I have bought atleast 3 complete seasons in the last few months and it seems to me that the dvd companies are switching to keepcases now Touched By An Angel season 4, The Facts of Life, Full House, Fresh Prince of Bel Air. They are using these overlapping disc carriers now which is okay but why are they doing it?

i think they are just trying to go as cheap as possible with most releases.

It's definitely more "cost effective"(a term the studios use)to package the DVDs this way. Seems that these Viva snapcases are the latest standard. I got the Everwood S3 DVD and it was packaged this way as well,although with the cardboard slipcover.
Here's a comparison in size of each of the 3 DVD releases of Everwood:
http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm285/chuck89_photos/Random photos/DSCF0068.jpg

Good.

They take up much less space, they're good and sturdy, and that's all I require out of DVD packaging.