Not too terribly bad. If you're a real quality critic, it might bug you a bit, but it is usually ok for those who don't mind a few jpeg artifacts here and there.Of course with all those extra episodes crammed on it'll take away the show's visual quality. Unless they use those double-sided DVDs.
the good thing about bootlegs
- TheKorovaMilkbar
- Joined: Sun Jun 13, 2004 2:40 pm
- Location: Dallas, TX.....You don't really care, do you?
sorry for double posting, but anyway

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- madbunny
- Joined: Tue Jun 17, 2003 3:12 pm
Looks like we have a split topic here.
Bootlegs: Everybody in the official chain of profit loses.
Bootlegs: The subtitles are generally horrific beyond comprehension.
" " : The video quality is noticeably aweful in many cases.
" " : Earthquake warnings, weird ass chapter cuts, if any.
" " : the packaging is nice, I wish that american companies would start doing the same thing, reducing waste, packaging space and increasing shelf appeal.
" " : No extras, ever.
Official: Everybody in the official chain makes some sort of profit theoretically, thus ensuring that the business keeps wanting to make more money.
Official: The subtitles by and large, unless it's Funimation make sense.
Official: The video quality is as close to as good as you can get within reason.
Official: Instead of earthquake warnings, you get special features like alternate audio tracks, and sometimes multiple subtitle tracks, such as in the case of Excel Saga.
Official: Standard cheap ass packaging actually looks and handles worse than the third world rip offs.
Personally, I'd like to know where you can get those gatefold cases. Then I could just make my own packaging and throw the disks in there. I'd gain about 4 feet of shelf space just by cleaning up my box sets. (about 175 anime DVD's on the rack as we speak, and an equal number of regular movies and such). If anyone knows, PM me. When you DO get multiple disks in a single case inevitably the case is crap, as in the instance of the Boogiepop Phantom case.
On the other (mostly tertiary topic)
I don't fault B. Gates for being a billionaire. For what it's worth, he also spends millions every year helping people in poor countries get medication and health services. To date he is indirectly responsible through his philanthropy of saving well over a million lives that would have been lost. I'm not super happy about the business practices of Microsoft, and the buggy programs though.
XP installation issues really piss me off. I discovered this when I had originally considered upgrading my classroom computers since I try to maintain systems that most people would have at home and thus keep the progam relevant.
Adobe is starting to follow a similar licensing model, with the CS software. Sucks for people that reinstall things all the time. They claim, not without at least some justification that bootlegging and piracy drives up the price of legitimate software. I think that the software is overpriced anyway. The economy of scale, and mass marketing should be able to lower the prices on mainstream items, yet it only seems to raise it to the point of whatever the market will bear.
This brings me right up to the bootlegged DVD issue. The thing about dvd's is that they are really dirt cheap to produce. stamping a disk is a penies per item operation. The packaging is worth more than the physical medium the product is delivered on.
I'm not sure what sort of prices a company like ADV or Disney pays for the right to license a product. I suspect that the amounts are substantial. Just as an American TV show with a high procuction value can cost over a million dollars per episode, I'm sure that an anime with a high production value can also be expensive to produce. All that is fine. I don't mind that a company wants to make a profit on the product, but it's sort of an insult to raise the prices to the point of market failure, and release the least amount possible to stretch it out. When I get anime that has five episodes on a disk these days I'm pretty surprised. On top of that, since the whole thing is designed to be released over a period of time, the disks are all individually packaged.
Bah. Bah.
Bootlegs: Everybody in the official chain of profit loses.
Bootlegs: The subtitles are generally horrific beyond comprehension.
" " : The video quality is noticeably aweful in many cases.
" " : Earthquake warnings, weird ass chapter cuts, if any.
" " : the packaging is nice, I wish that american companies would start doing the same thing, reducing waste, packaging space and increasing shelf appeal.
" " : No extras, ever.
Official: Everybody in the official chain makes some sort of profit theoretically, thus ensuring that the business keeps wanting to make more money.
Official: The subtitles by and large, unless it's Funimation make sense.
Official: The video quality is as close to as good as you can get within reason.
Official: Instead of earthquake warnings, you get special features like alternate audio tracks, and sometimes multiple subtitle tracks, such as in the case of Excel Saga.
Official: Standard cheap ass packaging actually looks and handles worse than the third world rip offs.
Personally, I'd like to know where you can get those gatefold cases. Then I could just make my own packaging and throw the disks in there. I'd gain about 4 feet of shelf space just by cleaning up my box sets. (about 175 anime DVD's on the rack as we speak, and an equal number of regular movies and such). If anyone knows, PM me. When you DO get multiple disks in a single case inevitably the case is crap, as in the instance of the Boogiepop Phantom case.
