Does anyone else feel extreme pressure to buy TV on Blu-ray to help continue releases (1 Viewer)

In recent weeks, I have bought many TV releases on Blu-ray. Looking at my collection. I have bought:

Fargo: Season One (bought yesterday, October 15th, 2014)

24: Live Another Day

Rick and Morty: Season One

From Dusk Till Dawn: Season One

Alpha House: Season One (the Amazon original series)

The Roosevelts: An Intimate History

From a 50% sale at Foxconnect:
Futurama: Volume 5
Futurama: Volume 6
Futurama: Volume 7
Futurama: Volume 8 (these are all the BDs available for the series)
The Bridge: Season One (the US remake that airs on FX)

The Blacklist: Season One (the first one in this cycle, bought on August 12, 2014, its release date)

That's 12 TV releases on Blu-ray in about two months. Most were relatively blind buys (I had seen only part or little of the series on HDTV) and five of them were total blind buys, meaning I had never watched any of the series before buying.

Crucially (I think), everything except the titles from the Foxconnect sale was bought during the first week or two of release. Many were bought on the release date, almost always in my local Best Buy, which is my store of choice.

Of course, there is a serious backlog to get through, and this represents a fraction of my Blu-ray collection, and even only a portion of my TV on Blu-ray collection.

Full disclosure: I[SIZE=14.2857141494751px]n the same period, I also bought two UK BDs of US TV seasons, a UK BD of a UK TV series, and a German BD of a UK TV series. All of these, however, require Region B and/or 50Hz equipment, so I have left them out.[/SIZE]

Bul nonetheless, I have started to feel extreme pressure to buy, buy, buy TV on BD in the past few months. I see the recent developments from Fox, Paramount and others, as to series that were on BD being discontinued and released on DVD-only from now on. The above list represents purchases I likely would not have made without feeling this pressure. I really hate having HDTV broadcast as the "best" option for so much television programming, as I don't feel that the quality is anywhere near Blu-ray.

Does anyone else feel a similar need to try to keep TV on BD alive?

And it seems I forgot the question mark in the thread title, and cannot edit it...

Nope, I only buy my favorite shows on BD. I watch Sleep Hollow, but I haven't bought the BD because it's not really one of my favorites like POI, Grimm or The Blacklist.

Nor do I. I only buy what I know I'm going to watch. However I would love to see more classic TV on Blu-ray. So far I've purchased:

The Twilight Zone
Dick Van Dyke
Columbo
The Honeymooners
I Love Lucy (season one)
The Andy Griffith Show (season one)
Little House On The Prairie (seasons one & two)

I'll be buying more LHOP, I just have so much to watch right now I haven't taken the time to buy any more. I plan on getting Batman as well and I hope CBS doesn't give up on Lucy and Andy. So while I don't feel extreme pressure to buy, I would welcome more of the older shows upgraded onto BD and would definitely buy them.

I only buy what I want. Call me a pessimist but, while it varies from studio to studio, I think TV Blu-ray is basically dead.

Warners still seems to be hanging in there but I think that Fox's (who has the most shows that I would want on Blu-ray) TV Blu-ray output is dead and nothing will save it. Fox will release the last season of Sons Of Anarchy on Blu-ray and I assume that American Horror Story and The Simpsons will continue (though I wouldn't be shocked if even those two shows went DVD-only in a year or two). I'd love to be wrong but I would bet the house that the second season of Fargo will never be released on Blu-ray.

Another Fox-produced series that seems to get Blu-ray releases is Archer. I'm looking forward to last season's Archer Vice reboot I guess early in 2015.

If this was back in 2011 or 2012, perhaps I might possibly be feeling this way. (Whether the "pressure" is real or perceived, or "psychosomatic").
But today, I'm too "burned out" already. The only tv show on bluray I'm still buying, is Person of Interest.

I largely don't really care much anymore.



I only started buying a lot of dvds and blurays in 2011. Over the entire 2000's decade, I had very little to no interest in dvd/bluray.

TravisR said:

I only buy what I want. Call me a pessimist but, while it varies from studio to studio, I think TV Blu-ray is basically dead.

Warners still seems to be hanging in there but I think that Fox's (who has the most shows that I would want on Blu-ray) TV Blu-ray output is dead and nothing will save it.

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I suspect if Warner drops the bluray + dvd + digital copy combo pack format altogether, I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of their tv on bluray shows also being discontinued.

I don't feel any pressure to purchase titles. Staying financially solvent is a much bigger priority. Having said that, I do wish more television did get Blu-Ray purchases and I would probably purchase more if that were the case. These days I tend to focus on favorites, and will (mostly) defer blind purchases for sales such as Amazon Gold Box promotions or during the big glut of sales at the holidays.

- Walter.

I would always prefer to buy titles on Blu-ray. This is particularly the case if they are 'new series.' With older shows I am just happy that they are being made available at all.

It's been made pretty clear to STAR TREK fans that the only way we will ever see a blu-ray release of DEEP SPACE NINE is if we purchase the blu-rays of the original series and TNG (which I did anyway). That said, there is a lot of expense involved in getting DS9 released, as there was with TNG, but potentially less revenue than TNG, so yes, there's a lot of pressure here, and I expect in the end they will go the cheaper (and lower-quality) route of simply up-res'ing the series instead. We'll see. I have found that DS9 Standard Def DVDs, when up-res'd on a high-end blu-ray player, look pretty good to me on a 55" HDTV (particularly the later seasons).

