I have some DVD boxsets of TV shows like The Sopranos,Family Guy and The Simpsons and I have noticed that a DVD boxset of these TV shows come on more than 3 or 4 DVD discs each. I know that HD DVD and Blu-Ray have better picture quality than the standard DVD but considering that these next-gen discs have a higher capacity than the DVD would it be possible to put all of a TV show season on a single HD DVD or Blu-Ray disc? It would be a lot more handy to get a full TV show season on a single disc.

If you can afford the required recorder(s) and authoring software - maybe.

There are several major DVD authoring tools that currently support BD and/or HD-DVD discs, so it should be possible. Menu creation will be interesting with that many episodes. But it would involve ripping each episode separately from DVD and re-authoring to BD/HD.

If there's really a demand for this, I'm sure they'll get around to offering entire series on one disc with "special" extras to entice you to buy. Your average HBO 12-ep series should total around 20-30GB with extras included and no compression.

Yes but keep in mind like regular DVD, you will probably need to compress them. You certainly aren't going to get HD DVD quality if you put the whole season on one HD DVD. Image size grows as capacity/technology does. If you are asking whether or not you could fit your existing DVD collection on an HD DVD then yes, you probably could but just because you are putting it on an HD DVD doesn't mean that you will have HD DVD quality. So really all you would gain out of the conversion is the convenience of having an entire season on one disc.

Depends on the length of the content, the compression type used (MPEG2, MPEG4/H.264), resolution, and compression level. Techincally speaking it would be no issue to fit several hours of content onto a single disc. With MPEG4 you can actually get about 2 hours of 1280x720 with decent quality at 3-5GB, so yes it's certainly possible even with a 15GB HD-DVD. If you have any doubts, you can download free 1280x720 trailers and other video clips, judge the picture quality for yourself and calculate based on the length of the trailer how much could fit onto 15GB/25GB/30GB/50GB discs. Both HD-DVD and Blu Ray support much more efficient compression formats than MPEG2 used in DVDs. You might be suprised how much 1920x1080 content will even fit onto these discs if you use some of the better compression formats.

I agree with scoobiedoobie's view. It is quite dependant on what quality you are expecting from HD disc formats. If you are satisfied with standard 480P/576P resolution DVD quality video, then it should be possible to have a current 4 DVD boxset with same image quality encoded in H.264/VC-1 on even a single HD-DVD disc as bitrate requirements for same image quality as current MPEG-2 equivalent is less than 50%.

Though, if you are expecting optimal HD image quality & advanced multi-channel sound, then IMO, no, a single standard HD disc will not be enough (either 15GB HD-DVD or 25GB Blu-ray). Though Blu-ray would be the more suitable disc format due to it's much higher capacity. I would much prefer to have optimal image/sound quality than the convienience of a single disc as it would mean some compromise to both.

If you have the knowledge, and are happy with reduced image quality, it is quite possible now to fit a complete season of a TV show on a single DVD5 using XviD/DivX.

Sorry, I should've clarified that I was talking about retaining 1080i or 1080p resolution AND fitting it all on one disc. Afraid that isn't going to happen.

With Blu-ray DL (50GB) even 1920x1080 is reasonable with MPEG4 depending on how much content we're talking about, although a SL disc of either format wouldn't be enough from the videos I've seen. It depends on the length of the content of the series in question, but 7+ hours of 1920x1080 is definitely possible. If you search around you can find plenty of HD content to judge by.

I'm in this club, however big/small it might be. Convenience of having all show episodes on 1-2 discs is super. Now if a standalone recorder with ~TB HDD's can get out on market - would be fun to squeeze 10-11 hours of SD programming onto a BD disc. While window of opportunity is still here, that is.