The Complete First Season (2012 Re-Issue)
BOX-ART
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A one with bubbles in the center is featured along with renders of all the characters. A banner at the top says, "The Complete First Season," along with the Nickelodeon and SpongeBob logo are pictured. The back lists all the episodes along with a brief description of the season, with extras and specifications below.
MENUS
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The menu opens with an animated intro introducing us to some of the characters, before giving options to play all, select episodes, and extras. A video of clips from the episodes plays in the background with looping instrumental theme music. My only issue with the menu is that the intro animation is a bit long, and isn't skip-able.
VIDEO
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Some of the episodes look very nice and even digitally mastered from the original film, while others are mastered from composite tape. These episodes suffer from dot crawling and generally have a fuzzy, softer, image. They're noticeably lower in quality, but still look decent. The episodes that were mastered digitally look about as good as a high definition transfer of cel animation on DVD can.
AUDIO
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Presented here is an English Dolby 2.0 track at 192 Kb/s.
EXTRAS
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N/A
FINAL THOUGHTS
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N/A
TECH SPECS
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ASPECT RATIO: 1.33:1 (Original Full-Screen)
NUMBER OF DISCS: 3
DISC SIZE: Dual-Layer
REGION: 1 / NTSC
AUDIO: English 2.0 (192 Kb/s)
SUBTITLES: None
RUN-TIME: 7 Hours 54 Minutes
The Complete Second Season (2012 Re-Issue)
BOX-ART
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A two with cut out of a pineapple in the center is featured along with renders of SpongeBob and Patrick inside. A green banner at the top says, "The Complete Second Season," along with the Nickelodeon and SpongeBob logo above. The back lists all the episodes along with a brief description of the season, and extras and specifications below.
MENUS
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N/A
VIDEO
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This is the first season to be fully mastered digitally and is sharp, colorful, and clean to boot.
While I love the original cel animation, as it has it's charm, the digital animation looks very good. A few episodes in the set, have the same dot crawling issues that the previous set had, but without as much of the fuzziness. Only about two or three of the episodes have this issues. Some interlacing issues seem to be present in all episodes, but de-interlacing with a program like VLC looks fine on computers, as do most TV sets with de-combing filters.
AUDIO
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Unlike the first season, this set includes a Spanish dub! Both English & Spanish tracks are Dolby 2.0 at 192 Kb/s.
EXTRAS
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Among the extras are a trivia quiz, two featurettes, cast commentaries, and a DVD-ROM script.
FINAL THOUGHTS
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N/A
TECH SPECS
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ASPECT RATIO: 1.33:1 (Original Full-screen)
NUMBER OF DISCS: 3
DISC SIZE: Dual-Layer (7.8Gb)
REGION: 1 / NTSC
AUDIO: English & Spanish 2.0 (192 Kb/s)
SUBTITLES: None
RUN-TIME: 7 Hours 32 Minutes
The Complete Third Season
BOX-ART
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The cover features SpongeBob posing in the kitchen with Squidward and Patrick behind him, through the window, in the main area of the Krusty Krab. The back has a list of episodes and extras.
MENUS
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After a short pan into and through the Kusty Krab, we see the options in front of a render similar to the one on the front cover. Through the window various clips for the season play. Options are overlaid on a plank to the side.
VIDEO
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The video is very similar to the previous season, with great colors, contrast, and sharpness. On occasion there is some noticeable aliasing artifacts, along with very faint haloing. The same interlacing issues that the last set had are still here. On the plus side, is seems all traces of dot-crawling have been eliminated in the season. No noticeable compression issues were observed.
Something interesting about this set is that if you select French audio from the menus, the opening, title card, and credits will actually change! The opening changes slightly, and all the title cards are translated, but the episodes themselves cut back to the original version. This only works with the French dub, as the Spanish dub is literally just an audio swap.
AUDIO
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This set includes: the original English as well as French and Spanish Dolby 2.0 dubs at 192 Kb/s. This is the last set until season nine to include any extra languages.
EXTRAS
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Some minor pop up trivia, a, how-to-draw featurette, and the pilot episode are included.
