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.