2025/03/21

I was thinking about this for a while now, Dark Matter ran for 3 seasons, the complete series has been individually released in North America (NA) and in Germany. But in Germany also a complete series was released afterwards. Because this show has only been released in only NA and Germany, there is not much to choose from. The North American is obviously region code A and the German set is region code B. I know for sure the NA version is region A locked. According to Blu-ray.com, the individual releases of the German set are successfully tested on a region A player.


I purchased the North American version upon release back in 2016-2018, they look beautiful and I am still happy I purchased these individual sets, because I have a region free player. Last year however, I got tempted to also purchase the complete series from Germany! It was not expensive, I found an excuse to purchase it, by thinking what if….my region free player dies… Indeed, an excuse, I wanted to be sure I could always watch and yes, the package does look nice. Because the series is only released in NA and Germany, I thought, well perhaps it is interesting to do an unboxing of the German complete set, which can, as you now know, also be played on a region A player.

Video

  • Codec: MPEG-4 AVC
  • Resolution: 1080p (S2&3) 1080i (S1)
  • Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
  • Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1

Audio

  • German: Dolby Digital 5.1 (S2&3)
  • German: Dolby Digital 2.0 (S1)
  • English: Dolby Digital 5.1 (S2&S3)
  • English: Dolby Digital 2.0 (S1)

Subtitles

  • English

Discs

  • 6 Discs (6 BD-50) - Printed

Packaging

  • Slipbox / Digipack

Region Code

  • B (A also playable, C untested)

There are some differences between the NA and the German set, while the complete series in NA contains 9 discs, the German complete set is 6 discs. So each season consists of 2 discs instead 3 discs per season like the NA set. Other differences are for instance: German’s first season (seems) to have a resolution of 1080/50i, while the NA set is 1080p. Seasons two and three of the German set are 1080p also. The German first season set has both an English and an German Dolby Digital 2.0 audio track, while the NA set has an English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio track. Seasons two and three of the German set have an Englisch Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track. Both the NA and the German sets do have English subtitles. Each season has 13 bonus clips as special features.

So indeed the German set is not of the same quality than its NA counterpart in almost every way, still, it is a way own Dark Matter on Blu-ray without having to import it from NA and still have a decent quality product. And the packaging of the complete series it quite nice also I think. Regarding its availability, well, at the moment, the complete series is not available on Amazon.de, so you would need to check out stores like Ebay and such. Of the North American release only the first season is still available via Amazon.com.

Final Word:

That’s it, the European counterpart, a weaker release yes, still it is a way to own it on Blu-ray and as I said, it is a decent set. I didn’t realize, when I began this blog, that the German complete set is now also hard to come by. I don’t know if this is temporary or that this is out of print, in that case you will need to look for it outside of Amazon.


Sources: Bluray-disc.de & Blu-ray.com

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