From: Matt Garvey 

Well, my season 20 DVDs came in the mail today. This was the first
time since season 3 that I did not get a season (or movie) DVD on its
release date. In fact, I used Amazon's super saver shipping - so this
week's delay probably makes the longest it has taken yet. Telling?

Since I did not see any explicit denial of the extra features we're
used to (commentaries, deleted scenes, etc.) I held out a hint of an
inkling of an iota of hope that maybe it somehow did and that fact
just wasn't publicized (or for some reason not mentioned on the box).
No. There's nothing except the one "extra" already known (and some
sketches from Matt, etc., in the menus). So now you know that for
sure. In fact, there's not even the standard goofy message from Matt
(in text or in the short video segment); not that they're all that
great, but it just shows that barely a minimum of effort was expended
here. On the plus side, with no poorly handled deleted scenes, at
least subtitles work as God intended.


For the rest of this, you may want to skip it if you get easily
annoyed at my attention to minutia, especially considering ancillary
parts of DVDs. I make no apology for being angry at this, and I find
it important enough to spend a few minutes registering my disgust on
the internet at least. I also hope, always, that this sort of thing
might get noticed by someone at Fox Home Entertainment, but that is
probably barking at the moon.

So here are some things that continue to be wrong or are newly wrong.

-The packaging. Jesus tapdancing Christ, I don't think they want
anyone to have an easy time getting to or keeping good care of these
discs. These DVDs have never been *easy* to get at, from the
cumbersome foldouts of seasons 1-5, to the abominable head boxes of
6-10. This eco BS for season 11+ continues to get on my nerves, but at
least my solution to that (separate slim cases) solves the rest.
Season 12 - and season 20 - put a flippity flap on the side of the box
enclosing the disc accordion, adding a wholly unnecessary step to the
whole affair. To top it all off, season 20 comes in a plastic
(PLASTIC! Where's your diminished carbon footprint now??) slipcase.
What. (Not that I don't like slipcases, especially as "status symbols"
of how early something was bought, but it's just another stupid step
here.)

-Edge enhancement continues to be present, at least on the KABFs. I
didn't see it on the LABFs. This is odd, since EE was applied - far
more acutely - to the movie DVD, just before it started appearing on
the show DVDs, and that was also HD and completely digital and
whatnot.

-EVERY SINGLE EPISODE now has a short warning at the end. This seems
to be yet another intrusion on the utility of the DVDs by FHE, as
evidenced by the exact same thing on, for example, the recently
released season 4 of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia". This, of
course, is ON TOP OF the unskippable FBI warning that's plagued us
since season 5 or so. At least you can skip this one, but come on.
It's slightly less annoying than the DVCC logo that showed up after
every episode in season 1 (and look, they got rid of that - in fact,
it's not even there once per disc anymore like most DVDs! it's GONE!).
Thanks again for treating us like criminals. (I know people who don't
mind all this crap, or actually justify it, but I can argue till I'm
blue in the face about this topic.) And no, it doesn't appear between
episodes on "play all" - not that I use "play all", but
at least you
know.

-I tossed on LABF01 to inspect the quality of the animation for the
widescreen/HD episodes. Barney's burp is missing, and Lenny's fall off
the ladder (an element that never changes) is almost foreign-sounding.
How do you mess that up?? (Other episodes seem to be OK in these
respects. A more full inspection will follow, naturally.)

So, that's part 1. I hope the monkeys at FHE somehow get some of this
shit fixed one day, instead of heaping MORE of it on. (The episodes
themselves, and their AV quality, do seem fine more or less, of
course. It's all this crappy presentation that is really bugging me.
It's ugly, it's paranoid, and it creates a hassle.)

--- Internet Rex 2.29