International All seasons of House M.D. being released in Germany on April 17th! (1 Viewer)

Universal Germany will be releasing all eight seasons of the FOX medical drama House M.D. (2004-2012) in Germany on April 17th, 2014. This includes a German re-release of season six with matching cover art. Seasons seven and eight appear to be making their German Blu-ray debut, while seasons one through five are getting their worldwide Blu-ray debut.

All of the new releases will be exclusive to Amazon.de, and each is currently €24,99. With VAT removed to the USA, each season is currently €21,00. With Amazon.de's now €3,00 shipping to the USA, the total presently for all eight seasons is €171,00 shipped.

According to the specs on Amazon.de, all of the releases will have English audio and subtitles, as well as DUBs in French, German, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish, and subtitles in all of those languages as well as Dutch. The presence of Japanese options, as well as Universal's habits, indicates that these will be region-free (or at least Region A and B compatible) releases.

Season One Season Two Season Three Season Four Season Five Season Six (re-release) Season Seven Season Eight

Cover art sample is below:

Nobody else is excited for all of House on Blu-ray!?!?!?

While I am happy to see it being released (and hopefully in the U.S.) I can see it just about every day in syndication, so it isn't something that just screams "Buy me!" I have been revisiting some older series with a friend who missed them and I may try to turn him on to House M.D. if and when a U.S. release occurs. We'll see.

- Walter.

Perhaps Walter may be on to something.

In general, I find that many long running episodic tv shows released on dvd/bluray, do not scream "Buy Me!" at all.

For example, I like watching semi-daily reruns of long running tv shows like the revived Hawaii Five-0, House MD, Bones, Criminal Minds, NCIS, NCIS LA, etc ... But I find that I have very little to no interest in buying the dvd (or bluray) season sets. Not even at $10 or $15 a pop.

Even episodic stuff that I don't really watch anymore (such as the Law & Order and CSI franchises, etc ...), I also find that I have very little to no interest in buying the dvd season sets. (I have seasons 1 and 9 of CSI on bluray).


In the case of tv on bluray, as much as I like watching new weekly episodes of the revived Hawaii Five-0, Bones, Person of Interest, etc ..., I find that I have very little to no interest in buying the bluray season sets of such tv shows. Not even at $20 a pop or less.

For some strange reason, the idea of watching through 70+ episodes on bluray of episodic tv shows like the revived Hawaii Five-0, Bones, Person of Interest, etc ..., sounds like a very dreadful prospect to me.

Some disappointing sentiments here, guys. Perhaps it's thinking like this that explains why so few TV series are released on Blu-ray in the USA, and why there are so many single season and partial series releases that were not completed on the format.

Meanwhile, Germany is booming, having become Europe's largest Blu-ray market, and I suspect they are the litmus test to see if the House M.D. sets will sell on Blu-ray,

For me, I know I can see House in 1080i broadcast resolution on USA HD and Universal HD, but I will be very, very happy to own it in full 1080p Blu-ray quality with lossless audio. I haven't seen the series since it ended, and it will be a joy for me to revisit it, episode by episode, in the best possible presentation.

I do hope, however, that the U.S. opening theme music, which is Massive Attack's "Teardrop", is included. I know it has been replaced on many international broadcasts by a generic theme because of rights issues, and I really hope that became a non-issue for these Blu-ray releases--I don't know if the non-US releases of seasons six, seven and eight contain the US theme or the international one.

At any rate, either way, I have all eight seasons ordered already. I'm really looking forward to this, as I genuinely thought we would never, ever see seasons one through five on Blu-ray.

McCrutchy said:

Some disappointing sentiments here, guys. Perhaps it's thinking like this that explains why so few TV series are released on Blu-ray in the USA, and why there are so many single season and partial series releases that were not completed on the format.

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Yeah, I'm not telling anyone what to be interested in but there's a number of series that I would like to see continue or get released on Blu-ray and it seems like there isn't even much interest from people here let alone the general public.

