Scrubs

[Afrobean]

Originally Posted by Verbal

The show is shot on 16mm film. Low-res, low-quality film. Then it's mastered to standard-definition video, using Sony's Digital Betacam cassettes for storage.

This is the same reason why you'll never see The Shield on BD.

There's no rule saying that 16mm can't transfer to HD, just that it won't look as sharp as larger stock sizes. They may need to recut the film if they were truly mastered to tape at 480i, but I'm sure the film is stored somewhere and they have the adequate documentation to allow for recutting directly from the film source.

Not to mention that it is now showing on ABC in 16:9 HD, and even if previous seasons aren't ripe for a BD release, this one will be.

ps I recall reading somewhere that they said that the sides of the matte were protected so that the film could be opened up to 16:9 in the future. I believe a specific example of this is the opening to the show: in this season, they're using the same old opening, but it's opened up to 16:9 now.