Yep, and there are STILL movies that were on HD-DVD that never got re-released on blu after Sony killed Toshiba. Plus, HD-DVD was region free. Fuckers.

I said Miami Vice, the 80s show, would never be on Blu-ray? I don't think that show has ever come up in discussions. FNL is a Universal show who has sporadically released TV on Blu-ray over the years. They don't release it - Mill creek did. At a bargain because they got the rights to show (likely being it wasn't selling for Universal).

Look at the thread you are posting in. We are discussing NEW shows still on the air that will never get a proper Blu-ray release or the studio simply stopped supporting them. I'm sure more people are upset the latest season of X is no longer on Blu-ray instead of pining for Miami Vice in upscaled 480p.

Nitpick: Miami Vice was shot and edited on film, like a lot of TV dramas. The Blu-ray is a new HD transfer of the original film. The reviews of the image quality are actually quite positive.
http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Miami-...159114/#Review
http://www.dvdcompare.net/review.php?rid=4483

Image comparison between the DVD and Blu-ray here:
https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?d1=10752&d2=10746&c=4290

It's obviously more than just an upscale.

Seinfeld still makes hundreds of millions in syndication fees. As long as that revenue stream is vibrant, I wouldn't expect to see Seinfeld hit Blu-ray. It's the same reason why Fox was so callous about cutting off The Simpsons on the format.

I'm hoping Mill Creek gets "The A-Team". The new U.K. set is ridiculously expensive but I'd def drop $50 for a complete set from MC.

I'd even pay $100 for that set. I think it does eventually make it out on Blu-ray.

I've watched the first four seasons of Miami Vice so far and it looks great.

I think A-Team and Incredible Hulk will eventually see a U.S. release.

Couldn't the same be said for Friends and that came out on Blu-ray. I'm sure X-Files still pulls decent syndication money as well.

I can just stream Sienfeld and Friends whenever I want on Netflix/Hulu/etc. Hell, I almost didn't buy the X-Files sets, because Netflix had them first in HD, but then I started buying them separately for no more that $9.99 each.

I'm the same way. I don't need X-Files on Blu-ray because Netflix had them in HD (and free). Seinfeld is on Hulu and my wife and I watch it nightly. I just can't imagine swapping discs anymore. Seems so 2009.

I think Seinfeld is a special case because some members of the cast negotiated a huge cut of home video proceeds when they signed on for those last two seasons. When something doesn't get released in Hollywood, it's almost always about money or rights. Jerry Seinfeld had enormous leverage in his final contract negotiations because NBC was literally begging them to keep it on the air.

So Sony would rather make $0 off Seinfeld on Blu-ray then some money? What about the DVDs that have already been released? Wouldn't that have factored in already?

I believe Seinfeld is one of those shows with multiple entities each getting a big piece of the pie for any release, so it may not be as profitable on home video for Sony as you would think. There just aren't many other good reasons why one of the most popular shows in history, with most of its fanbase still living, would not get a Blu-ray release.

Only trouble with streaming, even though it's so convenient, is that the licenses for all these shows and movies don't last forever. It's anywhere from 2 years to 5 years.

Seinfeld is probably not going to be on Hulu forever. For all we know, Sony may pull it when it's Hulu contract expires and start their own paid streaming service down the road.

Another thing to consider in regards the poor sales of discs in general for TV (since this thread is specifically about TV) is for those who follow their shows week to week from September to May. I think many may have finally started to realize this in the last few years, but why the hell would any of you want to pay $30-40 for The Walking Dead, Hawaii Five-O, The Americans, Better Call Saul or whatever show when you just saw the entire season 3-4 months ago? Why do you need to spend that kind of good money to add clutter for something that you're not going to watch? It's a waste of money to spend $30 for a 23-24 episode season of some network drama that you just watched for 6 months. Even if it gets heavily discounted much later, do you really think you'll watch it again?

The only people who I think these seasons of TV on disc are really meant for are those who don't have cable, don't stream or don't follow TV week to week.

I've cut back a lot on TV series purchases. In it's hey day, I would keep accumulating shows that I watched and never opened the discs. Finally I saw how full my shelves were getting and realized how much money I wasted on stuff that I will never watch any time soon.

