2023/04/20
I have to be honest, this is the 3rd time I am purchasing Star Trek: Voyager on DVD. First time I bought the big red chunky boxes back in 2004 I believe. Because I needed more space I sold these and bought the slimline releases. But these UK sets were of very bad quality and I only started to watch way past the possible return date so, I just gave them away…with a warning obviously.
Two weeks ago I started rewatching Star Trek: DS9 and for some time now I was thinking I wanted to rewatch Star Trek: Voyager as well. I know beforehand there will be a number of episodes I will skip but still Voyager also had some very good episodes which I really want to see again! When I was browsing on Amazon.de I saw that the complete set, the one I purchased, was only €49.95.
So I didn’t flinch and purchased it immediately. Of course I already did read that the set in question, not the show, was far from perfect. Easily broken with shipping, discs missing or wrong discs, discs stacked upon each other. So I knew I might be in for disappointment!
Well the set arrived in perfect condition, that was a relieve to me. When I opened it, I was less enthusiastic, a few discs had come loose, but nothing major but as I read about, the discs are stacked, 3 disc on top of each other, the plastic case is fragile but I was fortunate, nothing was damaged but immediately realized I had to check the discs as soon as possible if they weren’t damaged or scratched and if all discs where there and for instance not 2 discs of disc 6 of season 3. Another thing I immediately realized, is that I needed to put the discs in something user-friendly when I was about to start the rewatch because taking out a DVD from this set would be very annoying to say the least! So I purchased a metal box with sleeves in them where I can put in all the DVD’s for when the time comes that I am starting the rewatch! So you think you’ve purchased a slim set but to not let yourself get frustrated when you wanna watch an episode, you need to purchase something where you can store the discs in. At least that is how I feel about it. Of course I could have sent back the set and go for individual boxes but that would be more expensive and more space consuming.
Video
- Codec: MPEG-2
- Encoding Format: 4:3
- Resolution: 576i (PAL)
- Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
- Original aspect ratio: 1.33:1
Audio
- English: Dolby Digital 5.1
- Same for French; Italian; Spanish; German
Subtitles
- English SDH, English, German, French, Italian, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish
Discs
- 48 Discs (48 DVD's)
Packaging
- Slipbox - 2 big plastic cases containing s1-4 & 5-7
Region Code
- Region code 2
Extra's
- Yes, same extra's as on the earlier releases + bonus disc
The box is cheap so yeah perhaps I should not wine about it too much but still it can be quite frustrating when you need to switch the disc from below the stack to on top when want to watch episodes on the next disc. Why didn’t they use the same kind of release VEI does with their Stargate sets? Every disc in separate sleeves, bound together as one book with discs, much more user-friendly. So this is a German set, it does have an English menu and as you can see on the pictures, the titles of the episodes are in English, printed on the discs, which is very nice. On the inside of the cover of the boxes, the titles are printed in German. The cover art of both cases are nice, strange though that only Janeway, Tuvok and Seven of Nine are on it but they look kinda nice. What I also find curious is that the last disc of the entire set, belongs to season 1, is disc 6 and has Star Trek TOS episodes on it. It does say this set comes with an bonus disc so I assume that this is the one.
Final Word:
For a long time I was hoping for a Blu-ray release, which was also a reason why I gave away my slimline sets, because I was assuming that after Star Trek TNG, DS9 and also Voyager would get a Blu-ray release. But we now know that this did not happen and most likely will never happen.
If you are a huge Star Trek: Voyager fan, I think I would advice you to save a little more money and purchase either the slimline sets or the original red chunky ones, although you will have to look on Ebay for these sets I think. So, no I would not recommend this set that easily, if you are a DVD/Blu-ray purist, I would not advice this set to you, it is just too sloppy this set.
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