There are some nicks, spots and dust. Many (all?) scene transitions have splice marks -- they "flash" for a split second. Single-stepping shows that the the top or bottom of the frame is affected. I have not watched the R2 in full, yet I have already encountered these problems.
Here is an example. Look at the top of the frame. This is the first frame after a scene transition. The next frame is fine.
R2 DVD #3 (ep 10; 01:12:01 from start)
I believe this is not visible on TVs, due to the overscan. (All TVs crop the sides; some are worse than the others.) This does not happen on the R1 because it is slightly zoomed in, possibly to avoid this problem.
Update (16th Apr 2003): on watching episode 3 to capture the screenshots, I realised the marks can be seen on the R1 as well! They show up as flashing on normal viewing. I suspect only the early episodes are affected.