Fans of Downton Abbey will be able to buy the popular period drama on Blu-ray barely 12 hours after its season-one finale.

It screens 8.30 tonight on Prime and the Blu-ray goes on sale tomorrow for $45.

DVD Town thought some scenes suffered from heavy grain and noise but rated the transfer 9/10. “For the most part, Downton Abbey looks noticeably superior in HD …

“Skin tones are natural-looking, black levels pulled back just a little, and there’s just enough grain to make it all look appropriately aged.

“There’s still plenty of filmic grain and texture, but there’s far more detail and sharp edges in the Blu-ray version, which produces a nice sense of three-dimensionality.”

Extras include commentaries, deleted scenes and two making-of shorts.

Out in 3D, 2D and “limited” editions is the James Cameron-produced underwater adventure, Sanctum.

US reviewers praised the HD audio more than the video.

“While things were bright and colourful on the surface, below in the caves, where most of the film actually takes place, things weren’t as strong,” High-Def Digest argued.

“Weak black levels, DNR, and grain all contribute to a very average end product here.”

But it called the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track “powerful” and “sure to please fans of the film and engulf new viewers.”

Blu-ray.com said the image “lacks consistent, lifelike depth … Sanctum’s 3D presentation doesn’t hold a candle to Avatar’s top-tier beauty.

“It’s more of a gimmick — a flawed, problematic Fusion Camera demo reel, really — than an all-encompassing 3D experience.

“Just don’t be so quick to blame Universal; blame the environments [director Alister] Grierson is exploring, the additional challenges presented by his 3D location shoot, and the director’s inability to live up to the high 3D standards set by Cameron.”

Also new are the direct-to-disc Season of the Witch and, from Monday, the martial arts release, Shaolin.

Tentative US art

Jack’s back — but as you’ve never seen him before … in HD!

For the first time, the conspiracy thriller serial, 24, will be released here on Blu-ray.

The eighth and final season will go on sale on December 1, two weeks earlier than in the US and the same day as a complete series collection on DVD-only.

The four-disc set will include deleted scenes, shorts (Chloe Interrogation, The Ultimate CTU, 24 at Comic-Con, Being There, Scene Makers) and presumably commentaries.

The Blu-ray send-off is great news for Kiwi fans of Jack Bauer as 24′s never aired here in HD.

The show’s premiere in HD coincided with TV3 consigning that season, the seventh, to SD sister channel, C4, and 20th Century Fox released only a DVD of it in NZ.

Another TV3 staple that didn’t screen here in HD, because of a licensing issue that’s since been resolved, is Heroes.

Its fourth and final season is due on Blu-ray a week after 24 and the same day as a complete series collection.

Season-four extras will include picture-in-picture commentaries, audio commentaries, deleted and extended scenes, and shorts (Deconstructing Sylar: discussion with Tim Kring, Adam Armus and Zachary Quinto; Milo Speaks: Milo Vetimiglia talks about his career as an actor and his role on Heroes; Heroes Revolution: Tim Kring and Heroes new media creatives discuss the importance of a web series for a hit television show and how new media entertainment is created; Genetics of Scene: an in-depth look at the production process of creating specific scenes).

December’s shaping up as a signature month for TV-on-Blu-ray. Also due are seasons one of The Vampire Diaries, 13 of The Simpsons, six of Entourage and, rescheduled from this week, Doctor Who: The Complete Specials.

On the eve of Sky starting one HD series in SD and ending another, Madman Entertainment has confirmed both titles will be out on Blu-ray for Christmas.

The two-disc Great Migrations, which premieres 7.30pm Sunday on National Geographic Channel, will sell for $55 from December 2.

Although NatGeo is one of the many channels Sky is reluctant to upgrade to HD, Great Migrations was shot entirely in HD using such breakthrough technologies as Crittercam, Phantom HD Cam and Starlight Cam.

They were specifically developed for the series and helped it to notch up a slew of world firsts, including bull elephants scouting migrations routes and the rediscovery of the epic kob migration in Sudan.

Meanwhile, as Spartacus: Blood and Sand nears its first-season finale on The Box, on November 14, Madman is preparing to release the 13 episodes as they should have screened here originally.

It’s an epic week for TV-on-Blu-ray releases, with the WWII mini-series, The Pacific, leading the charge.