On the other (mostly tertiary topic)
I don't fault B. Gates for being a billionaire. For what it's worth, he also spends millions every year helping people in poor countries get medication and health services. To date he is indirectly responsible through his philanthropy of saving well over a million lives that would have been lost. I'm not super happy about the business practices of Microsoft, and the buggy programs though.
XP installation issues really piss me off. I discovered this when I had originally considered upgrading my classroom computers since I try to maintain systems that most people would have at home and thus keep the progam relevant.
Adobe is starting to follow a similar licensing model, with the CS software. Sucks for people that reinstall things all the time. They claim, not without at least some justification that bootlegging and piracy drives up the price of legitimate software. I think that the software is overpriced anyway. The economy of scale, and mass marketing should be able to lower the prices on mainstream items, yet it only seems to raise it to the point of whatever the market will bear.
This brings me right up to the bootlegged DVD issue. The thing about dvd's is that they are really dirt cheap to produce. stamping a disk is a penies per item operation. The packaging is worth more than the physical medium the product is delivered on.
I'm not sure what sort of prices a company like ADV or Disney pays for the right to license a product. I suspect that the amounts are substantial. Just as an American TV show with a high procuction value can cost over a million dollars per episode, I'm sure that an anime with a high production value can also be expensive to produce. All that is fine. I don't mind that a company wants to make a profit on the product, but it's sort of an insult to raise the prices to the point of market failure, and release the least amount possible to stretch it out. When I get anime that has five episodes on a disk these days I'm pretty surprised. On top of that, since the whole thing is designed to be released over a period of time, the disks are all individually packaged.
Bah. Bah.
Build a man a fire, and he will be warm for a night. Set a man on fire, and he will be warm for the rest of his life.
- Scintilla
- (for EXTREME)
- Joined: Mon Mar 31, 2003 8:47 pm
- Status: Quo
- Location: New Jersey
- Contact:
If by "JPEG artifacts" you mean "MPEG artifacts", then yes.TheKorovaMilkbar wrote:Not too terribly bad. If you're a real quality critic, it might bug you a bit, but it is usually ok for those who don't mind a few jpeg artifacts here and there.Of course with all those extra episodes crammed on it'll take away the show's visual quality. Unless they use those double-sided DVDs.
- Scintilla
- (for EXTREME)
- Joined: Mon Mar 31, 2003 8:47 pm
- Status: Quo
- Location: New Jersey
- Contact:
- TheKorovaMilkbar
- Joined: Sun Jun 13, 2004 2:40 pm
- Location: Dallas, TX.....You don't really care, do you?
Yeah, but a lot of the higher ups are just money hungry anyway. Not all of them though.Bootlegs: Everybody in the official chain of profit loses.
LOL, oops, that's what I meant. 8)Scintilla wrote:if by "JPEG artifacts" you mean "MPEG artifacts", then yes.

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- Village Idiot
- Joined: Fri May 03, 2002 12:17 am
- Location: Denver, CO Banned: Several times!
- Contact:
I'm a little more picky about my pirated products, but not really. The piracy store just a bus ride away ( in Colorado-prefecture, Aurora-district at www.animaniacs.com ) provides 5-episode single-layer media volumes, while a legit from ADV / Brandai is 3 episodes on a double layer. Surprisingly, at 30% less bitrate there's comparably good quality.
Piracy Is a Very Good Thing (explanation below)
DVD is great! (But indeed, LaserDisc was better)
While DVD is a great medium, it leaves much to be desired, along with everything else, when you actually take a close look at what's being lost. Many times when a curve with a high-contrast border appears in motion, you'll see motion artifacts, or a sparkly-jiggly feature as the staircase pattern moves around. Most don't realize LD was better!
Movie industry bastards and the DRM that they use
DVD's DRM "features" (now cracked, fortunately!!!), regions and the ability to disable the Search function has been abused by several distributors, resulting in my choise to pirate my films and not support them. This had included Bandai and ADV when they used to make people watch their logo until recently. Don't forget the lawsuits.
The solution is piracy! Or, hopefully, the Chinese players
What's better, of course, is China's EVD Enhanced Video Disc standard. It uses the VP6 codec, which rated in the top compared to most other codecs (only being beaten by Real9 for animation). Ripping part of BluRay for the discs would be preferred and naturally, being in C H I N A there haven't been any DRM-based reaming plans discussed yet.
