Both major home video industry trade magazine,
Video Business and
Home Media Retailing, are reporting in the last 24 hours that
The Sopranos - Season 6, Part 1 is going to be the first-ever TV show to be released on HD-DVD. This will cost $129.99 SRP, they say, and ship on
November 7th (the same date as
the standard DVD release for that title, but for a list price that is thirty dollars higher). There is no report of further content; the main benefit will be the higher-resolution video.
Both magazines report that a Blu-ray version of this release will be available in 2007.
VB also reports that other
Sopranos season sets are planning for release next year, but they didn't specify which titles or in which format.
The Sopranos was
the third TV show to be mentioned for HD-DVD release, back in January, a couple of days after popular retailer Amazon.com
"unofficially" indicated that Friends and Band of Brothers were coming to HD-DVD. Since then, we've gotten informal indications that Warner and HBO do indeed have plans for hi-res disc format of those shows, but there are no dates or timetables given as of yet for their release, nor have they even publicly committed to those projects. Right now, the focus is on
The Sopranos. Stay tuned!
