I have never understood the hate the album cover gets...I think it looks great. It is a big change from a lot of their covers (WDaDU, Awake, Scenes, ToT, SC, and BCSL all had dark covers) and I like the fact that it is bright and almost happy looking to me.
Anyway, the box set looks really tempting and I would like to be able to have all the extras that are included in it, but I just can't spend that much money now. I'll probably end up buying either just the regular edition or the special edition w/ the dvd...I hope they took out all the cheesy "On the next installment of the spirit carries on..." outros that are on the youtube vids.