Seinfeld: The Complete Series - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Seinfeld: The Complete Series



Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:



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Movie
It’s a Christmas miracle! After decades of languishing around on DVD and a few streaming services, we’ve been afforded a SECOND iconic 90s sitcom on home video, this time on both Blu-ray and 4K UHD with all the goodies that the show can afford. Yes, judging by the title of this review you already know what I’m talking about. Seinfeld, the iconic show about absolutely nothing, starring comedian Jerry Seinfeld, which would turn him from a higher-end comedian to an absolute superstar over the course of 9 years (with the help of Larry David of course).

Describing the plot of Larry David’s and Jerry Seinfeld’s brainchild is about as useful as trying to summarize Friends. The show is quote unquote, a show about nothing, and the plots of the seasons generally follow that mantra to a T. The series revolves around Jerry Seinfeld’s life as a comedian in New York City as he and his friends Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), neurotic George Costanza (Jason Alexander), and neighbor Kramer (Michael Richards) navigate the pitfalls of ….well… life as single people in New York City. It’s silly, hilariously funny, and the series lives and dies on the witty repartee between the friends.

To everyone else a grumpy immigrant soup kitchen owner is just a pain in the neck, in Seinfeld, he’s the “Soup Nazi”, and requires every bit of wit, gumption, and military mindset needed to get his delicious soup after getting banned from the location. A creepy doll from a girlfriend would just weird most of us out, but to George it’s the spitting image of his overly aggressive mother, leaving him in absolute terror of its very visage in the bedroom. I could go on and on and on with the classic episodes strewn throughout, but Seinfeld is a cult sensation for a reason. Managing to stand the test of time it has become the largest syndicated sitcom on earth (to my knowledge), raking in literally BILLIONS of dollars in profits for those involved for the last 26 years after it went off the air in 1998. I mean, this is the show that Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David sold to Netflix in 2019 for 500 million dollars! Yes, that’s half a BILLION dollars just selling the rights to Netflix after having been syndicated for 20+ years at the time.

Watching the show in 2024, the show still manages to fly high with viewers. I took a break for roughly 8 or 9 years of watching the DVDs after burning myself out on the show, and even after getting entirely burnt out I started re-watching the series and getting sucked back into the shenanigans of George, Elaine, Jerry, and Kramer once more. I can giggle myself silly watching the Soup Nazi episode, or dying laughing at George’s wacky family playing pool with Kramer in a stupidly tight room that leaves no room to pull back the pool cue. It’s just that show that somehow passes the test of time and manages to capture the hearts of everyone who sees it. While I still consider Frasier to be the best sitcom of the '90s (and technically early 2000s too), I still completely understand why Seinfeld became the ratings juggernaut that it was. Absolutely worth watching if you’re an old friend, or a newbie to watching the series for the first time, and seeing it look THIS GOOD on Blu-ray makes my heart pitter-patter with joy.




Rating:

Not Rated by the MPAA




Video:

Now for the interesting part as there’s going to be a lot of praise mixed with one gigantic “what the literal….???” in this one. To start out, this blows the DVDs for far out of the water that I’m not sure they will ever come back down again. Sony notoriously spent MILLIONS restoring the show for this release after a controversial Netflix upgrade a few years back, and it looks GORGEOUS. Sure, the show will always have some soft shots and slightly out-of-focus cutaways due to the style of the filming back then, but the 35mm show looks night and day better than its 480p counterpart. The grain is intact, and fine details are superb from beginning to end. That overly red hue that was present on the DVD and Netflix editions seems to be much better controlled, and I was genuinely dazzled at how well the old show sitcom looks. If I were judging this based upon nothing more than picture quality and how well the series looks compared to how abysmal the old DVDs were, then this would be a straight 5/5 rating.

