No Blu-ray for Burn Notice Season 3

[Marty McFly]

No Blu-ray for Burn Notice Season 3
Posted March 9, 2010 07:09 AM by Juan Calonge

20th Century Fox Home Entertainment has announced the release of Burn Notice: Season Three for June 1. Unfortunately, it will come out in standard-definition DVD only. This is a new chapter in the erratic hidef career of this TV series: Season One was released in June 2008 on DVD only; a year later, Season Two was released on DVD and BD (but the studio didn't release Season One on BD); and now Season Three goes back to DVD only.

Burn Notice thus joins the ranks of other TV series whose studios have pulled back from some BD releases and gone back to DVD only, such as Sony with Rescue Me and Damages, and Warner with Nip/Tuck.

But it is another Fox series, Prison Break, that has the most chequered BD history: Seasons One and Three got a BD release, as well as Prison Break: The Final Break, but not Seasons Two and Four: whoever wants to have the complete series in hidef must turn to importing from France or Germany.

When Burn Notice: Season Two was released on BD, it received poor reviews in the audio/video department. This, coupled to its high list price ($59.99, while the DVD listed for $39.99), may account for poor sales for this BD season set, despite its action/espionage genre: it didn't make the top 20 in its first week, and its percentage of sales from Blu-ray was only 8%.

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=4263

[Marty McFly]

I'm pissed. Fox need to get it together. They're acting like the format war is still going on and that 'Blu-ray' isn't a sure thing. They should be releasing BOTH S1 & S3 on BD at this point. I swear to God that Fox are the worst studio out there. They make such boneheaded decisions.

I thought season two looked really nice on Blu. Sure it didn't have the detail of say CSI on BD, but the colours popped and there were no problems with the transfer like edge enhancement or digital noise reduction. In fact it looked a lot like Chuck does in HD. Not mega detailed but nice to look at.

Now I have to decide whether to buy the SD-DVD (a real downgrade after S2) or stop collecting the series.

Thanks Fox.