Digital TV Show/Series: Farscape Series $30, Twin Peaks Series Expired

I already have all seasons of Frasier on DVD, and had long ago painstakingly ripped all episodes and saved them on my Plex server. The series never used to be on sale for years. Then last year it went on sale for $50. I figured I'll buy the iTunes copy as well. That way I'll have a digital copy without having to rely on my Plex server.

And so I went ahead and purchased it. But almost instantly I 'returned' the purchase and requested a refund. And that's because the quality of the episodes was horrendous. Yes, of course it's SD, but the videos were compressed just too much. Every scene had large amount of macro-blocking/posterization over any dark part of the image. Clear sign that the bit rate was too low. When I loaded up my own rips the difference in quality was huge.

Also, even though the last 2 seasons of Frasier were shot in HD, this digital set has those in SD only. They could have included at least those in HD. The only saving grace is that those seasons were widescreen (albeit SD only). On my DVD set they are regular letterboxed 4:3.

At $30, I would recommend buying it. It's a great TV show. One of the few long running shows with consistent quality all through. Just be aware of the image quality of the content. Granted, one doesn't watch a sitcom like Frasier for its visual glory. But it does bear mentioning that they did a horrible job digitizing it.

Unfortunately, this series will most probably never be converted to HD. Cost of conversion is too high for this series (it'll need to be re-edited from tape). So this is as good as it's gonna get. Might as well buy it at this price.

Edit: seems I'm wrong about the series not being converted to HD. Just saw that Amazon has the blu-ray set for $125. Must've released recently. Given that there is a blu-ray set, HD digital can't be far behind. I would just hold out for the HD version.