A&E didn't "edit" the shows they presented. They BUTCHERED them.

However, it was the only cable network offering the series on TV at the time, so I learned to live with it. All it did was to motivate me to find and view the uncut versions on VHS tape when (and if) they were ever to become available, which materialized toward the mid-90's.

Interestingly enough, Columbia House was the first commercial outlet that I knew of to offer Columbo at $24.95 plus $4.00 S/H per episode, and I was glad to pay it. In fact, the first one I bought was "Etude In Black" and I couldn't believe how much of it A&E had sacrificed in favor of advertisers.

I can tell you one thing, those master prints were as amazing as the sound quality.

Concerning "Etude in Black", I know one fairly extensive, but not necessarily important, scene I first discovered when I viewed the DVD version was where Janice and her mother meet the two men at the restaurant. I thought that scene conveyed, among other things, a strong sense of how troubled Janice had become following the murder, having a lingering suspicion about her husband. I think it's a pretty good scene, and it's a shame it had been missing for so long on television. One scene that I wanted to mention, that was cut from "Murder by the Book", was the well-framed (though admittedly morbid) shot of Ken gesturing toward Jim's body with drinking glass in hand, as if to "toast" the man he had just murdered. It's one of the few gruesome scenes in the series, so I wonder if that was part of the reason it was cut (besides the fact that it has absolutely no story significance, other than cementing the fact that Ken is a really creepy guy).