It's hard to get Pat & Mat on VHS or DVD if you're not living in Czech or Japan. I'm living in Switzerland and it really wasn't an easy task to get them. But I'm now holding ten DVDs with Pat & Mat content in my hands. Why ten? What's on them? What are the differences? Read on…

Japan import
As reported some time ago Deep Impression TDK in collaboration with Ateliéry Bonton Zlín, a.s. and Slovenská Televízia released five DVDs in Japan. Each DVD contains six or seven episodes. All together they contain episodes 1 – 35.

Czech import
Japan is not the only country which released Pat & Mat on DVD. Ateliéry Bonton Zlín, a.s. and euro digital center pressed the episodes 1 – 35 on three DVDs. Ten brandnew episodes are available on a fourth DVD.

The Mystery of episodes 36 – 49
Copyright holder of the episodes 36 – 49, with pearls such as Bisquits, Parquet or Billiards, is the no longer existing company AiF. Due to legal reasons these episodes are put on hold. No one may distribute, brodacast or release them in any way. That's what I got to know some time ago. I don't know what happend in the meantime, but in Japan these episodes are still not available on DVD.

The surprising thing now is, that 10 of those 14 episodes had their DVD release in Czech back in 2000. I also got a copy of this one. Why do I care about this legal stuff, as long as I own the DVD, you may want to know. I don't really know, it just made me wondering why they were released earlier and didn't get a rerelease with the other three DVDs in 2002.

Missing episodes
So, even if you own all the available DVDs, there are still four episodes (five, if you add episode 50) that are not on any of these DVDs. Due to this legal stuff I really don't know if we will ever see it on one...

Tech Specs
It seems that Czech and Japan didn't had the same master tape for producing the DVDs. The picture seems to be better on the Czech DVDs but the sound is sometimes far away from enjoyable. There was one special episode in my test where there was a significant difference. The sound was so much clearer on the Japanese DVD.

But if you look at the age of many of the episodes you can be happy what they achieved on the DVD. A suprise is, that on the newest Czech DVD, number 4, the picture quality sometimes isn't very good. That's a letdown for such new material.

Picture
All episodes are filmed in 4:3 aspect ratio. It would have been cool, if the newest episodes have been 16:9.

Sound
DD 2.0 mono and stereo. The Czech DVDs sometimes sound awful, but overall not bad if you look at the age.

Bonus
The Japanese DVDs don't feature any extras. If you take a look at the Czech DVDs you'll find on every disc filmographies, on disc 1 to 4 even games and a short "Making of", which is also downloadable on the official Czech Pat & Mat website.

On the fourth DVD there is a funny Photo Gallery whith many "Behind the Scenes"-pictures and photos of not yet released episodes.

The DVDs
Click on a cover for more informations.