Gift guide: Blu-ray box sets

Looking for a Christmas gift for the movie or TV fan in your life? Here are some box sets that are worth checking out.

The transfer of Star Trek: The Next Generation on to Blu-ray — with the painstakingly re-created special effects — continues, with season 2 landing on 12 December thanks to Paramount. Just like with Season 1, the transfer looks amazing and the list of extras is impressive to behold. For AU$62.95, you get just under 1000 minutes of run time, so you're sure to make the Trekkie in your life a happier than a redshirt with polywater intoxication.

(Credit: Roadshow)

Also remastered for Blu-ray, although perhaps a gift for the elder generations in the family, is Life on Earth — David Attenborough's seminal 1979 documentary series. Life on Earth is an ambitious project, charting the path of life from the first single-celled organisms 3500 million years ago right up to the modern day. (Or at least as modern as 1979 got.) A ground-breaking production, the four-disc box set of all 13 episodes is truly remarkable — and only AU$59.95, thanks to Roadshow.

Prolific food blogger and occasional author George RR Martin must be rubbing his hands with glee over the popularity that the HBO adaptation of his grim fantasy series Game of Thrones. (Well, the book series is called A Song of Ice and Fire, but that makes it sound like a Sufjan Stevens album.) Season 1 of Game of Thrones is out in a Blu-ray special edition thanks to Warner Bros, and while it's violent and more than a trifle racy, it's well worth popping under the tree of anyone over 18. Which means anyone born more than two years before the first book was published. Which is our way of saying finish the damn books, George!

While Michael Bay keeps insisting on creating less and less coherent Transformers films, the new animated series Transformers: Prime goes from strength to strength — hell, it's even got an Emmy! The four-disc set of season 1 is a little light on special features, but the series is worth a look for both the younger set and the older family members who remember the original cartoon. Madman has it out for AU$69.95 on 5 December.

Finally — and while it's not strictly a box set — the I, Robot 3D special edition might be worth a look. It comes with a nigh-on full-sized replicate of Sonny's head to house the Blu-ray disc. If you know anyone who's addicted to weird collectors' editions, then this might fit the bill.