Extreme Ghostbusters: The Complete Series Unofficial/Bootleg 4-Disc HD Blu-ray Set Review

Five years ago, I reviewed the Monsterland Media unofficial/bootleg Extreme Ghostbusters: The Complete Series 2-Disc SD-on-Blu-ray set. A few years later, TJ at Monsterland Media created a 4-Disc HD Blu-ray set, which contains the episodes at the full HD size of 1920x1080. Yes, this item was released a few years ago, but I never had a copy until recently, so better late than never. Also, it will be interesting to see how it compares to the official DVD release.

Let's start by looking at the packaging of this 4-Disc Blu-ray set.


The set comes in a standard size four-disc blue "Blu-ray Disc" case (the same ones the studios use) with decent-looking high-quality printed artwork. As you can see in the photo above, the front cover features a beautiful collage of the gang surrounded by some of the series' baddies. The back cover has a screenshot of the old and new crew from "Back in the Saddle, Part 1".


Open that case up and you'll see that each disc is on it's own page. Awesome! A vast improvement over the unnecessarily thick case TJ used (still uses?) for the SD Blu-ray set. The label on each disc features various screenshots and clip art.


Put the first disc into your Blu-ray player and you'll see this:


Each disc features a different background image, with all 10 episodes displayed on one screen, though they are listed left to right and not straight down in each column, which is opposite of how most would do it.


A little snippet of the theme song is played on each disc's menu, though it's cut off when the menu repeats. Thankfully, since all episodes are on one screen, there are no menu transitions to waste your time, like on the SD set.


After you play each episode, it goes back to the menu with the next episode selected for you. Of course, you could use that Play arrow button at the bottom right to Play All, which has all of the episodes on one title back to back.


As you can see in the episode list below, there are 10 episodes per each 25GB single-layer BD-R (recordable Blu-ray) disc. Each episode has four chapters, placed at the start of the episode, before the show opening, after the show opening, and before the end credits. Although there should be a chapter at the mid-point commercial break, instead of one before the show opening, this is still a big improvement over the chaptering in the SD set, which was every 5 minutes. There are no subtitles or special features. (Attention Advanced Users: If you have the capability of ripping the episodes off of these Blu-ray discs and adding subtitles to them, this set of Hulu rip subtitle SRT files can be used.)

DISC 1
01. Darkness at Noon (Part 1) (21:57)
02. Darkness at Noon (Part 2) (21:25)
03. The True Face of a Monster (22:28)
04. Fear Itself (21:56)
05. Deadliners (21:55)
06. Casting the Runes (21:54)
07. The Infernal Machine (21:43)
08. Home Is Where The Horror Is (22:00)
09. Killjoys (21:57)
10. The Unseen (21:56)
00. Play All (3:39:16)

DISC 2
11. The Crawler (22:18)
12. The Pied Piper of Manhattan (21:48)
13. Be Careful What You Wish For (21:57)
14. Grease (22:10)
15. The Jersey Devil (22:03)
16. Dry Spell (21:59)
17. Sonic Youth (22:00)
18. Ghost Apocalyptic Future (22:01)
19. Bird of Prey (22:00)
20. Seeds of Destruction (21:59)
00. Play All (3:40:19)

DISC 3
21. The Luck of the Irish (22:01)
22. The Ghostmakers (21:58)
23. Slimer's Sacrifice (21:59)
24. Grundelesque (21:59)
25. In Your Dreams (22:01)
26. Moby Ghost (21:59)
27. Fallout (22:03)
28. Eyes of a Dragon (21:58)
29. Till Death Do Us Start (21:59)
30. Glutton For Punishment (21:59)
00. Play All (3:40:00)

DISC 4
31. Ghost in the Machine (22:02)
32. Dog Days (21:59)
33. Mole People (22:00)
34. A Temporary Insanity (22:00)
35. Rage (22:02)
36. Heart of Darkness (22:02)
37. The Sphinx (21:57)
38. Witchy Woman (22:02)
39. Back in the Saddle (Part 1) (21:58)
40. Back in the Saddle (Part 2) (21:59)
00. Play All (3:40:07)

(You might want to copy and paste the list above into a text document and print it out to keep in the case, so you can quickly see what disc an episode is on. An episode list is the one thing missing from this set.)

