Page 1 of The West Wing on DVD

I noticed in today`s R2 news that the first season of The West Wing is coming to DVD in March, or at least the first half of season one. This is perhaps some of the best drama television to come out of the US in years and something I was eagerly awaiting.

Now, call me a skinflint if you want, but I find forking our thirty-five pounds for half a season of a television series - even one as good as The West Wing - a bit steep. Yes, yes, I know I`m getting over seven hours worth of programming but that`s just my opinion.

So, I head on over to Amazon.com to see if the US price in R1 works out cheaper as it usually does. Problem is, I can`t seem to find any R1 site that has this box set, or any West Wing DVD, for sale. It can`t be that R2 is seeing this series on DVD first, can it?

Does anyone have any info on when this might come out in R1 and, more importantly, what the price will be?

Cheers,

Gareth

Yes you`re quite right, this is expensive for just half a season of shows, albeit a very well written series. As much as I`d like to buy it, I`m going to hold off for a while because you never know what will be released in the US version. It`s another R2 first for some reason, but this doesn`t make it the best to go for. You only have to look at The Terminator etc. to figure that one out...

I`ve not heard anything about an R1 version of The West Wing as yet.

<<Does anyone have any info on when this might come out in R1 and, more importantly, what the price will be?>>

This is a particularly unhelpful answer since I don`t have any definitive information, but I seem to recall reading somewhere that the reason why we`re getting it first is that there is some form of agreement in the US which prevents the TV companies from putting shows on video and DVD for a certain period after their airing on TV. Or something like that.

It might also explain why Buffy Series 1 only hits the streets this week in R1, ages after its R2 release.

On the other hand, it doesn`t explain why the US is ahead of us in terms of the release of the X-Files!

Maybe I should just have kept quiet...... ;)

being a newbie to the west wing ang only seeing the last few episodes of season 2, does anyone think that this will be the same type of release as the sopranos, i.e. release the first half of a season then about two months later release the second half of the season as well as one box that covers the entire season, if this is the case i`d personally prefer to wait for what would be a cheaper complete box set.
any thoughts?