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Castle DVD Case Oddity

November 19, 2009

KC and I really enjoy Castle, the mystery show with Nathan Fillon (Firefly) as a thriller writer who helps the police solve murders.

Castle: The Complete First Season
Buy this DVD set

So since the Complete First Season DVD set has been on deep discount this week ($17 bucks or so compared to a list price of $40), we decided to buy it. The set has some entertaining-sounding featurettes, bloopers, and commentaries, which we enjoy.

Our first try was from Amazon.com. We have the free shipping plan, so that was easy — wouldn’t even have to leave the house! Unfortunately, someone at Amazon put the DVD set into a cardboard mailer with no additional padding, so by the time it arrived, the hinged insert in the case was broken apart, and one of the discs had come loose and was scratched.

Disappointing, but not tragic. Amazon paid to send it back and give a refund; they even have an automated process for such things. (Methinks they have a lot of shipping damage claims, especially recently.) We decided not to play mail roulette again and went to buy the set at Best Buy, who had it at the same price. (Amazon has since dropped their price another dollar, but I’m trying not to sweat the small stuff.)

All this is kind of pointless, except that I noted something interesting. This is what the set from Best Buy looked like inside:

The Amazon set, on the other hand, didn’t have a disc on the left side. Instead, there was one disc on the right and the hinged plastic insert that contained the other two discs back-to-back. Why would there be two separate versions? And why would Amazon have the one that seems more susceptible to shipping damage, given their business model?

3 Responses

Kelson writes:

November 20, 2009 at 4:00 am

Best Buy does exclusive editions with bonus discs from time to time. That’s probably what you’ve got here. I picked up the complete Farscape yesterday, and while the standard version has all four seasons of the TV show, the Best Buy version has the follow-up Peacekeeper Wars miniseries added to the “Archives” box.

The maddening thing is, they don’t actually make any note of it on the packaging — or, now that I look, on the website. They just slap a sticker on the outside of the shrink wrap.

Johanna writes:

November 20, 2009 at 7:41 am

I don’t think there’s anything special about this edition — it’s the same three discs as the Amazon set. And there wasn’t any sticker. Maybe it’s just as simple as coming from a different processing plant or something.

Kelson writes:

November 20, 2009 at 2:01 pm

Agh…sorry about not reading so closely and somehow missing the second paragraph. I guess I can blame the fact that I was reading it at 1 in the morning…