Being a fan of South Park in the UK isn’t easy, especially since I’m not also a fan of downloading torrents (both for bandwidth and moral reasons). For years, South Park releases in the UK rather absurdly stalled at season four, requiring fans to buy the region 1 releases (which in itself makes certain studios spit red-hot fury). Even when this changed, the releases retained the most boneheaded aspect of the US editions: making you wait several minutes to access any one episode—see Helpful Hints for DVD Producers for more on that.

Today, I was helpfully spammed by Amazon about South Park – The Hits Volume 2, which is now excitingly available. Containing random, out of context episodes I already own on DVD, this DVD with one of the laziest pieces of cover art in history (name, eyeballs, rating—it just screams ‘bargain bucket’) could be mine for just £6.49!

Never mind the fact that I’m still waiting on season 13 of the series, which was released on Blu-ray (for £49.99) back in March. Another search reveals, though, that Paramount Home Entertainment is finally going to allow people with a DVD to buy the series (for £24.99), albeit in September, six months after the Blu-ray release (which, remember, costs £49.99, which in NO WAY is the reason for the DVD version’s delay).

No doubt said DVD will still be stuffed full of adverts and anti-piracy garbage you can’t skip, along with a tiresome and lengthy snippet from an episode, before the menu appears. And companies wonder why so many people are drawn to torrents these days. As noted in the title of this post, Paramount Home Entertainment hates South Park fans—unless they own a Blu-ray and have deep pockets.