The Office Seasons 1-4 Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

Any word as to what Universal's plans are regarding season 1-4 Blu-ray sets of The Office? Now that the series is finished, wouldn't upgrading the first four seasons make sense?

The Office dvd and bluray season sets have been a staple of bargain bins for quite awhile. (Except for the latest season).

The question is whether Universal sees it being viable to release the older seasons on bluray, when it will be competing with the bargain bin straight out of the gate.

Universal's tv on bluray output has been rather lackluster over the years.

Sitcoms seem to be a real tough sell on Blu-ray. Unfortunately, I think if the seasons of The Office that had come out on Blu-ray had sold well enough to warrant them going back to the earlier years, it would have already started happening at least a year or two ago. I'd guess that the series being over actually works against the earlier seasons coming to Blu-ray because there's no start of a new season to tie a release into.

TravisR said:

Sitcoms seem to be a real tough sell on Blu-ray.

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At this point in time, one big exception would perhaps be "The Big Bang Theory". Warner released seasons 1 and 2 on bluray last year, while the other bluray seasons have been released in sync with the dvd version.

With around 15 to 20 million viewers this past season and the show being sorta "geek friendly", most likely Warner was betting on enough hardcore fans buying the bluray versions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Bang_Theory_%28season_6%29#Ratings


In contrast, "The Office" had around 5-6 million viewers in its past few seasons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Office_%28U.S._season_9%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Office_%28U.S._season_8%29

TravisR said:

Sitcoms seem to be a real tough sell on Blu-ray. Unfortunately, I think if the seasons of The Office that had come out on Blu-ray had sold well enough to warrant them going back to the earlier years, it would have already started happening at least a year or two ago. I'd guess that the series being over actually works against the earlier seasons coming to Blu-ray because there's no start of a new season to tie a release into.

Click to expand...

Make sense, but at the same time, most studios abandon Blu-ray releases for TV series if the previous sets don't sell well enough, like Fox did with How I Met Your Mother with only season 4 being released and WB did with the first seasons of Mike & Molly and 2 Broke Girls. There are others, I'm sure as well. Given season 5-9 of The Office have been released, I would think there could be some kinda of market for their previous season sets.

It's also understandable about the bargain bin releases someone mentioned above.

Maybe they're waiting for a complete set or to see how well season 9 does before releasing the first four seasons or maybe they won't be released at all. Season 8 won't even play in my Blu-ray player since it's an atrocious flipper and I'm glad S9 won't be given there's no DVD included.

The Big Bang Theory has all seasons on blu-ray.
Friends does too but only 1 and 2 are avaliable in stand alone sets.