Give Us The Sopranos On Blu Ray Already!

One of the great mysteries of the Blu Ray format is the absence of The Sopranos.  Eight years into Blu Ray’s life cycle and we still don’t have the real collection released.  I know, some people will point out that season one and season six are available, but what the hell was the point in that?  Who wants to watch season one in full 1080p, watch season two-five in lowly DVD then resume the goodness at season six?  Not me.

They just refuse to release the interim seasons or even recognize their existence.  Why?  Because they won’t profit?  The fuck outta here!  This is The Sopranos we’re talking about, where even the strict Wikipedia moderators allow it’s opening descriptive paragraph to describe it as the greatest television show of all time.  Technical hurdles?  Nope, that wouldn’t be an excuse either – though keep in mind the studio doesn’t even see fit to give ‘excuses’.  If that old series Star Trek: The Next Generation series can get a release and remaster, why can’t this?  That series was in hideous 4:3!

I haven’t watched The Sopranos since it ended in 2007.  I’ve been holding out to re watch it in 1080p.  I wanna see the series in its entirety, no breaks.  I’m tired waiting, I want it now.  Yes, it’s been released on certain web subscriptions such as Amazon in so-called ‘1080p’, but don’t let that fool you.  It’s not real high definition.  No streaming 1080p will ever match disc-based Blu Ray in bit rate, that’s simply because the hosts don’t want their bandwidth being encroached upon.  Consider this:  the bit rate and size of season one episodes are up to six times beefier than Amazon’s ‘1080p’ season one episodes.  Not good enough.

So here we are on the eve of the 4k era and we’re still watching The Sopranos in the DVD era.  Why?  You’d think that HBO greed would’ve kicked in by now.  Well, maybe it has.  On checking out their official home release date page, I notice they’ve taken the time to officially link themselves to Amazon.  If you’ve searched for the release date and found your way to that page, within two clicks you’ll be directed to season 2-5 in ‘HD’ (low bit rate, of course).  So my surmise is that HBO has some type of deal going with Amazon and are deliberately holding out.  They’ll cash in on Blu Ray just before 4k takes serious hold.

So if that is the case, then it’s bullshit.  So when this does happen and they give us the real releases, they’d better go all out.  To make up for the delay we want features, commentary and a pristine print.

Hurry up.