HOWEVER, there is going to be this one little niggle that makes me grind my teeth a bit. I’m not going to take off more than half a star simply because this is nothing encode related. The image quality doesn’t suffer in any way, and there’s nothing to be done from a technical standpoint. Rather this is a purist’s take on the situation that left me wondering to myself WHY this decision was made. We all remember the heavily cropped 1.78:1 framing for the Netflix streaming copy that got so many feathers ruffled back a few years ago. The cropping cut out some jokes and reframed others in ways that weren’t always pleasing. And of course, the Blu-ray has a 1.78:1 cropping and reframing going on as well. That being said, this is not the same framing as the Netflix editions in many ways. Sony judiciously went back and retweaked a lot of the problem scenes from the Netflix edition, putting back physical gags back into frame as well as making things a bit less “harsh”. And while you might say “why are you whining so much about this Mike? We knew going into this that we were probably going to get widescreen releases instead of the 4:3 OAR”. And in that respect, you would be right, but the kicker is that Sony went ahead and created a second pressing master for the 4K UHD version that was simultaneously released with this one which consisted of the entire show in its original 4:3 OAR ratio and NO widescreen editions. Which means that Sony HAD a working copy of the show in its remastered form and chose to put that only on the 4K UHD release while keeping the Blu-ray with the widescreen reframed edition. A choice that absolutely blows my mind as there is no real reason to ever do that. At the end of the day both sets look gorgeous in terms of picture quality, but purists will definitely be wanting to go towards the 4K edition (which technically may be the reason WHY Sony chose to do this) while everyone else will be more than satisfied with the fantastic picture quality of the widescreen Blu-rays.







Audio:

What I didn’t expect was how nice this audio track was going to sound. Sony has released the series with a singular 5.1 DTS-HD MA track (found both on this Blu-ray set and the 4K set) that is perfectly precise with every slap bass note, and every bit of the laugh track. Vocals are the vast majority of the track’s use, and it comes across magnificently. Voices are crisp and cleanly located up front and center, while the hubbub of New York City fills out the mains and surrounds quite handsomely. The surrounds are not as wildly active as one might hope for a 5.1 mix, but I’m not at all shocked as the original show was simply meant for a 2.0 stereo channel audience and was never really mixed that way to begin with. So I’m more impressed that they got the 5.1 upgrade to sound as good as it is based upon the stereo origins. Bass is punchy for the slap bass as mentioned above, and every little nuance is perfectly replicated. Well done Sony.








Extras:

Seasons 1 and 2

• Audio Commentaries
• Deleted Scenes
• Inside Look Segments
• "The Seinfeld Chronicles" Alternate Episode
• "The Revenge" Alternate Episode
• Bloopers

Season 3

• Audio Commentaries
• Deleted Scenes
• Inside Look Segments
• Bloopers

Season 4

• Audio Commentaries
• Deleted Scenes
• Inside Look Segments
• "The Handicap Spot" Syndicated Version
• Bloopers

Season 5

• Audio Commentaries
• Deleted Scenes
• Inside Look Segments
• Bloopers

Season 6

• Audio Commentaries
• Deleted Scenes
• Inside Look Segments
• Bloopers

Season 7

• Audio Commentaries
• Deleted Scenes
• Inside Look Segments
• Bloopers

Season 8

• Audio Commentaries
• Deleted Scenes
• Inside Look Segments
• Bloopers

Season 9

• "The Roundtable," a retrospective featuring Larry David and the cast
• Audio Commentaries
• Deleted Scenes
• Inside Look Segments
• Bloopers

Final Score: ​

Seinfeld is probably one of the most iconic sitcoms of all time, eclipsing even Friends in my humble opinion as THE 90s sitcom. It was funny, witty, full of characters you loved, and seemingly went on forever about absolutely nothing. As for the physical release, the upgrade over the DVDs is quite stunning. My age-old DVDs were never anything special to look at, but these new remasters destroy them. Sony has also done an admirable thing by packaging the seasons in their own individual 3-disc Viva Elite cases and packaged in a cardboard slipcase. Nothing fancy, but nowhere near the painful frustration of those overlapping disc cases that Warner and Paramount have been using recently. The big question when it comes down to which of the two new versions to get is what aspect ratio you want to view it in. If you want the cheaper Blu-ray set and are comfortable with the cropped 1.78:1 widescreen releases, then this will do you just fine. But if you want to watch in it its original 4:3 OAR like God intended, then I would highly suggest getting the 4K UHD discs for that (and the 4K is by all accounts as good or better looking as the Blu-rays). Great show, great image and audio quality, just with the mind-boggling quirk of having the 1.78:1 framing and being the odd duck of the bunch.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Michael Richards, Jason Alexander, Jerry Seinfeld
Created by: Larry David, Jerry Seinfeld
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 AVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 5.1,
Subtitles: English SDH, English
Studio: Sony
Rated: NR
Runtime: 4152 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: December 17th, 2024

Recommendation: Great Show, Great release with a quirk

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[tripplej]

Thanks for the review. Loved the series. Have the DVD version. Will look for the blu ray..

 

[Todd Anderson]

Great review - love this show. Simply fantastic!!

Interesting about the various aspect ratios. My only question: can we please get one cropped into 2.35:1?