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Anime Moves To DVD
Robotech_Master writes: "In the wake of other Japanese animation vendors moving select titles to DVD-only, AnimEigo recently announced it would be releasing all future titles (including the remastered subtitled Macross series due out by the end of the year) on DVD only, due to the fading VHS animé market no longer being able to support itself. This article explains why in economic terms, and the implications for the larger video market overall." This is a fantastic article. I still can't believe I'll have Macross before BTTF.
All I can say to this trend is right on! I just picked up Gundam Wind DVD Operation 1 last night at Hastings, and it greatly exceeded my expectations. I've also been impressed with the quality of a friend's Tenchi Muyo and Lain DVDs. This trend is IMHO a definite Good Thing. My favorite feature is the ability to hear English or Japanese depending on mood...
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
Anime on dvd will gradually for anime fans to adopt DVD as their medium of choice. but will anyone get rid of their vcrs? nope. 2 main reasons why:
1) existing collections.
2) Fansubs.
as an explanation of fansubs, it is when some anime is out in japan but not in the us, and a us distributor has not bought the rights. clubs and individuals all over the country put subtitiles on the copies of the originals using something called a genlock. then fans who want to see the anime, send a black tape to the fansubbers and get anime in exchange. this zero profit system is used to justify the "piracy." the unwritten law is that once a distributor buys the rights, all fansubbing of that title must stop immediately.
also the fans should get rid of their fansubs and buy the real mcCoy. one distributor had a trade in policy which was very cool.
some people like the idea of fansubs, others dont.
until dvd-rams get cheap enough, vhs is still a fansubbers best friend.
I got a message from AnimEigo a couple of days ago announcing this. I'd voted for AnimEigo to release Yuu Yuu Hakusho on VHS but not on DVD. Since they are shifting to all-DVD production, they sent emailsout to people like me who had voted just for videotape, to see if we wanted our votes shifted. I selected[1] "no", and sent an email to explain:
[1]Submitting my opinion was a pain. The email assumed I could "click on the coded URL", assuming everybody uses mail clients with autolinking. Grr! Copy and paste, copy and paste...
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Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
Not always. I still say "Serial Experiments Lain" is one of the finest DVD encodings, period. It all depends on how much effort a company is willing to put into it, and LD is more fool-proof in not having compression as an option, but I don't think it's worth the price in terms of the decay of the media. "Laser rot" is significantly less of a problem in the smaller, less flexible DVDs. The larger size of LDs just makes storage of them impractical for many people compared to DVDs.
I'll take the first LD of Evangelion over the first DVD of it any day, though. Gah. Whatta crappy, hacked-up transfer. DVD can be done right. It's just a matter of whether a company will do it or not.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Case in point. The one one the right is James, a male character. More info here. And here.
This was from episode #18 of the original Japanese series. Oddly enough, this episode never appears in the English dub broadcast in the USA...
Lots of DVDs are duel layer. I can tell because my player has a super breif, but supper irratating pause when refocusing. Movies I was buying last summer, and before were duel layer.
The Matrix has some other problem. Like use of alternate angle, or a diffrent path through the movie or something. I'm not quite sure, beause my player didn't have problems with it. I think it has problems with the "white rabbit tour" which is the normal movie, but some scenes show a white rabbit, and if you hit enter then you get a "making of" for that scene. I'm not quite sure what DVD features are used to do that.
I havn't bought VHS movies for a long time (well, ever, but my wife use to buy them a lot). I seem to remember them costing more then I pay for DVDs after a quick trip through a price search engine. Are video tapes really cheaper still?
I have a website I'm working on that has reviews of Anime DVDs. People might find it interesting. It's at:
http://www.xalien.com/anime/
Hope you like it.
A list of DVD players that are multi-region hackable (with hacks), for those of us that can't wait for country specific releases :-)
I want Starblazers on DVD dadgummit! The real problem is I would love to have the Japanese versions of vintage anime on DVD (Starblazers/Space Cruiser Yamato or G-Force/Gatchaman) but I'm not sure if the studios or distributors are willing to go to the trouble. Please release my american favorites in their unbastardized original forms! I beg of you!
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
I pre-ordered Urusei Yatsura on DVD over a year ago from Animeigo. 40 episodes of the TV series on DVD, woo-hoo!
On topic, when Animeigo first started this project, they were talking about squeezing a bunch on each disk and selling the series for what would calculate out to $50 or so each DVD. A bunch of people freaked out, saying that they had been trained to expect each DVD to cost $20, no matter if it was a half hour documentary or 4 hours of Anime.
This brings up an interesting point: People have been trained to pay for media, not content. Even though they are getting what they would pay $200 for on VHS, they complain because they equate DVD Disc with a set price.
