Sopranos, The (TV Show): Season 6, Part 1 (Blu-ray)

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The twelve episodes are as follows:

Disc #1:
Members Only
Join the Club
Mayham

Disc #2:
The Fleshy Part of the Thigh
Mr. & Mrs. John Sacrimoni Request
Live Free or Die

Disc #3:
Luxury Lounge
Johnny Cakes
The Ride

Disc #4:
Moe and Joe
Cold Stones
Kaisha

Video:
"The Sopranos" is presented in a beautiful widescreen transfer that is formatted with an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 (16x9) and is mastered at 1080p with the VC-1 codec. The picture quality is exceptionally good, but not perfect. Detail is very high and the bitrate occasionally tops 30 Mbps Colors are vibrant and nicely saturated. The sets and locations of "The Sopranos" greatly varies. There are times when beautiful exteriors are shown, while other times dingy and dull interiors are exhibited, such as the backroom of Paulie´s strip club. The source materials used were exceptionally clean and hardly a blemish was found. A few darker scenes did exhibit a minor amount of digital noise and a few of the background textures showed posterization of background gradients. These flaws were few and far between and for the most part, "The Sopranos" looks absolutely stunning. Comparing the Blu-ray release to any previous seasons of "The Sopranos" showed that a higher level of detail was certainly present with this release. There was far fewer moments of grain and the colors looked exceptionally well. About the only sequence that looks dated is the title theme, which dates back to 1997.

Audio:
I cut my teeth on the Sony Playstation 3 console with "The Sopranos." I had difficulty getting the discs to load on my Samsung BD-P1000 unit and decided to fully make the switch to purchasing a PS3 system and using that as my primary Blu-ray player. I had to figure out how the audio was to be configured and how to optimally set up my receiver and television to play nice with the PS3. As far as the audio is concerned, there was some early confusion. The box listed Dolby Digital Plus. However, Dolby Digital Plus for 5.1 channels is not supported by Blu-ray. Instead, 1.5 Mpbs Dolby Digital soundtracks are utilized. The white box listing the details of the set listed the audio as English 5.1 (Uncompressed) and Dolby Digital Surround Spanish 2.0. The PS3 confirmed that the primary track was indeed Uncompressed PCM and after comparing the discs to playback on the on the Samsung, I gained confidence in my PS3 installation.

It took a little while getting used to the voice mastering under the Uncompressed PCM, as I am unable to use my THX Ultra processing with a bistream optical stream. I have become accustomed to nearly all dialogue coming from the center channel and this is not necessarily the case with the PCM 5.1 track. Regardless, "The Sopranos" sounds wonderful in Uncompressed PCM. The show is very dialogue driven and thanks to the wide bandwidth given to the audio, it is quite clean sounding with every spoken word quite intelligible and every nasal delivered word from Tony Soprano powerfully heard. "The Sopranos" has always contained great licensed songs and season six, part one is no exception. The musical selections sound stunning on Blu-ray and I anxiously await musical releases on the format.

Extras:
"The Sopranos" is a pricey box set at a price that sits around $125. With each disc holding less than three hours of content, one would expect a little bit of value added content on four Blu-ray platters, but that is not the case with any of HBO´s releases of "The Sopranos" or any other shows of theirs for that matter. For this box set, four commentary tracks are released. The first disc contains a commentary track for the episode "Join the Club" and features Edie Falco, the lovely Jamie-Lynn Sigler and Robert Iler. The third disc has commentaries for two episodes. "Luxury Lounge" features a commentary with writer Matthew Weiner and "The Ride" has commentary involving writer Terence Winter, actor Michael Imperioli and actor Tony Sirico. The fourth disc finds a commentary track for "Kaisha" with series creator David Chase. I had great anticipation for the fourth commentary, but found it quite tame and lacking any great insight into the series, aside from Chase´s comments that the Christmas gathering at the Soprano household didn´t exactly make for a great Christmas card. None of the four commentary tracks necessarily stood out and I was let down overall by the quality of what was delivered for this pricey box set.

Closing Comments:
I love "The Sopranos" and have mixed feelings on Season Six, Part One. On one hand, I wanted a faster moving plot that was full of twists and excitement. The season hinted at a possible mob war, but it never materialized and the possibility seemingly ended when Phil Leotardo suffered a bad heart attack. It started decent enough with Tony Soprano getting shot by Uncle Junior. However, everything calmed down and much of the season resulted in posturing and smaller subplots that were easily resolved and never quite led to anything major. The Vito subplot was one of the largest developments of the season and was perhaps the lone example of the type of storytelling I had hoped to see for much of the season. There are eight or nine (I hear conflicting stories) episodes remaining in Season Six, Part Two and I hope for an ending that is worthy of this fine television series.

The Blu-ray box set is pricey. It comes in a really nice shiny blue box with a nice magnetic enclosure that makes it a step nicer than the older five seasons that were released on standard definition DVD. The picture quality of the VC-1 encoded transfer is quite good with only a few noticeable flaws. Sound is very impressive and the Blu-ray is given an Uncompressed PCM 5.1 track. The four included audio commentaries are disappointing and one trend that constantly plagues HBO releases is the horrid lack of value added-content. Hopefully, the very final season of "The Sopranos" will resolve this and when HBO gouges us with another $125 for only nine episodes, they give us a worthwhile set of bonus materials. Regardless, fans of "The Sopranos" are going to want to own this season and it is nice to see the series make its debut on Blu-ray. Hopefully, the other seasons will one day follow.

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