While "pre-shopping" over on Deeeeep Discount in preparation for a certain upcoming sale, I noticed that Sopranos - Complete Series is slated for release next Tuesday, although only in SD.

I seem to remember about this time last year, an HBO exec had alluded to a corresponding release this year on high definition. What happened to this? Isn't the show already completely mastered in HD? How hard can it be to transfer the episodes to Blu-ray?

I think they are missing a huge opportunity this Christmas Season by not having a corresponding Blu set available.

A complete set would require a ton of Blu-ray discs. It's likely a production line capacity issue at this point in the format's life (or simply a cost per disc financial issue). I don't think we'll see any complete series sets of TV shows on BD for quite awhile (for shows that lasted 4+ seasons anyway).

There are a few possible reasons...

1. The market is still too small to drop a monster set like this on DVD, if the SRP on the DVD is $400, we'd be lucky to see the BD at $600.

2. It's very possible that HBO needs to create new 1080/24P masters, many studios have stored product at 1080i/59.94 master that can be troublesome when converting to 24P. (They could also need to clean up the prints as well...)

fitprod

Doubtful. The two sets from the Sixth season sold poorly on both Blu-ray and HD DVD.

I'd much rather have Six Feet Under instead.

With the first couple of seasons being in 4x3, they either have to crop them or pillar-box them to get them in HD, and that's not taking into account the extensive clean up required to keep them from looking like shit in HD. It's work that I'm not sure will be worth it for WB.

Well if I recall, there were new masters done for the latest SD DVD release, so I would imagine the Blu are on the way.

That was a different time....format war & all.

Also, many held off buying just one season on high definition, anticipating the complete series would eventually be released.

I believe all seasons are 1.78:1.

Also, even if they were 4x3, there is no need to crop or pillar-box "to get them in HD".

Reagrdless of the format war or not they both still sold poorly. Even now most of the TV on BD releases have hardly been great sellers even when they are priced right (Pushing Daisies, Terminator). HBO will likely price these in a league of their own if they started releasing season sets again anyway. It's the reason why the only HBO show on DVD I own is Six Feet Under and I waited till they hit $19.99

I'm sure the price contributed to poor sales

This is incorrect...

All seasons of the Sopranos have a 16x9 OAR, and every DVD set has been released as such...

HBO did air showings of the first couple seasons way back in 1999-2000 on their main "regular standard def" network in a cropped 4x3 presentation (with "HBO2" showing the correct widescreen version), though eventually they went completely letterboxed later on...

The pricing is also a factor. Shows like Weeds and Mad Men (both released by Lionsgate; not a coincidence, I think) have done better in Blu-Ray sales compared to other shows where the BD prices are more expensive than SD.

The fact that it was a later season on BD is also a factor. I'll bet more people buy the season 1s and 2s than people who buy random season 3s (like Rescue Me) without the previous seasons first being on BD as well.

Which is why I mentioned Pushing Daisies and Terminator - both shows were only about $10 more on BD.