By the way, can you get used DVDs where you are? I buy used DVD sets from Amazon regularly and can usually get them used for 1/3 the list price of the new ones.
I actually have a wishlist going on their site, and keep track of the price fluctuations. When something I want drops to a level I'm happy with, then I get it. Until then, I just keep track of how the prices are going. Newer stuff is slower to drop in value, but the DVDs for "Angel" have been around long enough for the price to be reasonable now.
http://www.amazon.com/Angel-Season-One- ... 408&sr=1-1 This is unusual: Amazon is selling season one for $30.99, some other sellers are it new for $9.74 and used is $7.49.
Anyway, used has been working great for us. We haven't hit an unreadable disk yet, and the lower costs mean that if we want to sell them some day, we don't take too much depreciation.
The only issue so far with used has been with one season of "The Dead Zone" where the booklet was missing, and the episodes aren't marked on the box or the disks- so when we wanted to go back and show our kids one particular episode, we didn't know what disk to look on and had to actually load the disk to get to the DVD menu and check them one by one until we got to the one we were looking for. Otherwise, there's no difference. Well, except for the packaging not matching, if one cares about such things.