and so bought the region 1 version from amazon.co.uk to play on a multi-regional DVD player. In my haste to play the DVDs when they arrived I forgot to change the region settings and found they worked perfectly. With this in mind I experimented and found they worked on all the region settings thus meaning that seasion three is actually region free!"
We asked for details about this experience and were told: "First of all I used a cheap mult-region dvd player that I got especially for watching season three. My main player, a Sony, is not able to be made multi-regional as the region setting are hardware based not software. As I mentioned in my haste to watch it I forgot to change the region settings. Once I'd realised this I tried it on my Sony and it all worked perfectly. This got me thinking it may be region free so I tried on all of the region settings on the cheap multi-region player and it worked fine on all of them. The only thing that was any different was when the player was set to region 0. I got a Federal copyright notice warning about the illegal use of copys. Note, this only happened when the player was set to region 0!
Since receiving your reply I've played it sucessfully on my PC, and it also worked fine on my sons Playstation 2. However I have found that the picture was very jumpy and unwatchable when trying to view it on my ancient PAL only format TV which leads me to believe that it is only watchable on TV that can playback NTSC format video."
In case anyone wants to take a chance, Amazon UK offers the Third Season in Region 1, but we cannot guarantee what experience you will have with your DVD player.
We have had another report that the Region 1 plays in Region 2 with PAL TVs. We ask that anyone else who takes the risk and buys it and tries it on any region DVD, please tell us your experience!
(North American Version)
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The Region 1 (North American) version is in Original Aspect - Not cut at top and bottom to make it widescreen!
Number of discs: 4
(The British version (Region 2) of Season Two is in widescreen and it has no extras.)
Warner Brothers has made no announcement that it is planning a Region 2 release of Season Three, for some reason. British fans seem to like the widescreen but because American fans hated it, we do not know if a widescreen version os Season Three was ever made and Warner Brothers may not have decided whether to release the Third Season in original format for Region 2. There is just no news on any of this.
See below for First Season links.
October 27, 2004:
The ever reliable TV Shows on DVD announced October 17, 2004: Caine is back for more when Warner Bros Home Video releases the second season of Kung Fu. This 4 disc set will contain all 23 episodes presented in their original aspect ratio (1.33:1). The set will include an English mono audio track, and English, Spanish and French subtitles.....
Features (for North American version):
- Audio Commentary by David Carradine on The Well and The Chalice
- Zen & Now: A Dinner With David Carradine And Friends
Also available from amazon.com: both seasons together at a savings off getting the two seasons separately.
- Also Available:
Languages you can see subtitles for on the Discs
(Editor's note: Having seen the pilot and some of the first few episodes, I haven't noticed much loss from the top and the bottom of the screen. The discs, however, are two sided and therefore more delicate than regular DVD --- but the picture is gorgeous.
See more Information on the First Season DVD set
We assume most of our readers want the whole First Season with the Pilot as part of the set. But that DVD of the pilot by itself is tempting for just $5.98. Give it away to people to get them interested in this series they may never have seen!
May 2, 2004 - TV Shows on DVD has a story about planned extras for the upcoming remaining seasons.
- DVD/VHS Availability outside North America
Other information for Overseas Releases: It seems that Amazon in the UK is offering videos of some episodes. These would be PAL system, of course, and wouldn't play on most North American video recorders:
· Kung Fu - Vol. 2 - 'Alethea' & 'Battle Hymn'
· Kung Fu - 'A Small Beheading' & 'Cry Of The Night Beast'.
We didn't know these were available and are skeptical even if it is Amazon's sellers (not Amazon itself) and the claim is that they ship in a couple of days. We had never known they were available at all although there seem to be both new and used versions for sale at outrageous prices.
- What about Region 1 (North American) video tapes?
- The pilot is available (click on image to the left), but the only place we know of that is selling the episodes on VHS is Columbia House. You have to join their "Club". They will sell you the pilot (which is available elsewhere) for $4.95, then send you a tape a month with two episodes each for, we think, $19.95. Or you can make arrangements to get all they have (which doesn't include the whole series, we think they have about two-thirds of them) at one time. Go to the home page for Columbia House at http://www.columbiahouse.com and click on the box for "TV Greats". If you start shopping without a "Savings Code", it has you choose a category from there: Choose "Westerns". (If you use a "Savings Code", you get the series offered with that code and instead of going through what that offer has, click on "Classic TV Series" from the choices on the left and then click on "Westerns".) "Kung Fu" should be one of the choices.
The Pilot Is Available on VHS
