Howard the Duck (Special Edition) [New DVD] and similar items

I saw this as a young girl and thought it was great then. I hadn't heard of Its a Wonderful Life back then. Of course, it can't compare to the original, but still worthwhile.

Of course, The Rockford Files is great TV. To my knowledge, the DVD set comes in two versions -- a cheap version and this one, which is more expensive. The cheaper one supposedly contains edited episodes, while this version contains the ORIGINAL episodes in their entirety. However, the materials of this product are subpar. I've ordered two of these sets, brand new, and both of them have contained scratched discs. Further, the discs themselves have encoding issues, even when they match the correct playback region. At times, it will take a DVD player up to 10 minutes to read a clean disc and play it correctly; I've tried multiple DVD players, so I know it's not the player. Universal is the studio that produced this set, and while they provide the original unedited content, they clearly skimped on the manufacturing. Unfortunately, this is or only option for viewing this TV classic.