Streaming is good for it's convenience and to catch up on stuff you missed or never saw. But don't rely on it as a source for eternity. Occasionally if the price is reasonable I will have to pick up a set for something I wanted to see and discs are the only way to catch up if the show is not on streaming.

TV on Blu isn't getting love because of cost and that discs aren't discounted until many months later when they're usually sold at a loss.

2 years ago, I had to spend $30 for a TV season of NCIS LA because the streaming rights expired and I needed to catch up on some episodes before the new season started. After I caught up, I ended up selling the set at a used bookstore for roughly $15.

^ My wife and I don't stream and we don't watch regular TV as it airs. Streaming just never appealed to us (or me), and regular TV is SUCH a pain in the ass with all the commercials/advertising we end up more pissed off than entertained. We also ditched our cable in '09 because we felt like we were paying $60/mo. for 65 channels of SHIT, so we don't have channel availability to select from for recording movies or TV shows.

For us, buying our favorite movies and/or TV shows is advantageous in that we can watch whatever we want to watch, whenever we want to watch it, how ever many times we want to watch it, and we don't have to fuck with commercials. I ALWAYS look for the best possible deal (unless I want to own the first release of something so I can get all the goodies they always eliminate if you wait a couple of years for the price to go down) even if I'm buying a new release. Plus, maybe I don't want to wait a couple of years for the price to go down.

This way, I don't have to worry about licenses, data caps, expiring contracts, or any of that. I own the movie/TV show, I'll have it for as long as it doesn't deteriorate or suffer from disc rot.

When I was at a flea market I found S1 of Continuum on BD for CHEAP ($1.60), we came to enjoy it enough that I wanted to find out what happened next, so I bought S2, 3, & 4 on BD (so it would be a matched set). I also found Doctor Who S5 on BD at Best Buy on sale several years ago for $20 (DVD counterpart was going for $70), but I usually buy my TV shows on DVD because I don't really feel compelled to own them on BD, I don't care quite so much about the extra HD as I might for movies, and the price point is typically higher that DVD.

I just found your post interesting enough to want to comment, hope you don't mind...

See. This is what I don't understand. The content delivery monopoly these networks (and movie theaters for that matter) forever get. Even with digital streaming being an option, they refuse to offer us the entire season from the start like Netflix does with their shows. I don't want to follow week to week. I want to watch the whole thing. Offer it to me on disc day one, and I'll pay the $40-50/season. Otherwise, I'll be watching it for free via the internet and waiting for Black Friday deals when they get around to releasing it. Far as I'm concerned, as long as it's not for sale on disc, they have no business whining about torrents. Put the fucker on disc, and I'll buy it, but I'm not waiting an entire year to get the disc release right before the next season airs. Everything is being filmed digitally, etc. Getting these things ready for BD/streaming should be a hell of a lot quicker than before. I don't give a shit about special features. Just give me the show.

People buy movies and TV shows the way they want to buy them. Plenty of people who subscribe for bullshit weekly episodes do it because that's how they like to watch. Others prefer disc or full release digital like Netflix. Why not please everyone who's willing to buy it by letting them buy in the form they want now instead of pushing this bullshit archaic format monopoly!? The better looking TVs get, the less people care for movie theaters and dealing with idiots and high concession stand prices. What's the difference if they pay $8 each for tickets or $30 for the disc/digital release on day fucking one? Aside from hurting movie theaters that only survive because of that defacto monopoly, not a damn thing. The studio still profits.

You realize when a new season starts on TV around September they rarely every have more then 5-6 episodes films? It just wouldn't work out to release them all at once. I mean, sure, there is a the rare hold-over from a previous season or a midseason show etc., but it's not like 22 episodes of an hour long drama are finished.

I cut the cord 2 years ago and use Hulu, Netflix and alternate means to watch my shows. I don't but TV on BD, I don't even buy discs anymore. Nearly everything I want to watch is available to stream and if it's not I'm sure i'll survive.

and that statement is based on what? The whole reason GoT started late this year is because it took longer to film. They sure as shit didn't film a new episode every week. They had all 7 episodes done when they fucking started airing it.