FINAL THOUGHTS
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I'd like note note that the episode, "Just One Bite, " is the edited version removing the scene of Squidward in the burning Kursty Krab. Due to this edit being made so early after the episode airing, no home video version of this episode uses the original version. (Not even the VHS)
TECH SPECS
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ASPECT RATIO: 1.33:1 (Original Full-screen)
NUMBER OF DISCS: 3
DISC SIZE: Dual-Layer (7.8Gb)
REGION: 1 / NTSC
AUDIO: English, French, Spanish 2.0 (192 Kb/s)
SUBTITLES: None
RUN-TIME: 7 Hours 56 Minutes
The Movie
BOX-ART
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At the top is a pink banner that says widescreen, with the film title underneath on top of a life preserver. Renders of SpongeBob and Patrick running from various bottom dwellers, while holding King Neptune's crown are featured in the center. The back has a description of the film at the top, with specs & extras listed in the center. The background is literally SpongeBob, while Plankton is on the extras panel.
MENUS
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N/A
VIDEO
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N/A
AUDIO
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Both a full bit-rate 5.1 mix and well as a Dolby Surround mix are available in English. Spanish & French 5.1 dubs are also included.
EXTRAS
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N/A
FINAL THOUGHTS
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N/A
TECH SPECS
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ASPECT RATIO: 1.78:1 (Open Matte Widescreen)
NUMBER OF DISCS: 1
DISC SIZE: Dual-Layer (7.8Gb)
REGION: 1 / NTSC
AUDIO: English, French, Spanish 5.1 (448 Kb/s)
English 2.0 Surround (192 Kb/s)
SUBTITLES: English
RUN-TIME: 1 Hours 27 Minutes
The Complete Fourth Season
BOX-ART
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The cover features SpongeBob, Patrick, Squidward, and Mr. Krabs suck in bubble gum shaped like the number four. The back has a list of episodes and extras.
MENUS
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The complete season four set uses the exact same discs as the volume releases, therefor disc one and two have a slightly different design than disc three and four. Disc one and two open with a clip, from one of the episodes, of SpongeBob driving though a sign that becomes the options menu. Clips play in the hole that was created, while various animated effects play such as; bubbles & jelly fish floating around, etc.
Discs three and four open with a clip of Sandy lassoing a gum truck that crashes transitioning into a render of a giant gum ball with the clips playing inside. Options are on top of a sign render in the bottom left corner. Again, some various animation plays too.
VIDEO
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Like the previous seasons some interlacing issues are present, along with some line smear-y aliasing. Compression great, at around 7 Mb/s no artifacts are seen. A few episodes seem to have been using a composite transfer, and exhibit some artifacts. Dot-crawling, which I thought we had mostly left in season one, makes a small come back. It's not as major as the previous sets, but is here none the less. The coloring on these episodes is kind of off as well, with some clipped white levels, but they still look very good.
AUDIO
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Unlike the previous sets, this season only features the English audio at 192 Kb/s, there are no dubs.
EXTRAS
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Discs one and two feature animatics on two of the episodes. These work in progress versions play in a box on top of the screen, while the finished episode plays underneath for comparison. Discs two and four have a featurettes with cast interviews. Disc three has five shorts, which are labeled as, "Best Day Ever Shorts." They are each about thirty seconds in length, with the same quality of the episodes. The final disc has a sing along music video, of The Best Day Ever.
FINAL THOUGHTS
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N/A
TECH SPECS
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ASPECT RATIO: 1.33:1 (Original Full-screen)
NUMBER OF DISCS: 4
DISC SIZE: Dual-Layer (7.8Gb)
REGION: 1 / NTSC
AUDIO: English 2.0 (192 Kb/s)
SUBTITLES: Closed Captioning
RUN-TIME: 7 Hours 49 Minutes
The Complete Fifth Season
BOX-ART
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The cover features various character renders hanging out around SpongeBob in the shape of a five. The background is the underwater scenery we're used to on the show, with a spongy banner at the top that says, "The Complete Fifth Season." The back has a list of episodes and extras.
MENUS
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The complete season five set also uses the exact same discs as the volume releases, therefor disc one and two have a slightly different design than disc three and four. Disc one and two open with a clip, from one of the episodes, of SpongeBob eating a Kraby Patty at the Krusty Krab before transitioning to a menu with options on a background of his face. Clips play in moving bubbles.
Discs three and four have orange multicolored panes, with animate bubbles. Clips from the episode play in a panel in the top right, with options being on a panel adjacent to it.
VIDEO
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Compression is great, at around 6 Mb/s no major artifacts are seen. As far as DVD mastering goes, these episodes look the best so far, sharp and clear with, almost, no artifacts. A few episodes seem to have been using a composite transfer and exhibit some issues, dot-crawling makes yet another come back on four episodes on disc three.
AUDIO
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From this set onward, English Dolby 2.0 at 192 Kb/s only until season nine, which has surround sound and dubs.