US critics were blown away by HBO’s HD specs.“The Pacific comes to Blu-ray with a stellar video presentation, and an audio presentation that is unparalleled,” Hi-Def Digest raved.

“Fine detail is some of the best I’ve ever seen. During close-ups on the actors every fleck of dirt, every smudge of mud can be seen in stunning clarity. The rigid texture of their uniforms pop off the screen.”

Concurred Blu-ray.com: “Magnificently resolved textures bring every sweat-streaked face and grimy uniform to startling life, razor-wire edges are crisp and clean (without any significant ringing to report), skintones are lifelike and precisely saturated, daytime delineation is impeccable and nary a brightly lit scene goes by without something of note to offer its wide-eyed audience.”

While there were misgivings about scenes shot at night or in low-lit interiors not being nearly as dazzling, not so the audio. Predicted DVD Beaver: “The Pacific looks great and will likely become a benchmark for sound reproduction.”

Also new from Wednesday are Doctor Who: The Complete Specials, season two of Packed to the Rafters and the second movie spun off Sex & the City while Thursday brings the documentary series, Into the Universe With Stephen Hawking and Monday, WWE Summer Slam.

Inexplicably AWOL from this week’s Blu-ray releases are seasons one of Modern Family and four of Dexter, DVDs of which go on sale Wednesday.

The Pacific

The 10-part Band of Brothers stablemate goes on sale on November 3, along with season two of the Aussie hit, Packed to the Rafters, the Complete Specials box set of Doctor Who and the second Sex & the City movie.

Extras on the six-disc The Pacific will include a picture-in-picture track and an interactive field guide for each episode, interviews with veterans and families of the people who inspired the series, a 23-minute making-of doco and a 10-minute take on the historical and cultural differences between the US and Japan.

A week later the second and third seasons of Underbelly will resurface in HD, which is when V: Season 1 also launches on Blu-ray.

The rest of November is shaping up as a stellar month for stargazers, too, with Into the Universe With Stephen Hawking (November 4) and season two of The Universe (November 18).

Season one of Patton 360 also gets its Blu-ray stripes on November 18, the same (dooms)day as Nostradamus 2012.

If you were hanging out to see TV2′s long-delayed debut of the graphic novel action sensation, Human Target, in HD, you might as well hang out a little longer for the Blu-ray.

The network will double-bill the newcomer with season three of Chuck from August 25, in the 8.30pm-10.30pm zone.

Frustratingly, neither will air in HD, even though the first two seasons of Chuck are out on Blu-ray and season one of Human Target will be released on region-free Blu-ray next month in the US.

Presumably, it’s because TV2 has used up its quota of weekly HD hours with Fringe, The Vampire Diaries and bizarre twice-weekly airings of The Mentalist.

Until TVNZ completes its digital infrastructural overhaul, both TV One and TV2 are limited in the amount of HD content they can screen.

More puzzling is why TV2 didn’t employ Human Target as an adrenalin-junkie’s alternative to TV3′s Outrageous Fortune on Tuesdays, instead of the low-rating re-runs of The Mentalist.

It also would have made a more compatible lead-in to Fringe than The Mentalist. Who would have thought a fringe comedy/drama like Nurse Jackie would out-rate Fringe, which is what it’s doing due to Outrageous Fortune continuing to own Tuesday nights.

However, Human Target does sound like a fun stablemate for Chuck, albeit not as an irreverent take on the spy genre.

It’s said to echo the “retro-chic” of TV3′s HD spy caper, Burn Notice, only is more broadly appealing because it was made for network rather than cable TV.

It stars Fringe’s Mark Valley and has been dubbed everything from “a non-thinking man’s 24“ to “the closest thing on TV to swigging a keg of Red Bull”.

The same week, TV One will launch the seventh and final HD season of Cold Case (9.25pm Sunday).

Warner Bros NZ will release the Blu-ray of

The Iraq War drama about an imbedded Rolling Stone journalist from the creator of The Wire, David Simon, was briefly out on DVD here late last year but had to be withdrawn from sale after TVNZ made an 11th-hour purchase of the mini-series for its Monday night military strand, where it has screened Band of Brothers and The Pacific.

However, Generation Kill is drawing only half the TV One viewership of its predecessors, despite the topicality of the real-life Rolling Stone take on the US military in Afghanistan and the acclaim of The Dominion Post’s Jane Clifton, who reckons it’s “the best programme on television … An instant classic.”

