I have been watching a lot of blu-ray/dvd unboxing videos on YouTube lately which is kinda fun especially some from those Black Friday buys and noticed a lot of gorgeous steelbooks being unwrapped/unboxed. I don't own any steelbooks since I have always felt that the extras/bonus features on the disc and the film itself were more important than the outer package. However, I must admit that I'm partial to slipcovers and digibooks since they provide additional information on the film. Most of the people who posted these videos are themselves collectors and the (mostly) blu-ray steelbooks mainly come from Zavvi. Steelbooks usually feature gorgeous artwork and are limited editions that quickly run out of stock and appreciate in value. Often, they come from UK/Europe, are region free and can be pretty expensive. While watching these videos, I noticed that all the steelbooks featured were movies and none were TV shows. Studios are usually reluctant to release TV shows on blu-ray unless there is a demand for them. Most older and lesser known TV shows are released on dvd only. So it might be understandable that TV shows on steelbooks are a rarity. Sometimes, the studios/retailers might release exclusive/limited editons of season boxsets of certain TV shows for fans/collectors. These editions usually come with digipaks/slipcovers featuring different artwork, trading cards or bonus discs (e.g Grimm, Sleepy Hollow, True Blood) but as I mentioned earlier, TV shows on steelbooks are almost non-existent. Since I consider myself more of a TV addict than a movie fan, I decided to check out forums of TV fans asking for steelbook releases of their favourite TV shows. Most of them wanted Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead to be released in steelbooks. Although I'm not a fan of these shows ( I have not seen Breaking Bad before (?) and I got bored quickly after the first seasons of GOT & TWD), I must admit that any artwork on steelbooks for these shows would be awesome. However, upon checking further online, I discovered that there are indeed a few TV shows being released in limited edition steelbooks including Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead. In fact, the steelbooks for all 5 seasons of Breaking Bad are available for pre-order from Zavvi and features illustrations from renowned cartoonist Ralph Steadman. Individual seasons of The Walking Dead has also been released on limited edition steelbooks which features pretty much the same artwork found on the series standard blu-ray release. Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek TNG and Dr Who has also been released on limited edition steelbooks which are unfortunately either low in stock/out of stock. But the most surprising discovery is the limited edition steelbook release of the TV series 'Firefly' by Joss Whedon (which is amongst my all time favourite TV series). I never knew that the series was released on steelbook but I don't think that I will be double dipping unless the set comes with some extras on the disc that are not found on the standard blu-ray edition. As I said earlier, packaging is just not that important to me so the standard blu-ray edition of this series (which I bought at an unbeatable price) is just fine by me. So unless steelbooks comes with bonus content or extra discs, I'll stick to standard blu-ray editions of my favourite TV shows.
For steelbook enthusiasts, I have provided links below to Zavvi US and Zavvi UK (they have the greatest selection of steelbooks). Hope you find them helpful.
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