Disappointing? Is a show like CSI (any iteration) worthy of purchasing on bluray? I guess it's a matter of taste, but I find those shows to be rather poorly executed, gratuitously gross, and repetitive. They just go on and on - if they had an end point and more of an overarching story, they might be more appealing. Often the dialogue is lame and everyone is careful to take turns speaking - they've learnt that from Law and Order.

I'm not including House in my over-generalised comments - I think that was a much cleverer show.

I can't speak for some of the other shows mentioned, because I don't watch them. I catch the occasional CSI and I can't help thinking that Ted Danson and Gary Sinise could be doing so much more interesting stuff.

I would love to see Six Feet Under and The Sopranos on bluray, one of these days.

Some disappointing sentiments here, guys. Perhaps it's thinking like this that explains why so few TV series are released on Blu-ray in the USA, and why there are so many single season and partial series releases that were not completed on the format.

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Perhaps. Don't get me wrong, more complete series on Blu-Ray is a good thing. House M.D. just isn't as high on my revisit list, at least partly due to syndication. There are other series that received partial, or no releases in HD that I would have jumped all over. One of my biggest pet peeves about television media is that the studios offer an inferior version for sale (DVD only) when I saw the show for free in HD broadcast/cable.

I believe (but I am no expert by any means) that Germany's economy is doing much better than the U.S. right now. If that is true then I wouldn't be surprised that items associated with discretionary spending are doing better in that country vs. the U.S. Personally speaking, I am much more likely to weigh a purchase these days vs. four or five years ago.

A few series that I would have loved to see on Blu-Ray include: Swingtown ( CBS summer series), Life (with Damian Lewis), The Mentalist (Season 1 Bd only), and Legend of the Seeker - one of my favorite guilty pleasure genre shows from about 5 years ago.

- Walter.

I liked House, the trouble is that I never seem to get around to watching TV box sets. I might get around to buying season one as that had some of the best stories, & the UK DVD was in non- anamorphic widescreen.

For me the problem is that if I've seen the series recently on tv (or some streaming service), I probably won't buy the BD set in any time soon. So usually I just skip the tv/streaming and watch the whole season from BD. I can't wait to see Game of Thrones S3 soon!

Billy Batson said:

I liked House, the trouble is that I never seem to get around to watching TV box sets.

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This is my primary problem too these days.

These days I find I just don't have the time (or even the will) to watch through many dvd season sets I already have. It took me a long time to come to this realization.


(Long rant mode on).

Initially I started buying and watching a lot of tv show dvd season sets, when I was out of work for a period of time a few years ago. ($15 dump bin dvd tv season sets were already a fixture at some local discount stores). At the time I also dropped cable, and figured dvds/blurays and watching weekly episodes online/OTA were less expensive options.

Prior to 2011, I had absolutely no interest in dvds and blurays. Back then, I wondered why the hell anybody would waste their money buying tons of dvds that they only watched once or twice, and how anybody would have the time to watch through a hundred+ dvds. (Locally, I had one friend who owned over a thousand dvds that were hardly ever watched. This person spent most of their free time playing World of Warcraft and other video games, while holding down a 9-to-5 day job).

The first batch of tv season sets I ever picked up was the entire series of Numb3rs. A few weeks later, the next batch I picked up was the entire series of The Shield, and the first four season of The Closer. (These were all largely $10 or $15 purchases at various post-xmas sales and dump bins in early 2011). These were all largely "impulse buys", which I had some nodding previous familiarity with. With my engineering/science type background, the tv show Numb3rs was up my alley, though I didn't really watch the show back in its original first-run. Before I dropped cable, I was watching some episodes of The Closer. For The Shield, I previously read various stories about the LA Rampart division which The Shield was loosely based on.

In the end, I only ended up watching through the Numb3rs season sets from start to finish. I watched through season 1 of The Shield and the first few episodes of season 1 of The Closer, but got kinda bored and dropped them for the most part. (To this day, I still haven't finished watching the remaining seasons of The Shield and The Closer on dvd). The only semi-rational reason I can come up with for this, is that I had some intrinsic interest in the premise of Numb3rs and it was the only tv season sets I owned at the time. By the time I picked up The Closer and The Shield season sets, I had already finished watching every episode of Numb3rs.

