Entertainment For Lively Minds
Might as well face it, I'm addicted to boxed sets of boxed sets
I have just picked up the boxed set of The West Wing for £49 from my local Zavvi (urrgh). That's the box containing all seven season boxed sets, if you see what I mean. That's every episode ever made on 44 discs. It has occurred to me that boxed sets of individual series are now no longer enough. No, I don't want to buy each individual series of The Sopranos. I want the nice looking box that contains every episode. Ditto The Wire.
Anyone else suffering from this? Of course, it only really works for TV series that are no longer in production. I have a friend who keeps buying the Family Guy mega box sets, despite the fact that they keep releasing a new one every time the next series is released on dvd.
I am now eyeing up the X Files boxed set of boxed sets, despite the fact that I already own every series on dvd. But that special box sure does look nice.....
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i saw it in my local zavvi today
as well, but couldn't justify buying it as i've been working thru it, at an episode a week, on More 4 on the sky plus box. I know that some episodes are great, but it's not the kind of thing i could just pop in a rancom disc of an evening and sit back and enjoy. I could do it with Frasier or Seinfeld though.
Your point about wanting 'the big box' is bang on the nose though. I've missed the Sopranos completely and had a scout around for the 'big box' of it. €175 was a bit much to pony up so I put it back on the shelf, but Peep Show series 1-5 for €30 (around UK£20) was a bit of a bargain, but as you say (!) it would have killed me to see a Series 6 become available later on.
A propos The Wire, I got series 1 and 2 together in May 2007 and they were in the box style of a disc on each 'page' of a book, such that there were five pages. When i ordered Series 3 recently from Amazon, i was disgusted to see that there was a change in the format of the box and it was slimline. I've nothing against 'slimline' packaging, but i've everything against the darned things if they're not uniform when lined up on the shelf.
Yes, i know i need to get out more...
My obsession with The Wire...
...quickly escalated to a mental illness. I used to privately speculate on what the colour scheme might be for each forthcoming box set; whether, after the classic silver and black of the first season and the murky green tones of its successor, they might go in the opposite direction with season three and opt for hot pink. I was rather perturbed when they changed the cover concept for the final box set, rendering it the odd man out in the line up.
In my case I don't think getting out more is going to help. Maybe a spell in the armed forces will do the trick.
Do you, like me...
...obsessively compare these two to see if they match?
whoa whoa whoa...
you telling me there was two separate covers on sale. No, i'm not going to pony up for the 'other' one, but i'm curious.
(don't think they match, by the way...)
I love the idea
but, on further inspection, Keema is looking in a completely different direction in the promo for the fifth series.
Packaging the Wire
Actually I think those slimline cases used to package The Wire are most impressive. I'm running out of space for DVD storage now, so I appreciate things like this. For instance, I have two box sets of Hitchcock films and one uses slimline cases to store 14 films, the other only has 6 films but uses the full-sized cases and so is barely narrower.
The thing that annoys me about those mega-box-sets is that they sometimes put special features in them which aren't in the box sets themselves. That's quite annoying if you've got the first 5 seasons of something separately (that could be the reason your friend buys every Family Guy mega set).
Additional special features
Please tell me that I'm not the only geek who'll spend half an hour standing in the shop with almost identical versions of the same film or series in my hands, comparing the extras on the discs to make sure I buy the "right" one???
You're not alone
I do that, too, to make sure I don't accidentally buy the "vanilla" disc by mistake. A couple of weeks ago, I bumped into a friend of mine in town, who had bought some discs in a sale, one of which was the film "Zodiac." Unfortunately, he had bought the single disc edition with no extras. I marched him back to the shop to show him the double disc, extras packed edition and then I spent several minutes sweet talking the chap behind the counter to let my friend exchange his disc for the double discer and pay the difference.
I think I need help.
Oddly enough, I'm the reverse
I just want the film... no extras... no menus...
If I get a DVD with especially annoying/fiddly menus I often record the actual movie off onto a separate DVD-R and watch that, leaving the original extra-infested set to moulder in the attic.
...and whilst I'm on the subject
I also take the DVDs out of their boxes and put them in a big folder so I can sit there leafing through my DVDs whilst deciding what to watch. The boxes can then be ditched...
The last thing I want is shelves full of DVDs cluttering up my house
Surely
there must be a support group somewhere? We can't be the only ones with this terrible affliction???
You should never have to sweet talk to exchange an item
Never shop in that place ever again. If you have a receipt you have the right to return unwanted items that were recently bought and still in pristine condition.
Of course
what they should do is simply sell the empty big box at the end of the run, into which you can place the individual series boxes that you have collected over the preceding years.
The Byrd's CD re-releases came this way, so that you could buy the box with the last CD in the series. Of course then they find some unreleased material the next year and it doesn't fit in the box ....
'Boxed Meta-Sets' is, I believe, the scientific term...
...or should that be 'Meta Boxed-Sets'?
Elementary
Despite the fact that it is on ITV3 all the time I would love to get the DVD box set of all the old Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes adaptations. Just knowing that they're there whenever I want to lose myself in one would be very jolly. That and I know that it's pretty unlikely that they'll make any more on account of JB being, well, you know, dead.
Unfortunately, the only place I've ever seen it is online and I can't get things delivered to my flat on account of a very unsecure post box. This makes me sad.
Also, I'm very happy with the three Lord of the Rings Extended Edition box sets and I'm a bit worried that when the Hobbit DVD comes out, they'll change the packaging so that saddoes like me who want all the spines to look the same willl buy them all over again.
oh good - another spines fetishist...
I bought Frasier seasons 1-4 religiously in the first month of release. We had to wait over a year for Season 5; they've only gone and changed the entire design. Naturally the 'reissues' of Seasons 1-4 match the new design.
I'm not impressed
Join the club
My Auf Wiedersehen Pet DVDs just look WRONG on the shelf, because the designs on the spines changed with the re-release of the original two series', so half of them are from the "when you line the cases up, they make a picture" release, and half of them aren't.
Grrrrrrr.
<shakes head in desperation>
What's the DVD equivalent of "It's all about the music, maaaaaan" :-)