CURRENT STATUS

[Sascha]

LAST UPDATE: Tuesday 5th November 6am EDT

This is a collection of information regarding the current situation of the various companies involved in the DVD production. I'm collecting this information to reduce the amount of confusion on this board. With dozens of new threads created each day, it's almost impossible to get the current status in a few minutes.

As the information in this topic is even more unconfirmed than the information in the FAQ, I'm posting this to a separate topic. Replies/updates from non-moderators are not possible. If you have any additions/corrections, just post to the other topics (as linked in this posting) or send me a PM.

Note: The problem with internet forums is the fact that we can't provide any reliable identification of the users. We can not confirm that really someone from G-Whiz or AnotherUniverse.com is posting here. But as of now, we have no reason to doubt the "authenticity" of the posts made by Jason, Robert, Cate, MartinPierre or Ross. Please refrain from any personal attacks in this forum!


LOCATIONS
- BMG is on the east coast.
- AU is in Sacremento (West coast).
- BMG is three hours ahead of California.
- Jason is in NY (East coast)
- G-Whiz is in California (West coast)
- See current time zones information at the bottom of each MSCL.COM page.


STATUS BMG / discs
- BMG is producing around 8,000 dvd box sets
- Production has almost finished, right now they are putting them into slipcases.
- AU got 4,000 boxes from BMG on October 31st.



STATUS Ventura Distribution / other retailers
- Website
- Ventura will get 4,000-5,000 sets from BMG
- the announced shipping dates varies from Nov 5th to Nov 19th.
- Nov 19th is most likely (reported by Jason)
- still some errors in their product listing

Note: Other distributors for the disc set besides Ventura will most likely appear over the coming weeks.


STATUS AnotherUniverse.com
- No official information available.
- Their website makes no statement about the expected shipping date or the reason for the delays
- Last official mass email from AU dates September 6th
- BMG hasn't been fully paid by AU at the end of business day of Oct 16th (reported by Jason, MartinPierre)
- The required amount is $200,000 (reported by Jason)
- But there are reports that AU finally initiated payment at the end of Wednesday during a conference call with the accounting departement of BMG (reported by Jason, MartinPierre)
- BMG will know whether payment arrived by the start of business on Thursday
- Jason Rosenfeld and Martin Pierre will probably be able to get this information about the payment or non-payment from BMG today
- Jason and Martin got confirmation today from their source at BMG that AnotherUniverse did indeed pay in full for the boxes last night. (see thread here)
- AU expects the shipment of 4,000 boxes from BMG for next week (Oct 25th-28th) (reported by Jason)
- the company has been calling the families of employees to get them to help with the massive shipment they are expecting (reported by Jason)
- Many customers still claim to have not received a refund of their overcharges
- AU announces the start for the shipping to customers for November 4th, 2002
- They started shipping the discs to customers on November 4th via UPS and US Mail.


STATUS DryGrass Partners (Jason Rosenfeld's company)
- DryGrass Partners is officially pulling out of the project as of October 16th citing a lack of trust and good faith with the retailer AnotherUniverse.com
- Jason will continue to watch and accompany this project to force AU to give every customer their product and refund overcharges.
- The DryGrass customer support website will close on December 15th.



STATUS G-Whiz (Lunchbox) (reported by "Robert")
- http://gwhizonline.net/
- G-Whiz did only receive a part of the required amount yet
- The lunchboxes are printed, but not pressed yet.
- They are stored in Hong Kong.
- As long as there is no final payment from AU, the boxes will not be finished (Posting by Robert)
- AU supposedly offered payment via a credit card on late Wednesday (reported by Jason)
- Robert from G-Whiz will probably have an update about the payment on Thursday morning (reported by Cate, Jason and posted by Robert here)
- As of Thursday morning, GWhiz has not been paid. But Robert will make another update in the afternoon. (See this posting)
- As of Saturday morning, GWhiz has not been paid. But Robert will make yet another update in the afternoon. He and Ross are still working out a payment plan. Only if the payment is done, G-Whiz will resume production. (See this posting)
- Robert expects a cashiers check from AU on Monday. He'll make an update regarding the expected shipment date of the lunchbox from China to Sacramento next week. (See this posting)
- GWhiz has been paid in full as of October 21st. Production of the lunchbox will resume as soon as possible.



STATUS Bonus Disc (AnotherUniverse)
- The webmaster of AU (Justin) is currently finishing the BonusDisc (reported by Ross, Jason)
- no official confirmation whether MTV / Museum of Radio & Television footage is really paid and will be included on the disc
- the company that made the interviews at Bedford Falls has not been paid yet, it seems like Bedford Falls never signed a signed a release for the bonus material on the DVD (reported by Jason)
- no further information / confirmation yet


STATUS MSCL.COM
- With more than 2 GB Traffic and 370,000 hits only on Wednesday, this server is really at its limits. It only has 64MB, so it may run out of memory from time to time: If the server doesn't respond (or responds slowly), please wait about 20 minutes before hitting "reload". I tweaked everything to the max, but 72 users online at the same time and 300 open TCP/IP connections is just too much
Most of the time it runs just fine, but when too many users access the site, it goes downhill.
Please, only open one or two forum pages at once in your browser.