For quite some time, Fox has been hinting at a forthcoming
DVD release of Lost In Space. According to Fox information distributed to Press and Retailers alike, the street date officially (and very recently) listed for the first time is January 6th. TVShowsOnDVD e-tail partners
Amazon,
DVDEmpire, and
DVDPlanet all agree with that date (at least at the time of this writing).
However,
Fox's TV-On-DVD website for consumers started listing the
Lost In Space - Season 1 set just in the past couple of days. Instead, it shows a release date of January 13th (use the "View All TV DVD Titles" option). This may reflect a brand-new delay of one week...or it may simply be incorrect (this consumer site has had several known errors on release dates in the past).
Throwing a big monkey wrench into the whole idea of a January '04 release at all, though, is
this post at the Home Theater Forum by that site's owner, Ronald Epstein (who is on record as being a HUGE fan of the series, and just journeyed cross-country for the meeting he mentions):
This is sort of odd.
Just came back from a meeting at Twentieth
Century Fox studios.
I explicitly asked about Lost In Space
No official date has been set for this release
yet. I was told that it would be out sometime
2004, though.
I would highly doubt a January release. From
the conversation I had with Fox, it seems that
the production of the DVD set isn't nearly
ready to go yet.
It could be that the folks at Fox that he was meeting with were simply being coy with him, not realizing that the sales and marketing departments had gone forward with an announcement for January. However, it's equally possible that the people Ron met with had new information that the others didn't. We're getting conflicting information here, and so the situation is confusing right now.
Complicating this matter is that the Fox Home Video general website seems to be
taking feedback about fans' interests in which first-season episodes are their favorites. Survey-takers are rewarded with a code that allows them to get free shipping on orders they place at the studio's online Fox Store.
Stay tuned...we'll continue to monitor this situation, and alert you if we get solid information that the
Season 1 DVD set really is delayed beyond January 6th.
