(Note: This review is of the orignal Anchor Bay DVD Sets)
COVER ART
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On the slip box are renders of the main cast, sometimes including Mary too. The series logo is on the cover, at the top, as well as the spine. On the back is a description of the season, with various tech specs and info. scattered about. At the bottom is a list of extras beside another cast render at the side.
They are quite balky sets. At first, I was wondering why the front of the slip box had this empty cardboard space and the I realized that if you press the hidden button a voice plays. There's some sort of little speaker/chip in that empty space, kind of like those fancy gift cards! A message from the, "high commander," himself insulting you but then asking you to be his friend.
The fold out case inside features four multicolored discs, with each piece that folds out having a render of one of the cast on it.
MENUS
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All menus have a clip of the Solomon's with an animated space background. The menus are overlaid with options to select episodes, play all, or choose extras, on some discs. The episode select has a sub menu for each episode with a description & options to view a small preview of each episode. It's worth mentioning that these episode previews can only be played individually and won't play if you select play all.
AUDIO
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A stereo track is provided and is fine, no issues to note. No dubs are available and the bit-rate is standard 192 KB/s.
VIDEO
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While the episode were filmed, they were then transferred to NTSC sources. This explains why some episodes have tell tale tape artifacts like dot crawling. Most episodes, however, have a more digitally mastered look. They all have a nice fine grain structure, and seem quite crisp. The episodes that seem digitally mastered have great vivid colors and contrast, while the analog ones are more subdued. They still look fine, but exhibit some artifacts like the previously mentioned dot crawling & fuzzy rainbow type effects on finer details. The bitrate is quite high, in the six megabit range. Despite having such high bitrate, the episodes do have some issues with macro blocking in darker scenes. I'm not sure if this is an encoding issue or some sort of flaw in the mastering.
I'd like to note that by season four, all episodes seem mastered digitally and don't exhibit any of the analog tape artifacts.
I should also note that the original Anchor Bays sets include the slightly cut down syndicated versions on earlier seasons, while the Mill Creek re-releases includes the original premiere versions, running a few minutes longer.
EXTRAS
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The extras consists of: Various cast interviews, bloopers, behind the scenes, highlight clips, and DVD-ROM scripts. The Anchor Bay box-sets leave everything room to breath, so to speak. Meanwhile Mill Creek's set uses less discs, meaning they may some hefty compression in comparison.
FINAL THOUGHTS
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My only complaint, really, is that I don't like how bulky the boxes are. Some people love big collectors sets like, this so it's a matter of what you prefer. I wish that all the episodes had been digitally mastered, but I can live with what's here. As for which set is better, Anchor Bay vs. Mill Creek: I'm rather split really. I'd prefer the smaller case and uncut episodes from Mill Creek's set, but the higher bit-rate video from the original set.
TECH. SPECS.
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ASPECT RATIO: 1.33:1 (Original Fullscreen)
NUMBER OF DISCS: 24
DISC SIZE: Dual-Layer
REGION CODE: 1 / NTSC
AUDIO: English 2.0 (192 KB/s)
SUBTITLES: English Closed Caption
RUN-TIME: 50 Hours 47 Minutes
