Review of 2ND CSI DVD in the UK
Thanks to Simon for this review of the 2nd UK DVD release of CSI

Well at the start of October the second UK DVD release of CSI occurred and like a dutiful fan I queued up in my local Virgin Megastore and purchased the second half of season one on DVD. The packing is much the same, a three disc digipak with a pocket for the glossy booklet, surrounded by a Crime Scene Do Not Cross cardboard retainer. The retainer is more orange this time, but perhaps that is just a printing change. The booklets is as useless as ever, just brief outlines to the episodes and some glossy pictures. Sadly no cool fingerprint retaining thermal cover this time, Foo! Also, no little slip of paper detailing when the first disc set of season two is to be released. Start of a worrying trend? Maybe, I also collect The West Wing on DVD and only Series one of that has been released to date, with Season Three on satellite tv in the UK and Season four running in the US, the DVD releases are a little behind. So to the discs - and a major gripe here. The discs are identical to those in the first box set, they are also numbered CSI 1, 2 & 3. Which means that if you have a major watching session and are not that careful about returning the discs to their appropriate boxes, it'll be easy to get them muddled up. Grr... fix this Momentum. Call them discs 4,5 & 6 instead... Okay, the menus are exactly the same as before (no bad thing) and the discs offer production notes and extended interviews as extras this time around. The production notes focus on Zuiker and how he got into the writing business (interesting for me as I write screenplays in my spare time) and how CSI came to be. Not really Production Notes, as they don't cover anything about the production of CSI, but still interesting for a one off read. I haven't bothered with the interviews yet (my girlfriend, Vicky complained that every evening of our week off involved watching at least 1 episode), but they are probably along the lines of the interviews on the first disc - short, not particularly informative, and full of how good CSI is and the people they work with. I'll let you know when I've watched them... Episodes are the second half of Season 1: Boom, To halve and to hold, Table stakes, Too tough to die, Face Lift $35k OBO, Gentle Gentle, Sounds of Silence, Justice is served, Evaluation Day and Strip Strangler. All are presented with nice sharp images and good quality Dolby 2.0 sound. Checked out the subtitles this time and they actually run extremely close to what the character is saying, so our hearing impared fans get the same dialogue as we do. So again, a fine collection of episodes for £30, and it is available for Region 2 only from Amazon.co.uk. I'm sure they'll deliver. If any more appear I'll be sure to let you know. We've had chunks of Season 2 of CSI shown here on Channel Five (or FIVE as it is now known), but I managed to miss most of them (Saturday night at 10 pm - stuff that, I'm in the pub with a pint!).

Posted: Dec 17, 2002
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