After many years of campaigning by Prisoner fans around the world, Prisoner is at last being released on DVD in its entirety. At last, we can all enjoy full access to every episode without waiting forever for a TV station to return Prisoner to TV, and at our leisure.

October 13, 2005 marked a whole new beginning when Val Lehman announced on her website that a DVD company (who we now know as Shock, who released the previous boxsets) at last showed an interest in releasing every single episode of Prisoner on DVD. At first, due to costs, no extras were planned, but we were pleasantly surprised when they decided to give us extras along with every episode in original quality. One of the aims of the DVD release, from their end, is to try to eliminate the sale of pirated second-rate VHS recordings off the TV. But the fans are also the winners, with a guarantee of getting every episode of the series, and in broadcast quality instead of low-class VHS recordings with TV station watermarks, missing gateslam adcaps (with abrupt breaks in the music where they were hacked out), and sometimes unwatchable picture and sound quality.

In the months between the first announcement, of a DVD company's interest in releasing all episodes of Prisoner on DVD, and the rights and contracts issues were sorted out, support was drummed up, backed by the hard work of Val Lehman, and her website owner Hazel Prosser. Fans who heard about this announcement by word of mouth on the Internet signed up on Val's website to join the Top Dog Club to pledge their support for the DVD release, and were given updates through the mailing list on the situation. 1000 supporters were needed, and the figure was exceeded around Christmas 2005. More details on this can be found on our DVD timeline page.

After the required numbers were met, we waited out 6 anxious long months of the first half of 2006 while the heads of FremantleMedia (parent company of Grundy Television) and Shock Entertainment negotiated how the release could be accomplished. Issues such as the rights of actors and their agents, and contract issues, were discussed. Little is known about these discussions, but the main thing is, as we heard in July through the Top Dog Club mailing list, they were successful.

On the night of July 13, 2006 (AEST) we heard the news we had all been waiting for. The company releasing the DVDs was revealed as Shock Entertainment, and the release of every episode of Prisoner was imminent! A dream we never thought could come true was finally realised! The first editions — 2 volumes of 16 episodes each — were coming out in October. We spent the next 2 months waiting for a means of ordering the DVDs as TDC members, the first to get our DVDs before they are released to retailers.

The website link allowing us to order our DVDs finally went live at the end of September after much work 'behind the scenes' — I signed up the night it went live and was announced. The morning after I signed up for my monthly subscription, Projects Manager at Shock DVD Tania Hulme sent out a message to subscribers on the list, asking them to reply to be in the running to be one of the first 15 members to reply to attend an event in Sydney, or first 20 members to reply to attend the Melbourne event. Details on the Sydney event can now be found here.

The first 2 volumes first hit the streets at the end of October 2006. I received my first 2 volumes on Monday, October 23, 2 days after the published release date of Saturday, October 21. Tania announced in her mailing list message sent out late on Friday afternoon, October 21, that the DVDs were sitting in front of her on her desk, in the Warehouse being loaded onto postman Pat's truck for delivery to subscribers.....

....and so began a whole new lease of life for the Channel 10 TV series, Prisoner.

DVDs feature on Bert Newton show!

No more missed episodes due to power blackouts, TV aerial faults (which the maintenance men take weeks to get around to fixing), the program not being shown at the scheduled time, not setting the VCR timer correctly, the TV station even skipping an episode, or whatever other reason • No more waiting for long weeks or months (if not forever) scanning the TV guides looking for when Prisoner will be shown next, only to find sport, infomercials, etc. • No more boring, sport- or rubbish-filled breaks for long Christmas non-ratings periods!! • No more scouring the Internet for dodgy VHS dubs and the odd missing or incomplete episode** • No more silly "Pot Noodle" ads • No more watermarks

We remember the day in October 2006 when Shock invited us to personally meet Val Lehman to mark this DVD release.

We attempt to cover every issue concerning the DVDs, and try to put together all the answers we can find here, subject to the disclaimer below.

We list the DVDs, volume-by-volume, with a briefing based on the episodes and storylines contained in each volume, as well as the extras.

We owe it to these people for making this dream a reality.

Unfortunately, these DVDs are not completely uncut. We deal with this and other issues here.

To help rectify and have any remaining faults cleaned up from the release, click here.

	IMPORTANT NOTICE TO DVD CUSTOMERS Episodes 463–471 (Disc 4 of Volume 29, and Discs 1 & 2 of Volume 30)
These episodes are NOT UNCUT! They were deliberately edited, and not for "cleaning up" purposes as is the case with the other, smaller edits as have been documented. Scenes involving the prisoner Edna Pearson were censored so that any references to her crime are almost completely missing. Despite months of advance warning, the cut versions of these episodes were still authored to DVD knowingly against the will of paying customers, for "legal reasons" that still seem to exist in Australia more than 20 years after the fact. However, the UK release brings the world new hope that this problem will finally be solved. Questions about the legal problems in Australia still remain unanswered, and we are NOT HAPPY with the aforementioned episodes in the Shock Australia release! Click here for details.

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