EXTRAS
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Discs one and two feature trivia tracks on one of episodes on each disc. Disc one has a few shorts, which are labeled as, "Friend or Foe Shorts." It runs for about a minute an a half, with the same quality of the episodes. Disc three and four have karaoke videos that can be played with or without vocals. The credits and previews are under the extras menu as well. (The previews are identical on all four discs.)
FINAL THOUGHTS
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N/A
TECH SPECS
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ASPECT RATIO: 1.33:1 (Original Full-screen)
NUMBER OF DISCS: 4
DISC SIZE: Dual-Layer (7.8Gb)
REGION: 1 / NTSC
AUDIO: English 2.0 (192 Kb/s)
SUBTITLES: Closed Captioning
RUN-TIME: 7 Hours 42 Minutes
The Next 100 Episodes / Seasons 6-9
BOX-ART
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I've seen some versions online where all the discs come in one big box, but mine was different. Mine had the discs split between two boxes, with a slip-box holding them together. Inside the disc are stored a bit like a book, where you flip through them. The cover has a render of most of the characters from the show around a render of the title, with SpongeBob himself being the middle 0 in the 100. The front cover of each of the two boxes is the same as the slip box, with only the words Disc 1-8 being changed to, of course, Disc 9-16 on the second box. The reverse side of the covers list each episode & any extras that are on each disc.
Despite the discs being 1:1 copies of the original season sets, the disc art has no mention of this, with each disc being uniform. They also, erroneously, all say they are full-screen despite season nine actually being widescreen. The box also simply says full-screen/stereo, which isn't accurate for season nine. I don't really get why they didn't just specify on the packaging 4x3/2.0 for seasons 6-8 and 16x9/5.1 for season 9.
MENUS
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I wont go super into detail, with there being four separate menus, but just know they are all similar. Usually with renders of SpongeBob & Co. Some have animation, and/or music. They all have the following options: play all, episode select, and usually on the final disc of the season, extras. Season nine has an additional menu for audio select.
VIDEO
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All analog tape issues from previous season are completely gone now! Everything is very clean, sharp, and 100% digitally mastered now. There are no compression issues either, so everything looks great! Seasons six through eight are all 4x3, meaning the two widescreen specials released during those seasons are simply letterboxed within a 4x3 frame. I believe this is due to the way DVD works in that you can't have episodes in one big group in differing storage aspect ratios. For instance, they could have displayed these specials anamorphicly, but they would need to be in a separate menu and couldn't be played when you select play all. (This is my theory having mastered DVD-R's before with programs like DVDStyler.)
Starting with season nine, all episodes are displayed in anamorphic widescreen. The show finally made the jump to HD rather late, sometime in the early 2010s. The episodes look very sharp, usually studios add blurring and such to filter how HD looks when downscaled, but here it looks untouched. I personally, much prefer this raw look of HD video downscaled to DVD. The final season nine disc looks slightly filtered, almost as if it was scaled to 480x480 and then up to 720x480 giving it a lower resolution look. It's not a huge issue, but bizarre seeing how well all the previous discs were mastered.
AUDIO
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Seasons six through eight are all standard stereo at 192 Kb/s. With season nine switching to HD widescreen, it's also fitting that the show switched to surround sound audio too! It's presented as a 5.1 Dolby mix at 448 Kb/s. Two Dolby Surround 2.0 dubs are included at 192 Kb/s. Unlike the third season where the opening changed with the dub, this one is simply an audio swap.
EXTRAS
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There notable extras are some shorts, which are the same quality of the main episodes. There's a few other minor things too like how to draw SpongeBob, etc. It's light on bonus content, but you're getting so much content with all the seasons anyways.
FINAL THOUGHTS
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I'd like to mention that while It's A SpongeBob Christmas is only a letterboxed/stereo presentation here, a separate DVD/Blu-Ray release is available with full 5.1 and, on DVD, anamorphic widescreen. (A review of that may come at a later date.)
I'll also mention that since this set reuses the same discs as the individual seasons, this can work as a review of those too.
TECH SPECS
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ASPECT RATIO: 1.33:1 (Original Full-screen | Seasons 6-8)
1.78:1 (Original Widescreen | Season 9)
NUMBER OF DISCS: 16
DISC SIZE: Dual-Layer
REGION: 1 / NTSC
AUDIO: English 2.0 (192 Kb/s | Seasons 6-8)
English 5.1 (448 Kb/s | Seasons 6-8)
Spanish, French 2.0 Dolby Surround (192 Kb/s | Season 9)
SUBTITLES: English Closed Captioning
RUN-TIME: ? Hours ? Minutes
