Simpsons season 6 and beyond (1 Viewer)

[Alex-A]

Alright, who's got some speculations? Might the Simpsons sets still speed up in releases or was the quick jump to season 5 just a fluke? I sincerely hope they speed up, with so many seasons still to be released it'll be a miracle if they all come out before the HD format war knocks one of the two off the podium.

Here's some of my wishes for future releases:
1. Retain the packaging design so that all seasons end up matching each other. This means continue using the "slipcovers" for the bilingual editions. I absolutely HATE it when the packaging of something is changed midway (or anywhere) through a series resulting in an odd looking collection.
2. Commentaries including more of the actors, possibly some of the guest stars if they're available. I'd love to have Kelsey Grammer do a commentary on any of the Sideshow Bob episodes.
3. More featurettes on anything. I like to distract myself with these and it just doesn't seem like there's enough of them in these sets.

An odd thought...any ideas what colors Fox might use for upcoming seasons? I'm pretty sure a yellow and a green one will work their way into the mix, any other ideas?

 

[Frank Anderson]

I too hope they continue with the same packaging. But I would have preferred if they had done them like they did Futurama.

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[Ocean Phoenix]

Can you explain what you mean by this? I mean, it's kind of vague. How do you think the HD format would affect future Simpsons releases?

 

[MatthewA]

It would affect it in some ways, because the show was completed in 480i NTSC videotape. If the film negatives were conformed (and hopefully they were), then maybe the titles could be re-done in HD (and hopefully in the right aspect ratio).

 

[David Williams]

What would be really cool is a team-up of Kelsey Grammer and David Hyde Pierce for Brother From Another Series!

Hopefully both S6 & S7 will be out this year (and one can wish, S8 too).

 

[Alex-A]

All I meant is that the HD formats might make Fox think that they should start releasing sets in HD and possibly stop the regular DVD sets, which would really tick me off.

 

[Juan Books]

I say drop all those silly commentaries and speed up the release schedule to 4 seasons per year

 

[TravisR]

I wouldn't worry about that. Right now, probably 90% (or more) of the people that buy The Simpsons are average people that don't know or care about the difference between HD and SD. If Fox stopped producing the regular sets, they would just be cutting themselves off from a source of revenue (which is something that they won't do). I would think that by the time that Fox switches to solely HD Simpsons sets, you will have long had an HD player.

 

[WillG]

I don't want to lose the commentaries because without them, I find the roster of extras on there sets to be a bit lackluster. I'm still hoping for a full length, in depth documentary of the making of the show on one of these sets one day.

But anyway, the relatively speedy release of season five seems to indicate that Al Jean was the reason for the long gaps between season sets, as he is the current show runner and has limited time to record commentaries. So, I would imagine that the next few seasons will quite possibly appear at a quicker pace, even with the commentaries. I'm hoping that this will be the case.

 

[Ash Williams]

I don't care about commentaries myself. On a few episodes it may be nice but I don't need them on every one. I really wish they could get them out faster.

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

No way this happens, at least not for several years.

1. Even if next generation HD players hit the market by the fall of this year, market penetration will be very slim at first.
2. The fact that it would start out as a nitch format means that Fox would not likely cut off such a large portion of the consumers by haulting DVD releases of the show.

Al Jean said in an interview with IGN that a large reason for the delay wasn't so much the commentaries but his participation in them. As he is currently the show runner his focus is on the show's current seasons and making sure everything is in order for those before he could take time out and do commentaries. Notice how season 5 when David Merkin became show runner we got the DVDs much faster than any previous season. I suspect you'll probably get 2 releases this year maybe even 3 on an outside chance. But it seems that Fox has been trying to get out a couple seasons of a given show in a year and now I'm sure that's what they'll try with the Simpsons.

 

[Thomas Newton]

You mean, like Futurama Volumes 1 through 3. For Volume 4, they adopted a different style of packaging!

 

[AnthonyC]

Personally, I doubt HD-DVD will have any affect on most of the market. I think it will be mainly for afficianados, not Joe Six-Pack. Kind of like LDs.

 

[Bryan Ri]

I respectfully disagree, as I find the commentaries to be just as entertaining as the episodes themselves on these sets. Hopefully we'll be hearing an annoucement for season 6 sometime in February.

 

[Chris Bardon]

The keep/don't keep the commentaries debate has been going on for a long time now, and I can't really see them stopping now that they've done them for 5 seasons (unless they really run out of things to say). As much as I'd love to see the releases sped up though, I don't really see it happening. I'm happy to get them when they do finally come out, but somehow I don't think that Fox is going to all of a sudden start releasing a season every 2 months.

 

[Ocean Phoenix]

How much longer do you people plan on buying these DVD sets? I know that I won't buy more than three more, so I don't mind waiting a few months for each. I expect to be done with them by the middle of next year. Are some of you completists that just have to have all the seasons?

 

[TravisR]

I think the show is worth buying until Season Nine and maybe even Ten. With that being said, I will still be buying them all because I'm a completist. It's a sickness

 

[TedT]

The commentaries are great. They explain where some of the ideas came from, and they remind you of what was going on in the world the time the episode came out (which puts some of the jokes into perspective).

I have all the episodes on tape. I can easily transfer them to DVD. I've also seen the episodes many, many times. If there's no commentaries on the DVD sets, there's no reason for me to buy them.

 

[Bryan Ri]

I plan on going to at least ten.

 

[Chris Bardon]

I'll probably buy them all. In fact, if seasons 6-15 came out all at once tomorrow, I'd probably buy all of them at once.