HBO Unveils New High-Definition Re-Mastering of Award-Winning Hit Series 'The Wire'

HBO is releasing a new High-Definition upgrade of all 60 episodes of The Wire.

In the six years that have passed since the conclusion of the HBO series The Wire, the critically acclaimed drama has turned into a worldwide phenomenon that has been hailed as "one of the best and most original series on television in decades" by the New York Times. Now, new and old fans of the series can watch the show like never before thanks to a brand new High-Definition upgrade of all 60 episodes, which will debut in December on HBO Signature and HBO GO. The Wire: The Complete Series will be available to own on Digital HD Monday, January 5, 2015 and on Blu-rayTM in Summer 2015.

The entire series has been beautifully re-mastered in 16x9 Full-Frame HD from more than 8,000 reels of original 35mm camera negative, allowing for a tighter fit on widescreen TVs and computer/tablet screens. The original negatives were scanned, edited, dust-busted and color-corrected with great care and attention taken to stay true to the look and feel of the original Standard-Definition 4x3 version.

The Wire: The Complete Series in HD will be available for the first time as a full series purchase at iTunes, Google Play, X-Box Video and Vudu on January 5. Individual episodes and seasons will be available through all of HBO's Digital HD retailers.

To celebrate the HD launch, HBO Signature will air the entire series consecutively, one season per day starting with season 1 on Friday, December 26 at noon. The marathon will wrap with season 5 on Tuesday, December 30.

This will be the first time The Wire has aired on a linear HBO channel since Season 5 wrapped in 2008, as well as the first time that all five seasons of the entire series have aired consecutively on the network.

All 60 episodes will also be available in HD on HBO GO starting December 26.

The Wire depicts an American urban dystopia, framed in our time, in which easy distinctions between good and evil and crime and punishment are challenged at every turn. In five successive seasons, the series depicts a Baltimore in which institutional prerogatives, economic inequalities and a brutalizing drug war confound the efforts to advance the city and its people. The series' first season lays out the futility of the drug war, while the second highlights the deindustrialization and the death of the working class. The third season introduces the city's political culture and lays out the forces that stand in the path of actual reform. The fourth season addresses the educational system and the actual opportunities that remain to coming generations. The fifth and final season examines the media culture and its role in perpetuating the status quo. Amid all of this, carefully drawn characters on both sides of the law and from a variety of Baltimore cultures move forward as best they can, human to a flaw, struggling against a system that seems weighted against civic progress.