With 20-20 hindsight, this should have been the first warning sign to me that I was largely wasting money on dvd season sets. But at the time, I was largely "rationalizing" to myself that tv show season sets were a better "deal" than buying dvd movies (ie. a 10-15+ hours tv show vs. a 2 hour movie).

I didn't bother buying any dvds for the next five months or so after that, where I hoped that I would forget about the entire thing.

In the meantime a few months later, I was watching episodes at the tail end of Stargate Universe before it was canceled. (I had moved in with someone who had cable). At the time, I was wondering how I completely missed a long running sci-fi space type tv show. By sheer coincidence, shortly thereafter I came across a dvd sale which had all the seasons of Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis for $10 or $15 a pop. So I ended up buying all 10+5 season sets of these two Stargate shows, and season 1 of Stargate Universe. So I spent the next month or so, watching entirely through all these 16+ Stargate dvd season sets every evening.

By the summer of 2011, I was back to working full time and had some more disposable income. Against my better judgement, I went on a huge dvd buying binge during the summer and rest of 2011. I mostly went through various bargain bins and sales, picking up a lot of 70's/80's action tv shows and 1990's/2000's science fiction and cop shows for $15 a pop or less. (No point in listing them all. You guys can probably easily guess most of them).

To this day, I still haven't finished watching through most of these dvd seasons set I purchased during 2011. (In the end, I suspect I probably won't ever end up watching most of these dvd sets).


In the case of bluray, I first picked up a bluray player in late 2011. Shortly thereafter I picked up tv on bluray shows like season 3 of Sanctuary, two seasons of Dollhouse, and the first three seasons of Fringe. At the time in early 2012, I was still fascinated and awed by the novelty of native hd 1080p resolution video stuff. I immediately watched through the Fringe, Dollhouse, and Sanctuary bluray season sets, and later in the year picked up season 4 of Fringe during its first week of release.

By the time it was late-2012, the novelty of bluray and 1080p video had largely worn off for me. By then, I picked up bluray tv season sets like CSI seasons 1 and 9, Nikita season 1, Star Trek TNG season 1, all four seasons of Heroes, etc ..., which didn't really fascinate me much anymore. They all seemed kinda "meh" and mundane to me. (I suspect if I picked up something like Fringe, Dollhouse, V, Falling Skies, Dexter, LOST, or Battlestar Galactica on bluray today, most likely they would seem kinda "meh" too, such as season 5 of Fringe).

With 20-20 hindsight, the reasons I immediately watched through the bluray season sets of Dollhouse and Fringe in early-2012, I suspect are the exact same reasons I watched through all the dvd season sets of Numb3rs back in early-2011. Basically for the "novelty" of a "new experience" and the fact that I only had a small number of dvd (or bluray) sets. Basically a perverse psychological version of "supply and demand" and "scarcity" in my head and immediate surroundings.

After buying many more tv season sets on dvd or bluray, subsequent purchases don't seem as exciting to me.

(Rant mode off).

bugsy-pal said:

Disappointing? Is a show like CSI (any iteration) worthy of purchasing on bluray?

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I use to watch the CSI shows all the time when they were on frequent daily reruns on Spike and AETV, back in the mid-late 2000's. (Sometimes as many as 4 or 5 episode reruns a day).

In hindsight, CSI probaby isn't "worthy" of purchasing to me.

But with that being said, I only paid around $15 each for the seasons 1 and 9 blurays of CSI. I also have season 2 of CSI on dvd, which I only paid $3 for. (I don't have any other csi season sets).

Jari K said:

For me the problem is that if I've seen the series recently on tv (or some streaming service), I probably won't buy the BD set in any time soon. So usually I just skip the tv/streaming and watch the whole season from BD.

