Here is another Network UFO Blu-ray set promo clip, this time featuring Lt. Ellis.  Less than 2 weeks until release!

Network has extended their UFO Blu-ray set pre-buy to November 7th, and have added a UFO poster based on the 1970 Anglo UFO trading cards!  This poster is only available with sets purchased from Network, and is a limited edition.

The Gerry Anderson fan club Fanderson has just released interviews with Ed Bishop on CD, now available to its membership!

Network has posted two trailers for their upcoming UFO Blu-ray on YouTube, this one appears to be based on the Blu-ray menus, and this one is taken from a scene in the episode CLOSE UP!

Both HMV and Amazon.co.uk have raised their preorder price from £62.99 to £69.99.  Although presumably orders already placed at the lower price will be honored.

Amazon.co.uk has now lowered their price on the upcoming Network UFO Blu-ray box to £62.99!

Meanwhile, Network has just posted a new promotional video for this release, presumably based on new animations developed for the Blu-ray menus!

HMV is selling the upcoming Network UFO Blu-ray box for £62.99, which is the lowest price seen to date.

The Network UFO Blu-ray box has been confirmed to have 6 discs, not 7.

The release date for the upcoming "Complete Book of UFO" is now November 25.  There will be book launch event in London on that date with author Chris Bentley and Ayshea at the Cinema Museum!

Amazon.co.uk is currently offering the upcoming revised and expanded COMPLETE BOOK OF UFO for only £6.99, which is a whopping 77% discount!  Not sure if this is intentional, a mistake, or if the price will rise to something more normal at any moment...

The Official Gerry Anderson store has the upcoming Network UFO Blu-ray for pre-order.  This lists this as having 7 discs (not 6), and when asked, they confirmed that it has 7 discs (despite Network's own site which says 6).

Network now has the UFO Blu-ray box available as a "pre-buy", at £20 less (£69.99) than Amazon.co.uk's price (£89.99).  International shoppers should note however that Network is charging £40 for international shipping, although VAT is subtracted so the set prices falls to £58.33.

Network's description confirms this as a Region B release (not region-free), and states that there are 6 discs (Amazon said 7).  And in case you thought that the "600 page book" was a typo, it's not.  It's actually been confirmed at 620 pages, and contains around 200,000 words.

Network's upcoming UFO Blu-ray set is now available for pre-order on Amazon.co.uk, with a release date of 14 November 2016!  Details and special features include:

• All 26 episodes in their original 1.33 aspect ratio
• 1080p resolution
• New restoration based on 10-year old scans of the original 35mm negatives
• Original mono audio track plus a 5.1 mix
• English subtitles
• 600 page book/viewing notes by Andrew Pixley
• Film material, including textless episode title backgrounds, textless end titles, stock footage, TV spots, extra footage for Identified and Exposed, unused footage from Timelash and The Long Sleep, Italian trailers
• "From Earth to the Moon": brand new feature-length documentary with interviews, archive video, audio and stills - many of which have never been seen or heard before.
• "The Women of UFO": new documentary discussing the improving sexual equality depicted in the series and the role of science fiction in striving for that change
• "Identified: SHADO New Recruits Briefing": a newly created SHADO briefing film narrated by Matt Zimmerman
• Audio commentaries: Identified with Gerry Anderson and Sub-Smash with Ed Bishop
• S.I.D. Computer Voice Session and audio outtakes for these sessions and Kill Straker!
• Archive Ed Bishop audio interview from 1986
• "Tomorrow Today": Future Fashions with Sylvia Anderson
• Extensive image galleries including previously unseen images

ANDERSONIC Issue #21 is now out, and features a new interview with Deborah Grant (THE PSYCHOBOMBS), and a 1993 interview with Gerry Anderson, both discussing UFO!  You can order this from the ANDERSONIC website.

A new email from Network indicates that their UFO Blu-ray is still scheduled for release "later this year", without specifying a date.  They also posted a short USA TV commercial for UFO from the 1970's, which is merely an edited version of the regular opening sequence.

Network's new INVASION: UFO Blu-ray started shipping on Monday, and arriving in people's homes today (Wednesday).  It has now been confirmed that the discs are indeed restricted to Zone B (it is not an all-zone release).  Also that the HD version of the film is presented at 24 frames per second (not 25), with a total runtime of 1 hour and 37 minutes.

Note that Network's new high definition release of INVASION: UFO on Blu-ray has some differences from the original -- it is missing all the library music that was added (except for the title sequence), and it is missing the added sound effects.  Also it is in widescreen, so the top and bottom of the picture is missing.  However, the original version of the movie is included in standard definition.  It's not clear if any of this will be in Network's upcoming UFO Blu-ray release, or if the disc is actually region restricted (the advertising says Region B only). 

Here are some links related to this release:

• Article with background of INVASION: UFO and what was done for this release
• Clip #1 in high definition
• Clip #2 in high definition
• Purchase page

A bit of a surprise for today, Network now has INVASION: UFO available on Blu-ray disc, in high definition and widescreen, available now!

The "Complete Book of Gerry Anderson's UFO" is now available for pre-order in the USA, from Amazon.com!