This is the same thing that Napster is showing in our culture. People don't have a problem with sharing MP3s, but physical CDs are another matter. We still (for the most part) purchase bunches of CDs (at the price we've been trained to expect) when we like the music, even though we might have already downloaded the specific song off Napster or Gnutella.
EX Magazine did an article on VHS vs. LD vs. DVD a while back, so I'd mind as well post a link to it here:
DVD's and Their Place in the Anime Video Hierarchy
If you don't count the ease to distribute fansubs on VHS, DVD is clearly the better medium to have anime on. Not only do you get the better sound and video quality of the DVD, you also get the ability to turn the subtitles on and off at will, and even (groans) fall back on the English re-dub incase there is someone in the room who simply can't read fast. Although I don't agree with stamping out the VHS market so rapidly, I think the shift to DVD is a good thing.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
In addition to the points raised in the article, there's another thing to consider: It's expensive to produce VHS releases - More expensive than producing DVD (though cheaper than LD.) I realize that Audio CDs cost more than tapes, but never mind that.
DVDs seem to be about the same price as VHS, or a touch more, and they cost less to make per unit; The packaging is pretty cheap, especially in lots of a zillion, and it's all lighter and takes up less space, plus you can fit more on a DVD (including promotional material for your other productions) and more in the keepcase (including promotional... oh, you get the idea.)
DVD is also convenient because you don't have to go back and forth between analog and digital. You do a transfer from the final editing copy of the film (anamorphic, we hope) along with appropriate audio. The audio can then be fucked around with to do Dolby 5.1 or what have you, but usually you get standard Dolby encoded in the normal two uncompressed PCM audio tracks on anime. It's kind of amusing to watch my Sony receiver light up blue when the Dolby Demo Clip pops on, or the menu loads, and that stuff is in 5.1, and then the blue light goes off and the display reads PCM 44.1KHz. :)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Anime *has* been moving to DVD. Actually, it's been moving to DVD much quicker than live action has. Animation may just be easier to print to the format or something. In any case, AnimeOnDVD.Com has something like a couple hundred DVDs reviewed, and more are coming every week.
My DVD collection is almost exclusively anime DVDs. I really should get some live action stuff...
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
Okay, so now we can see all the lewd subliminal frames as we flip through the DVD. Scary to think of all the hidden things we might find in Dragon Ball Z. I wonder if the cop-offs like Pokemon do the same thing? ;)
CAD
Those breasts were on a guy!
On Pokemon, they aren't afraid to draw stacked chicks in hot outfits to appeal to young adolescent male fantasies, but I think they rightly draw the line at unrealistically convincing crossdressers wearing very skimpy bikinis grabbing their own fake tits to jiggle them at little girls.
>I pray that they don't force us to watch dubed material.
>But, with region codes, and whatnot. This may be the way they go.
I don't want to sound insulting but from this comment I have to assume that you have not watched any anime on DVD. =)
I think that the publishers have understood for quite a while that many of us prefer our anime subbed. They understand it very well actually, and know that we will even pay more for subbed than dubbed which is why you often see tapes with prices like $20 for dub and $25 for sub.
Someone else noted in another post that DVD is perfect for multi-language videos so any publisher would have to insane to NOT put both English and Japanese audio on there. Less production costs (1 DVD as opposed to 2 seperate VHSs) means higher profits and dub+sub both on one disk means more happy customers.
As an added benefit to the sub people we can then show dub people the differnce between sub and dub too. =P
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Ixnorp
Type. Submit. Insert foot in mouth.
As for being released solely on DVD I am all for it! There are many reasons to go this route, VHS wears out, DVD's don't (within reason of course). The cool additional features, and the fact that the DVD medium is gaining popularity at a very high rate!
regards.
"If voting could really change things, it would be illegal. " - Revolution Books, NY
Forget DVD and the pigs (read, MPAA) who support it - get your anime on VCD here and here!
Actually, if you like regular movies, I have had good luck with this place...
Why have we forgotten about VCD's (which can be easily made on today's hardware for little money as well)?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Well, the box set AnimEigo is doing won't be shipped to Ireland. However, when they release the DVDs individually later on, the firms like Express.com and Amazon and so on will get them, and I believe some of them will ship overseas. Sooner or later, you'll be able to get them...
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Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Actually, BGC 2040 vol. 1 on DVD has been confirmed for a 9/12/00 release date from A.D. Visions.
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Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
CSS is optional, choice of the manufacturer
Region coding is also left at the discretion of the manufacturer of the media
Macrovision is optional AND requires per-copy license fees
Therefore, rather than boycotting, write to AnimEIGO demanding no region code, CSS, no MV.
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Oh welps :\
Who's the black private dick, who's a sex machine for all the chicks?
It would make a lot of sense to do it during 2000, considering this year is the 15th anniversary of "Back to the Future - Part I".