As you can see, the last four episodes are not in the original airdate order. "Back in the Saddle" was always meant to be the two-part season finale, but it aired a little earlier. The rest of the episodes are still not in "Ideal Continuity Order", as my episode guide is. If TJ would have put "The Sphinx" immediately before "Back in the Saddle", and moved "Moby Ghost" to be somewhere before "Slimer's Sacrifice", the order would be perfect. (The other continuity-related episodes are already in the proper places.)

For all of you completists out there (like me), be aware that the new Sony Pictures Television logo appears at the end of these 15 episodes: the first 13 episodes, "Ghostmakers", and "The Sphinx". The remaining 25 episodes all have the original BKN and Columbia TriStar Television logos. Those of you who watched the series first-hand will remember that the end credits song changed about midway through the run. For the record, the new song, "Call The XGB", was used from "Moby Ghost" to the end of the series.

As with the previous Monsterland Blu-ray set, the source material for this new HD Blu-ray set are "Hulu Rips". As the name implies, those are files that were ripped from Hulu, which was streaming Extreme Ghostbusters from 2016 to 2021 using masters that Sony provided. The Hulu rips are either encoded at 960x720 or 640x480. The MKV files I found are 640x480, but I don't know if those are the "original" rips. At either resolution, this Blu-ray set upsamples them to 1440x1080 (pillarboxed in a 1920x1080 frame), presented in their original 4:3 aspect ratio. The video uses the MPEG-4 AVC codec (23.976fps progressive), while the audio is Dolby Digital 5.1. Each episode is compressed to about 2.2 GB each, while the SD Blu-ray set has them at 1.0 GB each.

Since Hulu got their episodes directly from Sony, the picture and audio quality on this set is really good. That's not to say that it's perfect, due to some defects that were introduced somewhere in the line between Hulu and these discs. These are the same defects that were in the SD Blu-ray set, which tells me that these defects are in TJ's source materials. These defects are also in the 640x480 Hulu Rips I found, so it's likely that they may have been present in Hulu's original files. I never watched the episodes streaming on Hulu, and they're gone from the service now, so there's no way for me to know for sure. I can tell you that Sony's official DVD set doesn't have these defects, so they're not in the episode masters.

• Ep 21 - "Luck of the Irish" - Lots of minor split-second audio hiccups here and there, three frames of digital artifacts at 14:50 and 16:28, and crackles in the end credits music.

• Ep 31 - "Ghost in the Machine" - Five frames of digital artifacts at 10:57, VERY bad artifacts and audio glitch at 19:05 for one second, and more digital artifacts at 21:56 (on Columbia logo at end).

• Ep 38 - "Witchy Woman" - Lots of digital artifacts at 6:21 (lasts for two seconds), 6:33, and 18:50. At 21:56, during the BKN logo at the very end, are slight digital breakup around the edges of the letters.

There are also two animation errors that are now visible, especially if you have overscan turned off on your TV, like I do.

• Ep 04 - "Fear Itself" - There are boxes from other frames in the lower left corner at 3:50 and in the lower right corner at 11:40.

• Ep 14 - "Grease" - The reporter's microphone has not been completely drawn in the lower left corner at 3:56.

Aside from those defects, this is a great set. Yes, there are some compression/upsample artifacts if you look for them, but they are not easily visible on my 43-inch 4K TV. I don't know how well the picture will hold up on an 80-inch TV. To give you an idea as to the quality of the episodes on this Blu-ray set, below are some framegrabs ripped directly from the discs, which match up to frames in my SD Blu-ray and official DVD reviews. Click to view the original 1920x1080 resolution images.





In conclusion, if you've wanted to own the complete series of Extreme Ghostbusters, you now have several high-quality options. Each has it's positives and negatives, with none being the "definitive" release. So, I put together a little table of facts that may help you decide which one is best for you. Click on the cover images to buy that release. For the sake of completeness, I am including my DVD ISO set in the list, even though I took it down in deference to the official DVD set.


In addition to the two Extreme Ghostbusters sets, Monsterland Media also has the following that may be of interest to Ghostheads: Cartoon All-Stars To The Rescue Blu-ray + DVD Combo Pack (likely sourced from the official VHS), Filmation's Ghostbusters Animated 3-Disc Blu-ray set, and The Real Ghostbusters 10-Disc SD-on-Blu-ray set (reviewed here). Do be aware that Monsterland Media does not charge sales tax, but payment is by credit/debit card and Venmo only. PayPal is not accepted. The product is shipped from New Jersey.

Images scanned and/or photographed by me. This item has been provided by Monsterland Media for review on this site.