The TV DVD Dilemma

Last week, in my post on “Family Ties” coming to DVD, I told you that buying season one of a TV show improves the chances for future releases.

But if you’re a big TV DVD fan, you know there’s a problem with that statement. Often, brisk sales of a title just encourage the studio to find more ways to make money. This usually means the release of a special series collection with extra material that was not available with the original sets. This leaves fans who already have all of the individual sets in the cold.

Sometimes the studios look out for their loyal fans. When Warner Brothers released “Friends” in a deluxe wooden box, they made the box available for purchase by those of us who already had the sets.

But in most cases, loyal fans are just left without the bonus materials, wondering if they should re-buy the set just to get them.

There are three instances of that in the next two weeks…

Warner Brothers will go to the “Friends” well again with “The Friends Collection” November 14th. The collection features all of the discs as they were in the original season sets, but they are not divided by season. The bonus material is a 60-page booklet with cast pictures, episode descriptions and the original network pitch. But since those things are available in any of the books about “Friends,” it’s really not worth the upgrade.

“The West Wing” gets the complete series collection this week. The only real bonus here is a copy of the pilot script with an introduction by Aaron Sorkin; but the packaging is pretty cool. The box looks like a dossier and the discs are contained in file folders. If you already have the sets, you can get the script in “The West Wing Script Book.” So again, not worth the upgrade.

But if you’re a “M*A*S*H” fan with all of the seasons, you will be hard pressed to ignore this week’s release of the “Martinis and Medicine Collection.” The earlier sets didn’t contain a lot of bonus material, so they’re catching up big time here. The collection features the original 1970 film, two all-new bonus discs (with hours of special features) and a retrospective book. If you have a “M*A*S*H” fan in the house, this will be the only Christmas gift you’ll have to buy them this year.

“Alias” fans will be next to face the choice on November 21st with the release of the “Rimbaldi Edition” and yes, that box is pretty cool too.