I recently saw the 2014 World Series film and enjoyed it enough to the point that I wanted to revisit some of the San Francisco Giants playoff run. Thankfully, A&E, Lionsgate and Major League Baseball video helped sate the appetite of this neutral of the Giants and Kansas City Royals and pored over the World Series Collector's Set diligently.

Like other multidisc sets that have been devoted to the Fall Classic, each game has its own disc which includes selection of inning if you wish and shows off all the drama associated with the Series. An eighth disc, highlighting the Giants' dramatic win over the St. Louis Cardinals with a walkoff home run by Travis Ishikawa that helped put the Giants into their third World Series appearance in five years.

Game 1 went as expected with an easy Giants win, but then the Royals won Games 2 and 3, prompting many to think that the Royals ‘didn't know it was a damn show, (they) thought it was a damn fight,' winning the next 2 before the Giants corrected course with an 11-4 win in Game 4. Game 5 saw them win behind Bumgarner's arm, his second shutout in the postseason and the third where he had given up a run or less. But the Royals stomped the Giants in Game 6 10-0 to set up Game 7, which lived up to the hype. The Giants scored a go-ahead run in the fourth inning and in the fifth, Bumgarner came on to pitch, barely three days after his start in Game 5. He closed the book on the Royals in the series and cinched his World Series MVP to boot, with two wins and a save in three games, allowing one run and striking out 17 in the process.

The set helps show off the games in their full unadulterated form, with some small notes that help add context. The problem which exists with sets like this and the decision to market them as they do remains, and at this point there would appear to be little changing of minds with A&E and Lionsgate. You can market the film and people will buy the smaller revenue, but if you add eight blu-ray discs to it then there is a larger retail point that may shoo people off. But I think the added context if the film helps show off why the games would be as good as they are and in the case of the film, helps accentuate the games all the more so.

I hope that one of these days, A&E does decide to pull the trigger and make a season retrospective for a World Series winning team as complete and exhaustive as possible. Until that point, you are left with watching the official film and yearning to see the games again, or seeing the games and yearning for something more. It's a weird, perhaps intentional paradox, but one I hope is rectified for the fans one of these days.

Each of the games is broadcast in 720p and use the AVC encode for all of the 1.78:1 widescreen fun associated with them. The games look as crisp as can be, with darkness looking sharp and colors reproduced accurately, and network graphics as vivid as can be. The Fox broadcast graphics are shown during viewing, though the Major League Baseball watermark which appeared on similar sets in the past is not present (that I could readily spot). It looks as good as you could expect.

Several two-channel DTS-HD Master Audio tracks grace each game. You have the Fox broadcast with Messrs Buck, Morgan et al, but you also have the Spanish audio as well as the radio tracks from the Giants and Royals' broadcast teams. As a fan of Jon Miller's from his days in Baltimore I found no issue with this. Everything sounds clear and includes no low-end fidelity, the sporting event sounds as good as one would presume it would.

There is a booklet that show off the stats and trivia for each game like the old slim DVD cases used to, and a couple of the games include the postgame analysis, but nothing of any note past that.

The Collector's Edition of the 2014 World Series is not really that, other than the games, which were broadcast in high-definition, appear on high-definition discs. There is little incentive to buy this set unless you have a DVR. But if you don't, or know a San Francisco Giants fan who wants to enjoy all the more of the dynasty going on in the Bay, this set and the official film (the latter of which can be purchased separately) is the way to go.