OK, I'm a huge futurama fan, and I really wanted the box set. As you all know, its only been released in R2. Well, I bought it anyway and went to Sam's Club, and for $90 got myself a Daewoo 5800 which will properly play the dvds on a regular NTSC TV set. It was well worth it.
Anyway, since I haven't seen too many, or any come to think of it, reviews of the box set, I thought I would give my own little review.
First of all, the 3 dvd set comes in a nice box with some great Futurama art work on it. Inside the box are 3 clear Amaray type cases. I really like these. Because the case is clear, there is artwork visible behind the dvd. The dvds themselves have a nice futurama scene printed on them. When you remove the disc, and look at the case under it, there is the same scene printed, with some changes to make it funny. Each case artwork is different.
Epsode titles: Space Pilot 3000, The Series Has Landed, I, Roomate, Love's Labour's Lost In Space, Fear Of A Bot Planet, A Fistful Of Dollars, My Three Suns, A Big Piece Of Garbage, Hell Is Other Robots, A Flight To Remember, Mars University, When Aliens Attack, Fry And The Slurm Factory.
Each episode has a commentary by David X. Cohen, Matt Groening, Bender, and sometimes others. I haven't listened to all of the commentaries yet, but the ones I have heard are informative and entertaining. Other extras include deleted scenes, anamatics, a featurette, 3 easter eggs (one on each disc), and original concept sketches for the series.
Since the DVDs are really R2 PAL dvds, the playback is not perfect. The playback is 4% faster than normal, so the voices are slightly raised. There are around 1/3 inch black bars on the top and bottom of the screen. Every once in a while, the action looks like it has a motion blur to it. All of these effects are supposedly normal for PAL to NTSC conversions. In my opinion, these effects do not make the episodes unwatchable. For the most part, you really don't notice them too much. If you really care, there are dvd players out there with better PAL converters. I didn't want to spend the extra $$. Another alternative is to region hack your computer's DVD player.
The bottom line is that the episodes are great to have on DVD. The mpeg vcd futurama episodes I've been downloading certainly don't have the same quality to them. It will be many years from now, if ever, before FOX decides to release these for R1.
For those who don't know, season 2 is set to be released on Sept 30th. I'm sure I'll be getting that too.
Morbo says "buy these, puny Earthlings!"