It goes without saying that "Upstairs/Downstairs" is a brilliant, entertaining series well worth the owning.  When Amazon offered the Collector's Edition Megaset on a great sale, I couldn't pass it up.  I didn't really remember the series well, but I knew I very much wanted to see it.  Like others, I read the discouraging reviews about the A&E Home Video transfer, but I thought, I'm not really that picky and it's probably not all that bad.  Well, I am not that picky; I don't care about things being in HD or looking like a "Harry Potter" movie.  That said, I want readers to know, I was very, very disappointed in the visual and sound quality of A&Es Megaset.  So much so, I had given thought to sending this set back and exchanging it for another in hopes that it might be better.  But first I did some research.  I googled "Why are the DVDs of A&E's Upstairs/Downstairs so bad?" and found an informative website which had a page on the US A&E version.  It made it clear that A&E Home Video had used old copies of the episodes for their remastering instead of getting new ones from the UK, undoubted a cost saving measure on their part.  As someone who has purchased many of these wonderful, older British series, I can tell you that the A&E version of the Joan Hickson "Miss Marple"s are not terribly good either, although they are certainly better than these sorry things. I have only taken a quick look at the two Thomas & Sarah DVDs and they do appear to be somewhat better than Upstairs/Downstairs.  Hopefully, someday another company will release a quality set of the original series.