DVDs
It was announced in February 2007 that DVDs of the first season of "CHiPs" would be made available June 5, 2007. The DVDs are official products from Warner Bros.. "CHiPs": The Complete First Season DVDs include all 22 episodes of season one with introductions by Erik Estrada on select episodes and a CHiPs: The Ride Out of Spanish Harlem featurette.
Other seasons will follow, but a complete release schedule has not been announced.
Bootlegs
Due to the previous lack of official DVDs, there have been numerous bootleg DVDs (in some cases, all over the world). Such bootlegs can have issues with disc and picture quality.
Bootleg DVDs often show up on eBay and elsewhere. Fans are cautioned that these are illegal. The footage on the DVDs was likely recorded off TV and is undoubtedly low quality. Fans are urged not to buy these.
Empirical
One DVD set that has shown up multiple times is sold by a company called Empirical (or Empirical Film). The company sells DVD sets of many television shows, many of which are already legally available on DVD. The company is based in the Philippines, making it difficult for license holders to shut them down.
Clues that this is a bootleg are:
- No copyright information on the DVD cover
- Not available at trusted retailers such as Amazon.com
- Strange 2/2/4/4/4 episode count per disc
- Episodes out of order...and hardly a "best of" set
- Inclusion of E!'s True Hollywood Story as one of the episodes
- Region-free DVDs
Unfortunately, the text description is too small to read, but it was likely taken from CHiPs Online.