Tintin Forums

Just had to let you know:
There now also is a Dutch double-DVD out with the two movies, including a Dutch/Flemish (and the French original) soundtrack and subtitles.

I'm sure I saw these two films on British TV later than 1973 as previously mentioned near the start of this thread. I would have been 4 in 1973 and remember being older than that when I watched these two films. They were dubbed into English. I'm pretty sure I saw them in the very early 1980's. Not sure if video players were around at the time. Our family didn't have one at the time otherwise I would have recorded them. I would like to imagine that both these dubbed films must be somewhere in a video vault at the BBC or ITV. The only scenes that I remember were Hadoock and Tintin at a Greek wedding and the Thom(p)sons being chased by a bull. I think both these scenes were from 'The Blue Oranges'. They don't appear in my English version book of the 'Golden Fleece'

It has been confirmed in another thread that "Tintin And The Golden Treasure" (as it was called) was shown on BBC1 on May 1st, 1978.


"Tintin And The Golden Treasure" was shown again last year at the NFT (see this thread) after a copy was found in the BBC archives. Some of the Tintinologists here attended and it was a great evening. I spoke to one of the organisers at the event and he told me that nobody has yet been able to locate "Blue Oranges", so we're still waiting for that to surface.

Ooh! Thanks for that, I'm definitely getting binning my hookey tapes of the two movies in fuzzy piratevision, and getting meself both of those as soon as Christmas is out of the way! :D

They're both listed on Umbrella's website, which I've used before. They managed to get their hefty box set of season one of Danger Man out to me in the UK in a little over a week.

Blue Oranges is listed as an all-region disc, and Golden Fleece as Region 4 only - I suspect that it might be all-region too, as was the Danger Man set. I've got a region-free player in any case, so whichever way, it shouldn't be a problem.

The DVD has English subtitles but the picture quality is a bit poor. A real pity. I've checked the DVD cover and it says Region 4.

Sorry, I was only trying to help. Besides, I live in Australia too.

I also have to admit that I've only got the Blue Oranges DVD, and it takes on a hue of red every few seconds.

Umbrella Entertainment has it subtitled, but it's got a terrible transfer. And it's Region 4.

Golden Fleece
Blue Oranges

I believe that there are a lot of Region 4 DVDs that can be played on Region 2 players. I have a Region 4 DVD of Hitchcock's "Dial M for Murder" that works very well on my Region 2 player.

Is there any way of finding out which Region 4 movies would work on Region 2 players? It could be that this film is among them.

Moderator Note: Region settings are discretionary in the manufacturing process - it is possible to set any combination at that point. "Region 4" discs which play on "Region 2" players do so because they are in fact coded "Region 4 and Region 2" (and perhaps other regions too), although they may not say so on the packaging.
The regional aspect of DVDs is actually wholly contrived, and not an aspect of the technology; they were introduced as a form of protecionism, to allow content to be licensed and marketed regionally, and to minimise the selling of titles internationally, where consumers would go outside their home territory in pursuit of a bargain they don't get at home. This is why Japan is arbitrarily included in Region 2, along with the U.K., despite no geographic proximity, and although they actually use different broadcast standards. It splits the major NTSC markets (the U.S. and Japan), making it harder for American discs to be played in Japan, where the software is more expensive.
However, knowing that sales are still being made, and not wanting to lose out, many manufacturers still make their disk multi-region - given a heritage that shares many common features, it isn't uncommon to find that Australian and N.Z. R4 disks are dual encoded for R2 as well (and vice-versa) so that they can be used in the U.K. (and all three use PAL encoding).
You need to look at each disk
The Technological Tintinologist Team

These Umbrella Entertainment DVDs are Regions 2 & 4, so they should work on European players too.


Moderator Note: Since this thread was started, the BFI has released multi-region PAL DVDs of both live action movies, with French dialogue and English sub-titles, plus a booklet for each; furthermore Fleece has an optional English-language sound-track as used by the BBC for broadcast.

Discussion about the BFI releases is in this thread.

The Tintinologist Team