Thank the producers of the DVD versions, also. They're going to be stuffed with a lot of special features. (I know what I want for christmas!)
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
http://www.animeondvd.com/
Nothing wrong with the occasional Anime post on slashdot, but I agree that it should be its category.
More modern MPEG encoders cope very well with animated scenes. Early attempts were, admittedly, quite awful. You won't want to go back to LD once you've seen a well-encoded DVD.
There is a snandard for DVD. Just some cheap DVD players that came out around last Christmas didn't bother to support dual-layer DVD's. The Matrix is dual-layer, so any player that can't support it will act weird. If I remember right, the GE and RCA under $120 or so players were the ones with this problem. The local Best Buy saw almost a 100% return on these.
I'm glad more companies are supporting Anime on DVD. So far, my collection only includes what is out on DVD. I refuse to pay $25 for 2 episodes subbed, and $30 for 2 dubbed of Neon Genesis VHS when I can buy 4 episodes subbed, and dubbed in English, French, and Spanish for $15 on DVD.
Now all we need is the average street price of all DVD's to come down to compete with VHS movies. I've been supporting DVD since late 1998, and so far, only good things have happened. (Special editions of movies, lower prices, better quality, no more flipper movies, etc...)
I guess this means I need to go out, and buy a DVD drive for my Macintosh so I can get new anime.
Personally, I'd suggest getting a DVD drive for your entertainment center, rather than your computer. Both my computer and TV have their sound pumped thru the Dolby reciever. My couch, on the other hand, sits in front of the television. Go ahead and get a DVD-ROM drive, then try cuddling up with your girlfriend in an office chair during the scary parts of Scream 3. It just doesn't have the same romantic quality. Trust me, your SO will thank you.
"Of course, that's just my opinion; I could be wrong." - Dennis Miller
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I just wish the standards for DVD had been settled first. Whatchoo talkin' about, Willis? The DVD-Video standard has been agreed on for years. The whole problem with the Matrix DVD is that it pushes the standard to the edge, and many players didn't implement all the features. It's kind of like bemoaning that web standards haven't been settled. The standards have been settled, it's just up to the vendors to stick up with them. By the way, don't get hopeful about the Matrix on a Mac. It's already established that Apple's DVD software won't handle it. I'm not very happy with Apple's DVD player as it has terrible problems with menus and selection of items is hideous sometimes. I've also seen it screw up where the mouse is supposed to be to select the buttons. (See the Trigun DVDs' picture galleries for an example.) The other concern I have, has to do with the japanese language. Don't worry. DVDs by actual anime houses (read not by Disney) actually have Japanese audio tracks. Some don't have English audio, but most do. Some also have Spanish, French, and other audio. It's funny to watch movies dubbed in Spanish with Spanish subtitles. Companies seem less inclined to lie with their subtitles (aka dubtitling) to match the dub when in Spanish.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Besides the obvious size, weight, and fragility issues, LD did have a few other problems.
First of all, it only stores composite video. So you automatically have half the potential resolution of DVD.
And then there were all the manufacturing problems. Laser rot was probably overrated (it could have been due more to old players than old discs), but there were lots of bad pressings done at the infamous Sony plant. In fact, ADV's first Evangelion disc was the only disc I ever had to take back and exchange because of speckling!
Chroma noise was a problem too. I've seen all too many LDs with speckly oversaturated reds and browns due to chroma noise.
And then there was the crosstalk problem. Most LD mastering had gone to a form of CLV which reduced crosstalk, but not 3M. And guess which pressing plant Animeigo chose? So on an out-of-alignment player, you get to see ghost sync bars dancing across the screen.
A good mastering of a DVD will outshine a good mastering of an LD any day. I just wish they had gone with more than three colors for the subtitling spec.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
And now here's another: the MPAA/deCSS on one side, and promoting DVDs on the other. I agree that DVD is a superior format espcially for anime as others have suggested here, and if the MPAA wasn't putting the smack down on deCSS, I'd have my DVD player already. But yet when a deCSS story comes along, people shout "boycott the MPAA!". You can't have it both ways, people.
Sure, that's the general impression that I get from these threads and reflects no way on a single user (unless I really wanted to find one specific double-talker). However, the fact that such double standards exists might reflect on the bias that /. editors give to their stories (and then again, there are multiple editors for /., so another problem there).
I think the solution here is for the editors to refrain for adding additoinal comments on the story message as to introduce such biases. Put a DeCSS case story and a new DVD release story as the plain submissions from readership without comment from the editors, and /. would not appear to have said double standard.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
...but DVD sound *can be* as good as LD. It's just that most of the time the stereo audio is compressed with Dolby Digital, to give more room for better video encoding. This is not always true, but ironically it's usually the cheaper mastering places that do PCM audio. (The exception is music DVDs.) The Iria DVD uses PCM, because it was such an early release.
