The Sopranos: The Complete First Season (1999)

The most-nominated show on television, winner of critical raves and awards (Emmys, Golden Globes, Peabodys), this gripping HBO series redefines family with unforgettable characters, tough-guy patois, and a hip, eclectic soundtrack. Have a sit-down with Tony et al. and recap the first season: 13 episodes, 11-/4 hours on 4 DVDs.
Price: $39.98

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
The Blu-ray version of Season 1 boasts significant video quality improvements over the 2000 DVD release.

Season 1 used a grainier film stock than subsequent seasons. This was problematic for the 2000 DVD release because MPEG II encoding has a difficult time handling grain, HBO squeezed 4 episodes onto each discs (except the last one) resulting in a high level of compression, there was a lot of edge enhancement applied to the video, and that this was a relatively early DVD release -- MPEG II encoding has significantly improved since then. As a result, the video on the DVDs had a lot of artifacts -- and the larger the TV you have, the more obtrusive the artifacts and edge enhancement are.

The Blu-ray release pretty much fixes all of those problems. You can really see the difference in the closeups on the actors' faces. The image is clear with a film texture. You'll also notice a lot more details in the background.

The pilot episode doesn't look as good as the rest of the season. This is no doubt because a cheaper film stock was used and they had less time to light scenes due to it being a pilot. The rest of the episodes look uniformly excellent.

Don't expect the show to look quite as good as good as the HD broadcasts of the later seasons. Starting in Season 2 much more money and effort was put into the cinematography in order to give the show a feature film look. The interiors of Season 1 are typically slightly over lit with a soft white light. I suspect this was done because they had a shorter production schedule then later Seasons when the show was a hit, and they didn't have time to relight sets every time they moved the camera.

The packaging is virtually identical to the DVD box. HBO has wisely decided to spread the season across 5 discs -- no more than 3 episodes per disc. This minimizes compression and helps improve video quality.

Nothing to report about the sound. Like the DVDs, the surround sound channels only come to life during explosions and shoot outs.

Fans of the show will be very happy with the results.