Per this review, cardboard sleeves held together like a book. Think of the packing for Simpsons S11.

I have all of Deadwood, and Seasons 1-4 of The Wire already, so I'm not gonna jump on this unless it's a Blu-ray release.

Now as for The Wire Season 5, it's inexcusable that they did not include the three shorts that premiered on Amazon.com. By those I mean the Young Omar, Young Prop Joe and the Bunk & McNulty shorts. Although these are not crucial to the story of Season 5, it's still a part of The Wire and was released to anticipate the season.

And as for HBO...yeah they fail for canceling Deadwood (and Rome for that matter). Deadwood doesn't end with much closure. And by closure, I don't mean every little thing being explained, I mean...it's set up so that a LOT of major stuff will be going down.

And although HBO deserves credit for financing The Wire, they could have done just a little better. David Simon requested 13 episodes for Season 5, but only got 10. If people are hailing it as the best show of all time and the creator wants 13 episodes to finish it off, then why not?

On top of that, they passed on Mad Men (bet they're kicking themselves over that one), and on Preacher.

But on the bright side, David Simon & Tom Fontana are teaming up for Manhunt.

For what it's worth, those three "prequels" are on the last disc of S5, along with a gag reel from all five seasons as exclusives in the complete series set.

im hoping that the release of the wire set will bring down the prices of the individual season sets. i really do not like the packaging. if i can score them each for 20-22 i would be happy

Well looks like I will be getting The Wire now...since I was under the impression that no new material came with it.

As for Deadwood, I will wait for the Blu release...since we all know it is coming.

From a creative standpoint it is annoying that the creator did not get the requested amount of episodes. But from a business stand point it makes a lot of sense. I think we should all give credit to HBO for even ordering a fifth season despite how horrible the ratings were in season 4. A lot of critics and people might hail "The Wire" as one of the greatest series in a long time, but it was never the most financially successful series.

Saw these sets today. They are surprisingly small.

That's disappointing.

I probably would have bought this, but I can't justify spending that much on sets with this type of lousy packaging.

as to some other comments - YES - HBO DVDs in the US are MOST DEFINITELY OVERPRICED !!

We're a bit luckier here in Australia - here's a nice Deadwood package

http://www.jbhifionline.com.au/Product/332628

Sure - we in Oz miss out on the special features (distributed locally by Paramount who must have had just a few money problems at the time and couldn't fork out the few $$ for the extras).

These sets actually come out pretty cheap per-season - about $25-$30 per season, which is a steal for HBO shows. I personally love that they're so compact.

I love the Deadwood packaging. It takes up just over how much space a normal season used to take, and the book style packaging is no where near as bad as The Simpsons. All the discs are very easy to take out, and not one of mine were scratched.

The Wire's is also very small.

Okay, so the packaging for The Wire set is good, in theory, but it's a fucking disaster in reality.

It has these slits the discs slide into, right? Well, most of the slits are either not glued down properly or the discs were inserted with such force that they ripped open a lot of the slits, so you have discs that go past where they're supposed to stop and end up on top of the glue residue that was supposed to hold the paper together, scratching, damaging and leaving glue on the bottom of the discs. Half the slits on my set are ripped, and most of those discs look pretty damaged.

Unbelievable. How hard is it to make a glue that holds paper together and to slide discs in between two sheets of paper until it stops? Apparently, it's pretty fucking hard.

A couple of mine came like that too, and while none of my discs were damaged, some sleeves had the printed artwork peeled up a bit, which made my OCD flare up.

This is depressing information. My brother has been pushing hard for The Wire Complete Series set for Christmas. But these are the kind of things that tend to happen with items with this many discs. You'd figure with as long as the disc format has been around, they could construct a beautiful set that would protect the discs as well, but go figure. HBO, sort your shit out. My brother already has the previously released sets anyway, so he'll live.

I noticed The Wire Season 4 had thinpak packaging (not sure on Season 5), but Seasons 1 - 3 were like a digibook or something.

Did HBO re-release the first 3 seasons whey they changed the packaging style? So they all match? Or do they look like crap?

No, they didn't rerelease them to match (like Sony did when they got the video rights to The Shield; although they DID crop the remaining seasons to 16X9). Season 5, I believe, has the same packaging as 4.

$135 on Amazon. A little over $25/season for the best television series? Yeah, I'll bite.

Why??? When you can get it at BestBuy next week for $90?

See the BestBuy thread for next week.

That's ****ing crazy. If I wasn't already getting that as a Christmas gift (knock on wood), I'd be all over that.

With that said, I'll get the Band Of Brothers Blu-Ray ($37.49) for my dad for X-Mas, and I might bite on the Deadwood Complete Series ($74.99) as well.

And indeed I did...$89.99 on Amazon right now!

Posted this elsewhere, but...

Is anybody who got the Best Buy Exclusive CD for "The Wire" not interested in keeping it and willing to get rid of it? I'm very interested in acquiring a copy. The only copy of it that any of the three BBs in my area had, the complete series packaging itself was damaged pretty badly. I almost bit and bought it, but the crushed corners would have bothered me far too much.

It's my favorite show of all time and I would love to have it, as a completest and as a fan.

If someone is interested, PLEASE PM me. I would be extremely grateful.

Thanks!

So, if you buy The Wire from Best Buy, does it come with the CD already? Or was it just select special marked packaging?

You do realize you can buy the soundtrack just by itself, right?
I'd send you mine, but it's more thrashed than just some crushed corners - I actually tossed the outer slip and just kept the cd & booklet.

Sent you a PM, Kory.

they are not cropped in anyway. The framing has been opened up as the show was shot in the 16x9 format. I personally like the move since i always thought it looked too crowded when it airs on FX.