Over at the Blu-ray.com website (please note that this is not an official site of the Blu-ray Disc Association), they have
posted news heard at the IFA show. For those of you who don't know, the IFA is a European "Consumer Electronics Unlimited" show, held this year in Berlin from Aug. 31st to Sep. 5th, with news affecting all parts of the globe. On the 30th, Josh over at Blu-ray.com posted:
During the BDA conference at IFA, it was revealed that the first season of the Showtime series 'The Tudors' will be coming soon to Blu-ray. Two seasons of
'The Weeds' have already made in onto Blu-ray, so this will be yet another showing for the premium channel. No specs or release date was announced at this time.
This is interesting, and -
as we've reported - the DVD version of
The Tudors - Season 1 is due to come out in
January 2008. Could a Blu-ray Disc version also be coming at the same time?
Here at TVShowsOnDVD, we've looked at this from many angles. As they note at Blu-ray.com, the Showtime series
Weeds (no "The" on the title) is on on BD...but then again, that show is owned by Lionsgate, a studio that is certainly in the BD-exclusive camp. On the other hand,
The Tudors is a Showtime show, co-produced by Showtime itself. And Showtime, as part of Viacom and distributed by Paramount,
ought to be included among the
recently announced group of Paramount-affiliated studios which will be using HD DVD as their only high definition home video format. Shouldn't they?
Reading through the press release, there's ample room for speculation about "loopholes." The press release doesn't mention Showtime. The press release talks about "movies," but never says a word about TV shows. Etc. But then again, doesn't that pretty much go against the spirit of the entire announcement? Why would the make such a big deal about dropping Blu-ray, and then turn around and let a Showtime TV series go with the Blu-ray format?
Then there's the thought that, since the show is only co-produced by Showtime, perhaps one of the other production companies has the home video rights, and they would be the ones going for a Blu-ray release. But it's easy to shoot a big hole in that logic: the original DVD trailers we reported on, specifying the January 2008 release, were found on Showtime's DVD release of the first season of
Dexter, distributed by Paramount. So...probably that's not it.
In the end, this announcement might be for other parts of the world than the United States. It's hard to know; we weren't there at the IFA to hear this, and with the holiday weekend we aren't in a position to explore this for several days. But, since this word is getting spread in other places on the internet, we wanted to address it and let you know our thoughts. Stay tuned, and we'll try to find out what's going on!
UPDATE: We've gotten an e-mail later this afternoon from reader Andrew Taylor, who might just have the answer to the above. Here's what Andrew has to say:
I did a quick Google on Peace Arch Entertainment Group, who, according to IMDB, has the distribution rights outside of North America, led to an article from Daily Variety, dated Nov., 2006, by Elizabeth Guilder. This article states that Sony bought the distribution rights to the Tudors outside of North America. So it appears that this report from the IFA has nothing to do with a region 1 release. I just wanted to let you know what I found in case the information would help.
Thanks, Andrew. That seems to bloster the theory that the Blu-ray
Tudors info is not for the United States. However, if we find out otherwise, we'll be sure to let everyone know.
