Region 4 Winners and Losers

    Region 1 has just received Season 5, and is about to get Season 6 — Season 7 is not yet announced (but it's expected soon). Region 2 got this season about a month earlier than we did. To my surprise, the UK Region 2 discs are different from ours: they get a choice of languages that includes nothing but English. The Region 4 has more options. However, apart from that, the transfers seem identical — it seems likely that they are using the same video transfer.

    I've changed my mind about the packaging. I used to like the R2 packaging (which packs all 6 DVDs in an album, with the discs in cardboard sleeves), but I've found that the discs are more easily damaged in sliding them in and out. The R4 packaging is much bulkier, but it is both more robust, and offers better protection for the discs. The R1 packaging (a classic digipack design, with plastic panels on cardboard) protects the discs better than the R2, but it's not all that robust.

    We expect to see a much bigger difference in R1 (when it arrives...). The R1 discs are likely to be full-screen (1.33:1) rather than wide-screen. If you want to get Buffy in full-screen, then you'll have to wait for the Region 1 (my guess is that it will arrive later this year). Of course, if you are an affluent addict, you may find it necessary to get both the R1 and the R4 (and possibly even the R2 as well).