DTS does seem to sound better, but 192k DD stereo is still a lot better than 128k MP3.
However, DVD excels in one way which is very important to anime fans. With LD, you can only add a single mono analog track to a disc with Dolby Digital 5.1. With DVD, not only can the second track be in stereo, but you can have multiple 5.1 audio tracks! So if the original Japanese was in 5.1, the domestic LD would have it in mere mono, and the dub in 5.1. Luckily I managed to get import copies of the Tenchi Muyo in Love movie LD (both CAV and CLV) cheap.
Also, LD required a special decoder to get a usable Dolby Digital signal. This used to be built into amplifiers (which added $100-200 to their cost), but it was never built into an LD player.
But there is one way in which DVD sound can be superior to its LD counterpart. DTS had to encode 14 bits per word (leaving off the two MSBs) to avoid blowing out speakers if you accidently played it as PCM. DTS on DVD can use the full 16 bits per PCM word.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Anime on DVD is one of the best things since sliced bread. DVD is just suited for import titles of all kinds, you can have optional subtitles and different language dubs all on the same disc which means no more dubbed to watch subbed to collect videos anymore. DVDs also don't degrade after every time you watch it which means I don't need to buy new copies of my VHS collection every two years (I do alot of anime watchin'). Everything is now great, just kidding. Anime on DVD is fucking expensive. Of course DVD in general is expensive but Anime is expensive without a bunch of extra goodies on a disc. I was disappointed with the Ghost in the Shell disc, it had some production art and some interviews but I would have expected a bit better interaction with the disc a la Matrix or Austin Powers. Maybe with companies migrating entirely to DVD the sales of the DVDs won't need to carry the overhead from the VHS tapes and prices will drop a little. I want my Anime.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
--Bud
Is Otaku no Video with fully removable subtitles! Because of all the charts and stuff, they had to put black-block backgrounded subtitles over the video in a lot of places.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
This is truly a wonderful thing, When I bought lodoss wars on dvd for instance, it was 43 dollars (US), on vhs, that set is about 170. Also, we wont be seeing the remastering debacles that have been occuring with the likes of evangelion, i remember being told it would be out last october, but it has been delayed due to "remastering probs" from vhs. toodles.
"Arrogance and Stupidity all in the same package. How efficient of you." - Londo Mollari, Babylon 5.
I wouldn't call myself an otaku, but I'm quite the fan; I've about 80 tapes (fifteen of them Urusei Yatsura). So when I saw that Animeigo were making the movies available in a DVD box set, my first reaction was 'woohoo!'.
Sadly, they won't ship to Ireland. In fact, they state that they won't ship to another address if they think it's going to Ireland (okay, they said outside the US, but I only read Ireland).
This is a pain in the nuts, if you'll pardon the technical term. Especially so since I was able to order the first movie direct from Japan (only one, just in case it didn't have subtitles. Guess what? It didn't. At least Bubblegum Crisis did).
This isn't an anti-animeigo rant; they're the company I have the most time for. Their liner notes are excellent, and they've a much higher hit rate than (say) Manga, who'll release any old crap. Rather it's an anti-region-licencing thing; something I'm sure I don't have to elucidate on here.
On a related topic, the reason I'm able to write this in the first place is that I've got a multi-region DVD player. If I didn't, I'd be stuck with disks from the UK and Japan. There are many, many films that just aren't available in Region 2 (or on PAL VHS, for that matter), and I don't appreciate being told I'm not allowed watch them. Again, I'm probably preaching to the converted here but I needed to get it off my chest.
PS: When will we see slashbid so I can sell a Japanese Language copy of Urusei Yatsura movie #1?
I guess this means I need to go out, and buy a DVD drive for my Macintosh so I can get new anime. Hmm, oh well it could be worse.
I just wish the standards for DVD had been settled first. With VHS, I can stick it in any compatable player, and go. Not the same with DVD. I bought 'The Matrix' and tried to play it in my parents DVD player. No dice, it would just load for about 30 min, then eject the disc. Maby I'll get to watch it after I order my new drive? Who knows.
The other concern I have, has to do with the japanese language. I pray that they don't force us to watch dubed material. But, with region codes, and whatnot. This may be the way they go. What a sad state this world is in when a man can't watch a anime in it's origional japanese language.
http://www.xpurple.com
For anime, Laser Disc is the best for animation quality. With DVD, the compression/decompression introduces quite a bit of line noise. On small screens this isn't too much of problem, but I normally watch anime with a projector and have either a 110 inch viewing area or a 25 foot viewing area and the line noise in DVDs is very noticable.
While the sound quality is better and the language/subtile options are more robust on DVDs, I still prefer LDs.