Chris Bentley's long out-of-print "The Complete Book of Gerry Anderson's UFO" is being re-released on November 1, 2016, this time by Signum Books.  And it's not just a reprint, either -- the book is being completely redesigned, will now be in full color, will include never-before-published photos, new sections will be added, and the remaining text updated!  Here is a pre-order link on Amazon.co.uk

Here is an update from Network, posted on their Facebook and Twitter pages:

"Just a little update on UFO...

We have made every effort to ensure these new versions are substantially improved on anything you've seen before and will supersede any previous versions in circulation. We have assessed all the materials available to us and invested what is necessary to bring them up to a standard that is on a par with our other restorations given the state of the materials. The previous transfers were perfectly useable but we have re-treated every scene in every episode from scratch.

Packaging for this set is still being designed, and will be revealed at a later date: we can promise you it will be something very special!"

Network has posted a YouTube video with some new information about their upcoming UFO Blu-ray set.  While this looks like it will be better than the German and Japanese UFO Blu-ray sets, they are no longer saying it will be an all-new HD restoration as they said in December.  Now it's merely a fixup job on the existing HD video masters, which is unfortunate, as some of the issues with the existing HD video masters can't really be fixed digitally (and would require finding better film elements and scanning them).

Unstoppable Cards now have their UFO trading cards available for pre-order!  Purchasing a box guarantees that you will get a complete base set, plus some extras (autograph cards, sketch cards).

Actor Douglas Wilmer, who played Dr. Brunner in the UFO episode E.S.P., has passed away at age 96.

Actress Adrienne Corri, who played Liz Newton in the UFO episode THE SQUARE TRIANGLE, has passed away at age 84.

Some sad news... UFO co-creator Sylvia Anderson has passed away at age 88. 

In the UK, Network has just announced that they will be releasing UFO on Blu-ray disc in 2016!  The video on their website says that this will be a new HD restoration, and with new special features!

Here is a new fan short film, based on the UFO episode EXPOSED!

The December issue of the Ed Straker Herald is now online!

Rose Tobias Shaw, the casting director for UFO, passed away in October at age 96.

In the spring of 2016, Unstoppable cards will be releasing a UFO trading card set!  Facebook announcement

If you haven't checked lately, the publicity photos section has had a few new UFO publicity photos added to it in recent months (the first ones on the page are the newest)

After a long hiatus, the Ed Straker Herald is up and running again!

The interviews on CD mentioned last week with Ed Bishop, Gerry Anderson, and Sylvia Anderson are now available on eBay!

"Blast from the Past" is offering rare interviews on CD with Ed Bishop, Gerry Anderson, and Sylvia Anderson, and the first two discs are now available for pre-order!

A new Skydiver model is being released in Japan this summer! This is from the WAVE corporation, the company that once released a Skydiver kit.

ANDERSONIC Issue 19 is now available, and features an interview with UFO special effects production manager Ken Holt, and also takes a look at the UFO episode THE CAT WITH TEN LIVES!

The Prop Gallery has a new article about the miniature models used in UFO!

The UFO Blu-ray set from Germany is now out!  I have posted some photos of the packaging and screen grabs here on Facebook.  Some things to note:

• The video quality is exactly the same as the more expensive Japanese set for all but one episode, as it uses the same video encode.
• The exception is THE LONG SLEEP, where they have added sepia tint to the flashback sequences, but the image is a bit less detailed than the Japanese release (as they fixed and reencoded the video from the Japanese release)
• This has the same 1-minute aspect ratio error during ORDEAL that the Japanese set has (where is switches to widescreen and then back to normal)
• The discs only play on "Region B" Blu-ray players (that means they will NOT play on USA Blu-ray players)
• Audio includes an English track and a German track, also there are optional German subtitles for the portions of the episodes that were never dubbed in German.  The English track is the original mono (it does not include the 5.1 track that was on the Japanese release).  The audio is PCM (uncompressed) on discs 1 and 6, otherwise it is Dolby Digital 2.0.
• There are no special features on the discs, however it does come with a small booklet and a small SHADO patch.
• As with the Japanese release, the video quality is mixed.  It does look great for the most part, while in other places it doesn't look that great.  Someone could have done a better job on this (e.g. finding better film sources, doing better color correction, spending more effort digitally removing film dirt and damage, properly darkening scenes shot day-for-night, digitally replacing stock footage shots with the higher quality original footage).  For more information on this, see this page on the Japanese release.

Here is a recent BBC4 radio interview with Gabrielle Drake, regarding her brother Nick Drake.

The Amazon.de page for the upcoming German UFO Blu-ray has now been updated with the correct cover artwork.

In Germany, Epix Media will be releasing UFO on Blu-ray disc on November 28.  The discs will be region B encoded (not playable on USA Blu-ray players), and will have options for English audio, German audio, and German subtitles.  The aspect ratio will be 4:3, although I understand it will still have the same one-minute lapse into 16:9 in the middle or ORDEAL that the Japanese set has.  The audio tracks will both be mono (it will not include the English 5.1 track from the Japanese release).  The video quality should be about the same as the Japanese set, except that  the flashbacks in THE LONG SLEEP will actually be sepia-toned instead of black&white. As for special features, the first 1000 units will have a coated slipcase, a booklet and a SHADO patch.  All 26 episodes will be presented on 6 Blu-ray discs.

Here is a link to this set on Amazon.de (the current cover artwork shown is for the older DVD set).

This Saturday (September 20), there will be two UFO guests at Autographica in Birmingham UK - Ayshea Brough and Georgina Moon!