The Complete Series

 

BOX-ART

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The artwork on the slip box is the same as the case within. My copy came with a blue sticker on the plastic that says, "directed by John . Dilworth." The cover is a green background with an image of Courage. The title is at the top, with the top right & bottom having text that say, "Cartoon Network Hall of Fame, " and, " All 52 episodes." This set basically repackages each of the season single's into one big set. A slip of paper comes inside box with a list of which episodes are on each of the discs.

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The back has a description of the series, with renders or Courage, Muriel & Eustace. Various tech. specs. are at the bottom.

 

MENUS

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With season one coming out, by itself, almost a decade before the rest of the seasons its menu is in a different style than the rest. The remaining season having a more uniform look.

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The season disc menu opens, after a promo for Jonny Bravo on DVD, with a static image of Courage in front of the farm. There are options to play all episodes, episode select, and set-up. Sub menus feature artwork of Muriel or Eustace, with the episode select menu having screenshots of the episodes you can choose.

 

All menus play a loop of the theme music. The set-up menu simply lets you turn subtitles on or off. Season two onward feature an image of Courage atop a plain white/blue background. The episode selection on these menus is simply text with no images.

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AUDIO

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Season one is in stereo, while the rest of the series is 2.0 Dolby Surround. All are presented at 192 KB/s.

 

VIDEO

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Colors, contrast, and compression are fine throughout the series. Clarity is weakest on season one, with it seemingly being from an analog tape master. Is has loads of soft/flickery dot-crawling artifacts. The rest of the series, safe for the season two finale, is free of these flaws. The episodes that are digitally mastered are sharp and clean.

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The second season has some problems with ghosting artifacts which starts on the last episode on disc one, and continues for the rest of the season. It seems that maybe they were using PAL masters converted back to NTSC. My theory is that because this season came out on DVD in Australia years prior, I think they simply re-used those transfers. It's weird, because most of the episodes on disc one don't have this issue. The final two episodes on the second season disc have been deinterlaced by discarding a field, which leaves the episodes with awful aliasing. Luckily, seasons three and four look fine & have no issues.

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FINAL THOUGHTS

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I loved this show as a kid. It was surprisingly dark at times, for a kid show. It spooked me out sometimes, but kept me coming back.

 

I wish the quality was a bit more consistent here, with the first two seasons having some issues. What's interesting about Courage, is that it was using digital animation at a time when most studios were still using cel animation. So while they were ahead of their time using digital, it kind of cost them in the long haul. If they had been using film, they could have remastered it.

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 TECH. SPECS.

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                                                                     ASPECT RATIO: 1.33:1 (Original Full-Screen)

                                                               NUMBER OF DISCS: 8

                                                                           DISC SIZE: *Single & Dual-Layer (*Season 1 Disc 2)

                                                                     REGION CODE: 1 / NTSC

                                                                               AUDIO: *English 2.0 & 2.0 Dolby Surround (192 KB/s | *Season One)

                                                                          SUBTITLES: English SDH

                                                                          RUN-TIME: 18 Hours 38 Minutes