Just a quick one this morning to point out that Walt Disney Home Entertainment has begun the process of sending out replacement discs to those with incorrect versions of Volumes 1 and 4 of the Walt Disney Legacy Collection: True-Life Adventures sets.

The acknowledged problems, a topic of high activity on many message boards across the web, are:

• True-Life Adventures Vol 1: The Prowlers Of The Everglades feature is presented with the yellow and blue component colors switched. Although a solution is to change your inputs on a component system, the current disc results in an overly-red colored image.

• True-Life Adventures Vol 4: The feature Secrets Of Life was presented originally with an aspect ratio change for one of its reels. Although the disc should pan out to a letterboxed CinemaScope ratio for the duration of this footage, some discs were pressed that continue to play the film in fullscreen, thereby cropping the left and right of the image by half its intended width.

For those with defective discs, Disney is doing the good thing (tried and tested by Universal with their Back To The Future set and Warners with their Ultimate Superman Collection) and replacing these two discs. To arrange for new copies of these titles within the United States, call 1-800-723-4763 or e-mail Disneyinfo@Disneyhelp.com. Those outside America can still call the 1-800 number, but it may be more convenient to contact Disney through the e-mail address, which I did and received this reply:

Thank you for the e-mail regarding your Walt Disney Legacy Collection: True-Life Adventures Volumes 1 and 4 DVDs not playing correctly. We are aware of the issue and are able to resolve it with different copies of the DVDs. We will send you the new copies of the discs.

If you have any other questions, please reply to this email or call us at 1-800-723-4763, Monday 9:30-7:30 and Tuesday through Friday 9:30-6:30 CST.

Thank you for your patience,
Walt Disney Home Entertainment Technical Support.

Good to see Disney putting the customer first, especially as there was initially some doubt as to whether these discs would see replacements. There also seems to be some missing content on the Walt Disney Treasures: More Silly Symphonies set, and Disney have said replacements would be forthcoming for that title as well, though they are not yet ready. Apparently, the set lacked some main title elements and used some alternative masters than were intended for some color shorts. Most intriguingly, Disney are using the opportunity to also present some recently located fragments of additional footage from The Night Before Christmas (1933) which had been cut from early showings and remained unseen since.

Naturally, we’ll keep you updated as to when that replacement becomes a reality, but those True-Lifes are being rectified now. Be sure to check your sets, but kudos to Buena Vista for acting on the problem.

– Ben.