As will I. Shout! did a typically fine job.
But, I'm just seeing this differently. I get how people are feeling about this set. I get how we can compare this set to the Shout! release and complain that standards have dropped. But they really haven't. Discotek is maintaining standards just fine. If they had the rights to this show we know it would have been in safe hands.
But complete series sets like that have always been a tiny niche. We expect companies to go well out of their way to do a good job, because it's a product we've been willing to go well out of our way to get. Some companies still get that, and the deal hasn't changed.
What's changed, is one of the streaming revolution's rare positive effects on the DVD market. Most people have been happy to catch whatever random episode happens to air at the time, and space out for a couple hours until they forget what they turned the TV on to watch in the first place. DVD releases have typically been a just slightly higher effort version of that. It's a disk of a particular show, but it's still just 3-5 random episodes. Maybe not even in order. You put in the disc and you're just watching whatever episodes. It's a low effort product for low effort viewing.
Casual viewing has changed. People have gotten used to that 'next episode' prompt, and the 'skip intro' prompt. Just getting on with the show. The same show. The idea of binging a complete series or at least a complete season has become completely normalized. It's not just us going well out of our way to do it anymore. There are shows that have only ever been released as whole seasons. Shows are made to be released like that. Even if not everyone watches shows like that, it is an utterly normal preference to have now.
This set isn't for us. Maybe it should have been, but it's not. This set is for a market that previously never would have gone out of their way to buy a complete series set, but today would see this as a casual purchase and truly has no idea there's any higher standard set for this sort of thing.