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About a year ago or so, I was thinking along similar lines

Over the last year or so, I tried doing this for tv shows like: Homeland, Strike Back, House of Cards, Games of Thrones, etc ... where I didn't subscribe to the original premium channels (ie. Showtime, Cinemax, Netflix, HBO, etc ...). I watched the bluray sets instead.

Following this through, in practice I found that it completely fell short of my expectations. In the end these shows seemed kinda "meh" to me, in spite of the excellent writing and filming. This completely failed to capture the previous "experiences" I had with Numb3rs (early 2011) and Fringe + Dollhouse (early 2012).


In an unexpected unrelated case, I found that I was able to partially capture the above mentioned "experience" (of Numb3rs and Fringe/Dollhouse) when I recently watched through the complete series sets of The Borgias and HBO's Rome on bluray. (I never watched these two shows previously, and I was never into historical dramas before). How and why exactly this happened, I still do not have a good explanation.

If The Borgias and HBO's Rome were just another case of a "novelty" of a "new experience" to me, then I suspect I probably won't feel the same "experience" again, by watching other recent historical drama type cable shows such as The Tudors, Spartacus, etc ...

I also did a lot a binge buying of TV on DVD and ended up watching very little. Not much gets released on Blu-ray but even then I'm very selective. My favorite purchase by far is the Columbo set from Japan (released by Universal). I just love that show and it will be getting a lot of replay.

McCrutchy said:

Meanwhile, Germany is booming, having become Europe's largest Blu-ray market, and I suspect they are the litmus test to see if the House M.D. sets will sell on Blu-ray,

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Interesting article.

I strongly suspect the lynchpins of the German market, are summed up in these passages:

- “The fact that Germany still has strong bricks and mortar video retailers like Media Markt and Saturn is a very important market advantage over the U.K.,” Loeffler told The Hollywood Reporter. “They heavily promoted the format, positioning themselves as the 'home of Blu-ray,' and they competed head-to-head with Amazon.de. This had the effect of driving average price down in Germany, but the heavy exposure (compared to in other territories) that resulted from this direct competition, made German consumers more aware of the benefits of BD as premium format.”

- Another key difference between the German and U.K. markets is the lack of major competition from VOD providers. The penetration of personal video recorders in German households as well as pay-TV VOD services lags behind the rest of Western Europe. Netflix has yet to launch in Germany and Amazon’s VOD operation LoveFilm, while a significant player, has not yet proved a game changer for the home entertainment market here.

Germany, like Brazil, is anti-download. Hopefully that never changes. SACD and DVD-A are still alive in those two markets.Granted for every DVD-A, there are 20 SACD. So being a bastion for BD is not shocking.

Also Germany BD buyers love their deluxe packaging, as it's the steelbook capital of the world.

If Germany is a hotbed for optical disc media, wonder if the movie companies will use Germany as a "test" market for a possible future 4K optical disc based medium.

(On a tangent, while I was writing these last several posts).

I decided to test further whether my mind is caught up in a "novelty" + "new experiences" thing, in regard to such bluray tv shows I watched in the past where I felt this way (such as Dollhouse and Fringe).

So I put on Dollhouse on the bluray player. After watching 10 minutes or so into the pilot episode, I skipped forward onto another episode which I really liked previously. After watching this subsequent episode in its entirety, I was having that "meh" feeling about it.

I put on my favorite episode from season 3 of Sanctuary. I stopped watching after about 15 minutes. It seemed kinda "meh" too now.


I put on the pilot episode of Fringe on the bluray player. This episode still holds up. Not as exciting as the first time I watched it, but I still found myself being "captivated" by it.

Hmmmm .....


(I'll have to do the same "test" for my favorite episodes of Numb3rs. I'll watch some later tonight).

The only TV shows I find myself revisiting...Walkind DeadMad MenGoTSkinsDownton AbbeyCalifornicationEntourageGirls (sue me)The L Word (again, sue me)Shameless (ours, and the original)Few other UK/ Danish