Life in a Cheap Mass Production World...

As anyone who thinks about it for more than ten seconds knows, or should know, DVD reviews should not and cannot be simply about the the TV show or film transferred onto DVD. This is a mistake so many "reviewers", amateur and "professional: make. Look through the DVD review sections of many publications online and off and you will find "reviews" of DVD's that focus solely on the content. A DVD, however, is not simply the film or a television show transferred into digital form. It is also a product in which a film or television show is transferred onto a plastic disc and packaged in a keepcase holder.

One of the problems associated with MHz's Beck DVD releases--I recently purchased Beck episodes one through three and ten through twelve--is its packaging. Beck, the 1997 to 2010 Swedish television programme based on Maj Sjöwall’s and Per Wahlöö’s popular Martin Beck book series, has been released in installments by MHz networks, a PBS affiliate in DC and northern Virginia, a company that offers this series along with other television shows from Scandinavia, Italy, and France for sale (a good thing in an American incredibly parochial when it comes to television viewing) via its MHz DVD division. Unfortunately MHz DVD, presumably because it wants to reduce costs, has stacked three DVD's on top of one another, something that puts MHz in the same league as cheapo companies like Mill Creek, Echo Bridge, and the el cheapo division of WB, in their DVD keepcases increasing, in the process, the likelihood of damage to these DVD's. Since MHz prefers cheap packaging to quality packaging I will not be purchasing further releases of Beck from this company. I have an all region DVD player and so I have more "choices" than the average American DVD viewer as a result and I will, in the future, be buying my Beck from across the pond.

Up yours MHz. You just lost a customer.