Daily Blog – Brian Florian – May 14, 2008: RENTAL APPEAL OF TV-ON-DVD.

I’ve never really understood why TV-shows-on-DVD are such big sellers.  To a certain extent I still don’t, but I’m starting to come around.

While I’ve always been an avid movie collector, I still don’t see the appeal of buying, say, all the Seinfeld seasons on DVD, even though I was/am a huge fan of the show.  Unlike great movies, I just don’t think I would ever say to myself “I think I’d like to watch Seinfeld episode 83 tonight….”.

Nevertheless, a few weeks ago my wife caught a second season episode of a serial-style show we’d never seen.  It seemed interesting so when she saw the proverbial “complete first season” at Jumbo Video, she rented it, and we’ve enjoyed watching a few seasons of mini-series style TV shows.  Appealing points include excellent 16×9 video, non-existent commercials (not even the need to skip past them) and above all no waiting for next week (or next season) to find out the next twist in the plot!

In fact, the experience was so radically different from watching, or even recording, cable TV, I’m now going through the old release section at Jumbo to see what else I might enjoy.  Noble House, recently out on DVD and reviewed by JJ, is next on my list (I had seen a couple episodes back in ’88, but never got to watch the whole thing).