I find myself in a kind of love//hate relationship with the Season 1 DVD Box of Due South. The set has some good features (For example, being able to play all episodes on a disc in a row without returning to the menu) but also some really silly mistakes. The biggest of these have been mentioned before in almost every review here, but I'll restate them anyway.
The set is called the "complete first season", yet it lacks the 2-hour pilot episode. What was Alliance/Atlantis smoking when they made this decision? If they wanted to be greedy, corporate jerks they could have released the pilot separately FIRST and charged full price for it, but it should have been included in the Season 1 box (there's room for it). As it stands, newcomers to the series have no idea what's going on. They aren't introduced to any of the characters properly. They don't know why Fraser is in Chicago or how he met Ray, etc. Sloppy sloppy. They'd better not decide to release some Special Edition season 1 box down the road that does include the pilot is all I have to say.
Next on the hit list are the DVDs themselves. They're 2-sided, although I believe at least 2 of them are DVD-18s (dual-sided, dual-layered) and I applaud A/A for the effort but there's a reason why DVD-18 never caught on. With the release of DVD changers (players that hold between 2 and 200 DVDs) it's simply more convenient to have 2 dual-layered DVDs instead of one DVD-18 that you have to get up and flip over (anyone having LaserDisc flashbacks?). Despite the annoyance, the DVD-18 format does allow 8 episodes to a disc and still have them all be good quality (better than many newer series I own). Very few features are included, but they were always secondary to quality of presentation, in my opinion.
The case itself is also flawed in that it is simply a modified 2-disc case. Discs 2 and 3 overlap so one must be removed before the other. Again, sloppy sloppy.
Having Due South in any form is greatly appreciated, but let's see the pilot released separately now (at a decent price please) and when season 2 is released, let's see 6 dual-layered discs rather than 3 DVD-18s.
