Breaking Bad News
March 25, 2010 
3 Comments
A spate of top US TV dramas is soon to be released on Blu-ray but three of the best – Breaking Bad, Weeds and Nurse Jackie – won’t be among them.
The latter appear to be getting a DVD-only release while season two of Breaking Bad won’t receive even that.
A Sony Pictures Home Entertainment spokesperson told ScreenScribe.tv that it’s been decided not to release season two in NZ “as the associated costs were too high to justify it when looking at the season one performance”.
Kiwi fans who want the DVD can buy it from across the Tasman, where it was released last month, but if they desire the Blu-ray, the only option is to order the region A-locked version from the US – and to view it they’ll need a hardware modified Blu-ray player like the Oppo BDP-83.
Likewise, season four of Weeds, which comes out here on DVD-only in May and has been given a region A-locked Blu-ray release in the US (as has season five); the good news for Nurse Jackie fans, which goes on sale on June 2, is the US Blu-ray’s region-free.
Among the US TV dramas and comedies that will shortly be released here on Blu-ray are: seasons one and two of Chuck (April 7), two of True Blood (May 19), three of Mad Men (June 2), four of Supernatural (June 16), six of Entourage (June 30) and three of Heroes (post-July).
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March 26, 2010 at 1:22 pm
And they wonder why people pirate downloads of this stuff. Great Hollyweird regional coding clobbering machine.
Couldn’t agree more, Paul. A youth-oriented, niche series like Breaking Bad, which screened on C4, is tailor-made for exposure on DVD — just as Warner Home Video successfully proved with its season releases of The Wire, another below-the-radar sensation that TV2 used to air around midnight and which has sold steadily on DVD as more people belatedly discovered it.
Can’t agree more with both of you, having recently discovered and enjoyed both The Wire and Breaking Bad, no thanks at all to terrestrial broadcasting entertainment hobbling machine…