Just got Star Wars on Blu-ray when it came out Friday, and couldn't wait to open it.

Then I opened it.

NOT again.

Yes, again. The packaging for this super-duper much-hyped better-than-ever souped-up high-def edition is indeed worse for disc-keeping than previous editions.

Same as The Sopranos. Same as The Shield. Same as Battlestar Galactica, M*A*S*H, The West Wing, Sex and the City, Futurama, I Love Lucy, The Wild Wild West, Little House on the Prairie, Sanford & Son and any number of other TV series whose heralded complete-series "gift sets" turned out to be more about a flashy box than protecting the content inside it.

What's the point of a DVD/Blu-ray gift if you can't play it?

I thought digital media containers were supposed to be about protecting their precious contents. Why else the CD jewel box, the DVD keep case, or plastic Blu-ray box in its namesake color? And most DVD/Blu-ray first editions -- TV season sets, feature film releases -- do hit store shelves that way. Their discs are carefully nestled into the case back, or into thick hard plastic platters or "pages," or onto those round flippers that hold a disc on either side in compact cases. The disc is safe. Preserved. Even its holder is resistant to damage and decay.

Then you eagerly open the super-special complete/anniversary/special edition that costs as much as 400 smackers -- and suddenly the distributors think it's cool to jam the disc inside two glued halves of a cardboard "page" (The Shield, Sex and the City). Or shove it inside tight cardboard cutaway sleeves (Star Wars, M*A*S*H).

Or slide it into snap-open binder pages from which it falls to rattle around the metal rings (Little House on the Prairie, Fraggle Rock). Or put them inside flimsy card stock "accordion" slots (I Love Lucy, Battlestar Galactica).

Sometimes, they get fancy and gingerly place them into wide plastic slots, which is fine until you do something insane like, I dunno, actually move the package at all (Futurama's otherwise cool Bender head). And then there's the astonishing space-and-money-saving tactic of stacking 'em naked on a plastic spindle of approximately the same strength as a Reese's peanut butter cup wrap (Sanford & Son, Good Times).

You couldn't scratch or otherwise damage DVDs more easily if you tried. Yeah, moving them in and out of skintight cardboard anytime you want to watch, or having them scrape against each other -- those are always smart ideas.

This makes me even more nuts because it doesn't have to be this way. Maybe it's a teensy bit cheaper to cram them inside paper or cardboard -- but then the disc distributors throw in "collectible" goodies like fancy booklets, action figures, theme-shaped boxes, cloth covers, etc. So it seems like it's gotta be a financial wash. (Lucy's heart-shaped box did the discs no favors.)

And it can't be about saving space when it comes to extended series. Because lots of long-run shows have made themselves more compact by putting a season's multiple discs into single-width cases, where they're still well-protected by using those flipper rounds. The complete series sets of both 24 and Monk vastly improved on their season packaging by switching from the original, bulky fold-out sets on platters. And the complete Seinfeld set placed its discs in two small and easy-to-handle square volumes, by making its plastic platters CD-size, which is all they need to be.

Smarter distribs have left well enough alone and just packed the single season sets in their separate boxes into an overall container. Home Improvement was collated into a red cardboard "toolbox," The Golden Girlsinto Sophia's cardboard "purse," and Homicide: Life on the Street into a filing drawer that pulls out of a hard outer box.

I have to believe what most fans want from a complete-series DVD package is protection and accessibility -- not ultra-cool collectibility or "shelf presence." Sure, those buyers who merit the full word "fanatic" may want fancy-schmancy whoop-de-do for the complete set, if they've already got the single season sets to actually, you know, watch.

Most of us, however, don't have the zeal or the moolah to buy things twice. And among those who do double-dip, plenty of buyers sell the original season sets on eBay so they can afford the all-in-one. That means, heaven forbid, they actually need to handle the package (no flimsy paper!), remove the discs (here come scratches), and have them well enough maintained to be playable (my Shield complete box had so much glue glommed on the discs from the "page" packaging that I spent at least an hour cleaning them before inserting into my DVD drive).

It would also be nice if these expensive complete sets fit on the shelves of a TV DVD library, alongside other "regular" sets, instead of being twice as high, twice as wide, or otherwise weird-shaped or unwieldy. The complete series of Monk actually got this concept exactly right -- it shipped as a double-wide package, but one designed to optionally fold back onto itself, to shelve conveniently with other discs, while all the season-set spines remain visible for easy selection.

So it's not like it can't be done. It's that sometimes the distributors' packaging artisans get a mite too "creative" for anybody's good. They think more about the "wow" factor of seeing an "impressive" box on a store shelf or some ginormous package being unwrapped at holiday time, and less about the next 10 years of using and enjoying the gift, rather than merely appreciating it.

Call me crazy. I actually like to watch my DVDs.

And I hate feeling likely to damage them in order to to do it.