As well as showcasing the seven-part drama in 1080p (unlike TV One’s SD version), the Blu-ray will feature commentaries, a making-of documentary and interviews with veteran Marines.

WB also has confirmed release dates for a slew of other TV shows and movies on Blu-ray, including: Supernatural: Season 4 and Precious (July 7), Valentine’s Day (July 21), Clash of the Titans, Cop Out, Edge of Darkness and The Road (August 11), and The Blind Side, A Single Man, Creation and The Box (September 8).

Expect The Pacific, which has only two episodes to run on TV One (8.30pm Monday), to bow on Blu-ray in November.

Warner Bros NZ will only say it’s due in the fourth quarter but HBO in the US has just announced a November 2 release and one Australian website is taking pre-orders for the day after.

The Blu-ray will include the DVD edition’s five-minute historical background prologues for each episode and three documentary shorts (Making The Pacific, Profiles of The Pacific and Anatomy of the Pacific War) as well as such HD exclusives as: an enhanced, picture-in-picture viewing mode with interviews, archival footage and maps; and The Pacific Field Guide, which complements on-screen events with background information, animated maps, interviews with historians and veterans, historical footage and photographs.

Meanwhile, if you want to see the fourth and final season of Heroes before it airs on C4, pre-order the region-free Blu-ray that goes on sale in the US on August 3.

Season three was released here only last week and don’t expect Universal Pictures Video NZ to release S4 until after its C4 run, which has yet to start.

According to the US press release, the final volume, titled Redemption, will come in a four-disc set with hours of special features.

They’ll include picture-in-picture commentaries, audio commentaries, deleted and extended scenes, and shorts (Deconstructing Sylar: discussion with Tim Kring, Adam Armus and Zachary Quinto; Milo Speaks: Milo Vetimiglia talks about his career as an actor and his role on Heroes; Heroes Revolution: Tim Kring and Heroes new media creatives discuss the importance of a web series for a hit television show and how new media entertainment is created; Genetics of Scene: an in-depth look at the production process of creating specific scenes).

The first — and best — of the Underbelly series will be released on Blu-ray in August.

The award-winning dramatisation of Melbourne’s ’90s gangland wars was one of the first shows TV3 aired in HD (but, ironically, was repeated in SD).

The latest series, The Golden Mile (TV3, 8.30pm Wednesdays), bridges the first and second, and has been thrashing the competition: FlashForward on TV2 and Aussie rival Packed to the Rafters on TV One.

Reportedly, series four and five are in the works and the third is due for release next month across the Tasman, but on DVD only.

Distributor Roadshow Entertainment hasn’t confirmed a NZ date yet for The Golden Mile but expect it to be August or September, given NZ’s broadcasts are about a month behind Australia’s.

So much for saving the cheerleader, saving the world – what about saving face, TV3?

Universal Pictures NZ has announced that the season-three Blu-ray and DVD release of Heroes again has been postponed, making this territory probably the only one in the world where you can’t buy either locally.

Why? Because Heroes has still to complete its free-to-air TV run.

After launching season three in late ’08, TV3 pulled it because of faltering ratings and has since consigned it to sister channel C4 – where it will resume in March.

By then, of course, the end will be ‘nigh for season four in the US (and probably the prospects of its renewal).

You can’t blame TV3 for dumping Heroes after viewers started to switch off – but if it’s no longer popular enough for primetime on the channel, why should the broadcaster thwart its home video release?

The irony is TV3 deserves kudos for being progressive enough to air the last couple of seasons so close to their US transmissions.

Fans might think the strategy a no-brainer for a free-to-air channel that doesn’t want to lose audiences to new media but it’s one NZ broadcasters have been reluctant to pursue — even though distributors are urging customers worldwide to screen their product as close to the US networks as possible to discourage piracy.

With Heroes, TV3 has only encouraged illegal downloading: firstly, by delaying new episodes for more than a year after their US premiere; and secondly, by not screening the show in HD.

There is a silver lining of sorts for Blu-ray buyers: season three of Heroes can be imported from anywhere because it’s zone-free. (And if you have a multi-region DVD player, regional coding on the DVDs won’t matter, either.)

It’s also likely C4 will screen season four soon after season three, which means by the time the former’s released on Blu-ray everywhere else, you should be able to buy it in this part of the world, too.