TV shows on DVD and various other websites have listed the press release for "Friends: The Complete Series" on Blu-ray.

MSRP - $279.98
21 Discs
3 Hours of New Bonus Material

This is going to be a day 1 purchase for me! So glad that Warner Brothers is experimenting with catalog TV Titles

Wow what a surprise, I thought for sure they'd do them Season by season, but this is great. The new extras sound perfect too. Although only 21 discs for all 200+ episodes & special features does worry me a bit.

TBS currently runs the new HD transfers of Friends, and I think the color palette looks more vibrant than the 4:3 transfers did.

I don't think the 21 discs is going to be a problem. All of the hour-long drama's that Warner Brother's produces on Blu have 6 episodes per disc, so for a half-an-hour comedy that would 12 episodes, so two discs could easily fit an entire season, especially if the old special features are kept in SD.

I'm so glad to hear this and particularly pleased to see WB include so many various languages in subtitles. Friends has broad appeal and the Complex Chinese subtitles means my mother can get the jokes. On DVD, only season 4 carried these subtitles. Great news!

Good to see a classic show hitting Blu. I'm really surprised it's preceding Seinfeld, though. I would've thought that would've hit BD first.

I'm not a Friends fan, so I don't plan to pick this up.

With that said, I do hope it does well, so that maybe we'll see other studios take a chance with releasing catalog TV on Blu-Ray (Seinfeld, anyone?).

I'm glad they're going for the whole mess at once rather than a one-season trial balloon. Sure, it'll be expensive, but it'll probably be a DOD the following holiday season.

Don't care to ever see Friends, but its certainly good news for fans of TV on Blu-ray. One step closer to Seinfeld.

I have the whole series set of Seinfeld, and am happy with it. But I have never owned any of the Friends dvds, and those xtras sound really cool. I might consider it.

I'll bet money right now with this assumption if the set stays at 21 discs:

Each season will be contained in two Blu-ray discs a pop. 12 episodes a disc is perfectly fine, especially if Warner uses the VC-1 codec.

The bonus materials will be on their own, separate Blu-ray disc as most of it is standard definition content.

I might consider it at $50.

Pass.

Why Friends on Blu-Ray before Seinfield on Blu-Ray?

That would make total sense for 21 discs

We know the HD prints of Seinfeld are out there. TBS and syndication have been running them for a number of years now. It's the only TV series I'd rebuy in HD.

I've heard Seinfeld will be out next year. Yes, all that is speculation and rumor, but people were saying that about Friends, while others were insisting it was clear the show was destined for blu relatively soon.

I've also read Friends was supposed to be out last year, because they planned to do them one season at a time so when they changed their minds, the release got delayed.

Don't know if any of that is true, but all the things people were saying about Friends made a lot of sense. It wasn't just pure conjecture like you see all the time. So, I'd certainly have to believe Seinfeld will, indeed, be released on blu next year around the same time.

No interest in this. But Im glad they are putting out the whole thing at a time. Opens the door for others, Seinfeld being the biggest one I would buy.

Exactly what I was thinking as well for my price point.

I'm going to pre-order it from Amazon whenever they add it. I prefer to have the complete series all at once than buying seasons individually.

This looks interesting.

I never liked Friends so I won't be buying it, however I do hope that it sells well so others will take chances on catalog shows. I know basically everyone in here has said it but I'd love to see shows like Seinfeld and Cheers on Blu-ray. It does sort of surprise me that Friends is being released prior to Seinfeld actually. I know it was popular with the generation that grew up with it, but it seems like Seinfeld has a broader appeal and is still pretty popular to this day with new and old audiences. Not sure if Friends has the same broad appeal. I could be off though.

I think the big thing is that repeats of "Friends" on cable rate significantly higher than "Seinfeld" and also "Friends" is a WB property and Sony owns "Seinfeld". Not to mention that despite being the company that invented blu-ray, they seem pretty reserved when it comes to releasing TV shows...

Friends = Warner Bros.
Seinfeld = Sony

Warner Bros. is much more aggressive about releasing TV product (and catalog titles in general) on Blu-ray than Sony. Sony has pretty much given up on TV-on-Blu.

My friend was telling me that the early years of Seinfeld were filmed on pretty bad quality film stock. I didn't know HD prints already existed, but that was his reason for thinking a Seinfeld release would be unlikely.