The vast majority of TV shows produced over the last few years have been filmed in high definition. Even if the channel didn’t have a HD station at the time, the show was still probably shot in HD. So where are all the Blu-ray releases of these shows?
Think about it. The show was shot in HD, Blu-ray can hold a crap-ton of these episodes all on one disc and the Blu-ray format could use the shot in the arm.
I have never bought a TV show season DVD set for the very fact that 99% of them are not available in HD. Why would I want to re-watch The Office in standard definition when I original enjoyed it in glorious HD? But I would totally re-watch a good amount of shows if they were available on Blu-ray: Battlestar Galactica, Dexter, Heroes, you know, the nerdy shows with great eye candy. There are currently a couple – 13 TV seperate seasons by my count – available, but by no means enough.
Since Blu-ray’s capacity is massive, it would only make since that an entire season could fit on one or two discs. It might not be cost effective at this point because I can only imagine standard DVDs bulk production costs are next to nothing compared to Blu-rays, but the format as a whole could use the shelve space bump and customer recognition.
You have to wonder if there was suddenly a massive surge of Blu-ray titles, how it would affect sales. Right now, the format is struggling and seems to be on the verge of living a Laserdisc-type life, but perhaps if the format breaks into a different genre like TV shows, it will broaden the format’s appeal and sell better. There are so many HDTV shows out there, why not bring these out on a HD medium like Blu-ray and show the consumer that this format has a future.
Then again, maybe physical media is dying altogether.
Great post!!! I keep wondering where the hi-def tv shows are hiding at. I’ve been watching Knight Rider in HD, and it is definitely better than SD. I’d be willing to pay a premium to buy the season on blu-ray rather than DVD.
Awesome post Matt. I’ve been wondering the same thing. I’m guessing the costs are restrictive…or they’re emptying inventory before the switch.
LOST is on blu-ray. You dont really NEED anything else…
Heroes Seasons 1 & 2 & Terminator – The Sarah Connor Chronicles – Season 1 were released on Blu-ray last month. I think it’ll just take a little time before HD TV shows on Blu-ray is the norm, rather than the exception.
Besides, your favorite TV shows didn’t all show up at once on DVD, back in 1998 either.
HD content takes up a lot of space so they can really only fit about the same number of HD episodes on a BD as they can fit SD episodes on a DVD. The idea of fitting a whole season on a disk or two is a in using SD content on BDs.
I wonder if shows like X-Files could be transferred to HD. If they were shot on film, they should be able to do this.
Also, there is arat in separate.
Well when you have older movies like Blade Runner and Close Encounters out on BD you know it is posible for TV shows to start poping up maybe it will take a nudge from some of the cable networks like SCI FI, Cartoon Network and Spike to nudge the others. But could it be posible that some of the networks who were on the HD DVD side are alittle sore now and just want to punish BD overall?
I like to see a lot of current TV shows on blu-ray also.