A complete DVD is 40 episodes and it would take all day to watch. I know because I actually did this during Labor Day weekend.
Since August, I've been watching 8 episodes a day trying to go through at least one set a week.
A set a week? Yikes!
Collection 2 had just come out when I started buying the DVDs. (I had never seen a single episode, by the way)
Of course I started with Collection 1, but I was burning through episodes so fast that when I made it to the end of Collection 2, I had to wait several weeks for Collection 3 to come out. I was completely hooked by that point, so it was quite painful to have to wait so long for more episodes.
That's when I decided I had better pace myself so that I didn't "run out" before the next set was released. Each set contains 2 months worth of the original broadcast schedule, so I figured I'd better keep it down to 5 episodes a week so that I could keep pace with the releases and never have to go without.
I soon realized that If I watched my episode early in the evening, I jonesed for more for the rest of the night, so I made my DS viewing the last thing I did before going to sleep. It wasn't long before my head was trained to start getting sleepy when I put on DS.
I was working a Monday through Friday job at the time, so I eventually got on a schedule of watching an episode each night from Sunday through Thursday, that way I was sure to be well rested for my Monday through Friday job. It was a great way to enjoy the show because I was basically watching it the way it was aired; I'd see the Friday cliff-hanger on Thursday night and have to wait until Sunday night to find out what happened next.
My current job keeps me on the road for long periods of time, so now I watch an episode a night, every night. I miss the rythym of 5 episodes a week, but fortunately, due to various circumstances, I've fallen far enough behind the release schedule that there's little chance now that I'll run out.
If I continue watching at this pace, it should take me approximately 5 years to get through the entire run of the show - I should be far enough removed from the episodes I've already seen that, by the time I get back to the beginning, they'll be relatively "fresh" for me -