A typical TV series that premieres in the Fall will have started filming in July. It's less common than you think for shows with more than a handful of episodes to have the entire season wholly completed (fully edited, FX in place, etc.) before the season premieres.

Yes network TV filming schedules operate differently than cable. A typical production schedule for network TV is from July to March or April of the following year.

There is simply no way to deliver 22-24 episodes all at once on disc or streaming for a network TV series.

So for anyone who buys or rents shows on disc, you’re always going to be 1 year behind. Even cable shows like Game of Thrones don’t get released on disc until months later.

You can’t compare the delivery method to Netflix streaming shows. Look at the upcoming Netflix series The Punisher. That’s probably going to come out in November, but they started filming it in Fall 2016 and they just wrapped earlier this year. Luke Cage just started filming season 2 a few months ago, but won’t be out until probably next Fall (2018) They have a much longer window when season’s are posted.

When network TV seasons wrap filming, they have barely a 2 month break before they have to start cranking out scripts and filming again to make air in September.

One show on a paid cable channel is vastly different from network TV.

All other shows that air on the 5 major networks typically start filming around July/August and don't finish to March/April if they get a full order of 22.

Network TV is different from cable which MIGHT film an entire season before it airs, but that's still pretty rare unless the network holds it for certain reasons or scheduling conflicts.

Streamers hold the shows until they finish shooting before they release. Hulu operates differently as they still do a weekly episode, but I think that's just to mimic network TV.

This is a very good point ^.


(In more depth).

In recent times, I too have been coming to a similar conclusion. Though I suspect this phenomenon is even more insidious than I first realized.

Even before I started buying a lot of dvds/blurays in 2011, I have long suspected that if I am stockpiling episodes on the dvr (or vhs tapes previously), then there is a high likelihood that these stockpiled episodes will only be watched once by me or eventually deleted without ever being watched at all.

For several years after I started buying a lot of dvds/blurays in 2011, I naively thought everything would be different in regard to tv shows I watch a lot. At the time, I thought the only tv show dvd/bluray sets worth buying were ones where I watched the then-current episodes multiple times. For example at the time, I was watching then-current first-run episodes of the revived Hawaii Five-0, Nikita, Person of Interest, etc ... as many as 10+ times during the week(s) between new episodes.

Initially I thought the bluray season sets of the revived Hawaii Five-0, Nikita, Person of Interest, Fringe, The Following, The Blacklist, etc ... would be be worthwhile purchases to make. Naively I thought I would be watching these blurays repeatedly, based on the fact that I watched the same episodes over and over again repeatedly back in their original first-runs. Though in practice, I ended up watching these blurays only once.

I've gradually come to the conclusion that current (or future) dvd/bluray rewatchability for me, is completely uncorrelated and independent of how much I watched the same content in the past.


As an extreme example of this ^ conclusion over the past nine months or so, the only tv shows on disc which I have been watching repeatedly over and over again in an obsessive manner, turned out to be shows which I never would have thought that I would like watching at all: the atrocious CSI Cyber and the orginal Dynasty. (Back in the day, I only watched Dynasty once with various then-gfs).

Basically a priori, I have no idea what dvd/bluray discs would have a lot of replay value. Completely unpredictable for me.

Actually, I have shows I've watched the whole series 5 or 10 times now, if not more. Shield (itching for the BD release next year), Spartacus, Banshee, GoT, Breaking Bad, Stargate SG1/Atlantis, NCIS, Justified, etc. I also have a pile of shows I haven't watched at all. lol

I rewatch all kinds of shows, but I will say more often than not it's not currently running series or shows in heavy syndication (Seinfeld, Friends)

Currently nearing the end of Lost* and still have the last 2.5 seasons of Smallville I've been rewatching. I just started Chuck again a couple weeks ago. Ran through Sports Night over the summer. Thinking about hitting Fringe or Veronica Mars(needs a BD release!) again after Chuck.

*Lost might be the only show that I rewatched while it was still airing.

While they had finished filming Game of Thrones by the time the first episode premiered, I wouldn't count on them having had all 7 episodes completely finished. Think about it, that's 7 more weeks of work they could use for the finale and other episodes, and it means they could premiere the show a few weeks earlier than if they waited for all the episodes to be finished.