No pressure for me but if a tv show or movie is out on Bluray I wouldn't even consider buying it on dvd

Well McCrutchy has a lot more $$ and viewing time than I do, but looking back on the hundreds of TV series I watched over the last 50 years, there are so very few that I actually remember or have any interest in ever seeing again. There have been only three exceptions where I actually invested in the DVDs: X-Files, 24, and GoT (Blu-ray); other than that, they served their purpose at the time, and let them rest in peace.

sonomatom1 said:

Well McCrutchy has a lot more $$ and viewing time than I do, but looking back on the hundreds of TV series I watched over the last 50 years, there are so very few that I actually remember or have any interest in ever seeing again. There have been only three exceptions where I actually invested in the DVDs: X-Files, 24, and GoT (Blu-ray); other than that, they served their purpose at the time, and let them rest in peace.

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Clearly you don't fall into the "tv collector" category which is fine .But as a collector I like to see many shows again and thanks to dvd over the last 16 years I've pretty much mopped up every tv show I ever wanted to see again from the 60's onwards.

Where possible I'm now looking to get the ones shot on film on Bluray although I doubt that the majority will appear on the format

I do my part by buying anything they release that I want. But that still doesn't help in some cases (Modern Family season 5 is now DVD only). It makes you wonder why they shoot some of these shows on film or in HD if they don't think Blu-ray discs will sell. If videotape was good enough for soap operas, Norman Lear sitcoms, and the news, they might as well go back to shooting these low-selling shows that way.

I was looking forward to finally catching up with The Good Wife when it came out on Blu-ray, but it's many seasons in and they haven't released one yet. WTF?I've also found it cheaper to check out a Showtime or HBO series on BD when it comes out complete, rather than continue subscribing to those cable stations. I just picked up Penny Dreadful for $27. But then where is Six Feet Under? Hey... I've done my best to encourage the bastards. And we finally got The Sopranos complete series.

No season sets for me for most shows,I'm waiting for the complete series.The mistake I made, over and over was thinkingthat series would be completed , and clearly this so notthe case. More than ever complete sets seem to be coming this year, that's great news.

I think tv on bluray will continue but it will only be recent shows filmed in HD or there will be complete series boxsets of landmark shows such as "The Dick Van Dyke Show". If a classic show has a huge fanbase, the studios will get away with selling the series season by season (as with Andy Griffith and "I Love Lucy") before the inevitable complete series boxset arrives on the scene, most likely the studios final attempt at selling these shows as physical media before streaming and downloads become the order of the day.

To be perfectly honest, I welcome watching most shows on dvd (most of the shows I buy are in 4:3 and many shot on videotape in front of a live studio audience) -- I usually watch them on an old Sony Trinitron tv where they sparkle like they never did when first broadcast -- they were made for tv, so I watch them on a tv.

But some shows do go to bluray that have no restoration whatsoever and end up being a somewhat glorified dvd. For example, I'm toying with getting the first three seasons of "Airwolf" on bluray, only sold in the UK -- the prints were pretty beat up on dvd and I assume these will be the ones that will be in all their 1080 glory on bluray -- that's a show that has a huge fanbase in Europe and the UK and most likely Universal spat them out on bluray for the fans -- but having been spoilt by the spectacular restorations of Dick Van Dyke and "The Twilight Zone", I'm slightly wary buying this "Airwolf" set.

Another thing -- the studios would sell a hell of a lot more sets of tv blurays if they made them region free. "The Dick Van Dyke Show" set had all regions on the box and discs but were Region A in reality -- here in Australia, people would have gone berserk buying this if it had been region free and available at the great price the set has been recently in the US.

I have learned a hard lesson about buying TV shows on DVD and Blu Ray: only buy my all-time favorite shows, otherwise the odds are very high that I will never re-watch them.

TV shows that I actually rewatch, time and again, enough to warrant owning, are few and far between. Times complete series watched in parenthesis.

Star Trek TOS (6) and TNG (4)
The Fugitive 1960s (21)
Twilight Zone 1960s (4)
Andy Griffith (2)
Father Knows Best (1+)
Danger Man (3)
Stargate SG-1 (2)

I think Dr. Kildare will be added to this short list, but it's too early to tell yet.

But to answer the question, I do not feel extreme pressure, or any pressure, to buy TNG so that DS9 will be released in BD, for example. I own every ST DVD ever released and TNG in BD. But I didn't do it to further other releases.

Now, am I buying Dr. Kildare season releases to support the series in hopes of a full run? Absolutely. But I am doing it because I really like the show, not to get more DVD releases from WB Archives.

Carabimero said:

I have learned a hard lesson about buying TV shows on DVD and Blu Ray: only buy my all-time favorite shows, otherwise the odds are very high that I will never re-watch them. TV shows that I actually rewatch, time and again, enough to warrant owning, are few and far between.

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While i agree with this sentiment, there are shows i've never watched except for on dvd.
It has been the case that the most convenient way to watch a show when you want to watch
it was on dvd. But that's also changing with more on-demand, streaming, and other services.
Basically i want to see the shows i want, whenever and wherever that is. So even if i watch a
series once, maybe owning it on dvd is still the best way. But for sure I bought many sets
"just because" in the past, and that's happening a lot less now.

I never saw an episode of Danger Man until I bought the DVDs, and now it's one of my top 5 all-time shows. Same goes with Dr. Kildare, but it remains to be seen whether Kildare will become one of my all-time favorites. It has a chance, but I won't know for years, since time is the test.