For those downloading, Windows Media is some of the best you can get with features such as reliable streaming with coefficient reduction for on-the-fly bitrate adjustment, variable framerate (using coefficient reduction for streaming - also Faststart), captions with fonts, language tracks, chapters, and more.
A Word About DivsuX
Everyone's jumping on the DivsuX bandwagon... compared to the flexibility of WMV and (for open source freaks) MPEG-4 it's performance is stellar in select places. There are peak bitrates to chose if you want performance... on my 350Mhz Dell there's always problems playing DivsuX video. In all, DivsuX has a histroy of problems and you should not buy the paid version at ALL, and try XviD only if you KNOW you and your clients have high end PCs (e.g. 750Mhz or above and a WHOPPING 512MB of ram! That's alot!!!).
Remember:
DivsuX was originally a Windows Media ripoff, taking the name of a Circuit City blowup, which tells you a lot about what they're doing.
DivsuX then got a recoding job, part of which was the Project Mayo programme. DivsuX Networks used the questionable practice of taking open source programming for free and re-closing it (the open source lives on at XviD). (Note that the GPL would have helped in this instance, but historically the GPL has caused more problems that it's solved and is known iwdely to hamper software devlopment)
In summary... (most people skipped here anyways)
DVD:
Movie industry controlled - and movie industry likes to sue
DRM, Regions, Disable Search, etc
Lower performance compared to other algorithms
Legit discs will cost you monet, pirated discs are a gamble
PIRACY with Windows Media 9 Series, VP6 or MPEG-4:
Codecs are owned but user usage is royalty-free and not controlled.
The freedom to share your collection with people you don't know!
High performance and doesn't cost anyone a cent
So PIRACY is a VERY GOOD thing:
If you want to continue supporting the producers (as I do for series I enjoy), you can import the R2 discs from Japan, bypassing American companies and expensive American jobs, after you've tried it.
Piracy Is a Very Good Thing (explanation below)
DVD is great! (But indeed, LaserDisc was better)
While DVD is a great medium, it leaves much to be desired, along with everything else, when you actually take a close look at what's being lost. Many times when a curve with a high-contrast border appears in motion, you'll see motion artifacts, or a sparkly-jiggly feature as the staircase pattern moves around. Most don't realize LD was better!
Movie industry bastards and the DRM that they use
DVD's DRM "features" (now cracked, fortunately!!!), regions and the ability to disable the Search function has been abused by several distributors, resulting in my choise to pirate my films and not support them. This had included Bandai and ADV when they used to make people watch their logo until recently. Don't forget the lawsuits.
The solution is piracy! Or, hopefully, the Chinese players
What's better, of course, is China's EVD Enhanced Video Disc standard. It uses the VP6 codec, which rated in the top compared to most other codecs (only being beaten by Real9 for animation). Ripping part of BluRay for the discs would be preferred and naturally, being in C H I N A there haven't been any DRM-based reaming plans discussed yet.
For those downloading, Windows Media is some of the best you can get with features such as reliable streaming with coefficient reduction for on-the-fly bitrate adjustment, variable framerate (using coefficient reduction for streaming - also Faststart), captions with fonts, language tracks, chapters, and more.
A Word About DivsuX
Everyone's jumping on the DivsuX bandwagon... compared to the flexibility of WMV and (for open source freaks) MPEG-4 it's performance is stellar in select places. There are peak bitrates to chose if you want performance... on my 350Mhz Dell there's always problems playing DivsuX video. In all, DivsuX has a histroy of problems and you should not buy the paid version at ALL, and try XviD only if you KNOW you and your clients have high end PCs (e.g. 750Mhz or above and a WHOPPING 512MB of ram! That's alot!!!).
Remember:
DivsuX was originally a Windows Media ripoff, taking the name of a Circuit City blowup, which tells you a lot about what they're doing.
DivsuX then got a recoding job, part of which was the Project Mayo programme. DivsuX Networks used the questionable practice of taking open source programming for free and re-closing it (the open source lives on at XviD). (Note that the GPL would have helped in this instance, but historically the GPL has caused more problems that it's solved and is known iwdely to hamper software devlopment)
In summary... (most people skipped here anyways)
DVD:
Movie industry controlled - and movie industry likes to sue
DRM, Regions, Disable Search, etc
Lower performance compared to other algorithms
Legit discs will cost you monet, pirated discs are a gamble
PIRACY with Windows Media 9 Series, VP6 or MPEG-4:
Codecs are owned but user usage is royalty-free and not controlled.
The freedom to share your collection with people you don't know!
High performance and doesn't cost anyone a cent
So PIRACY is a VERY GOOD thing:
If you want to continue supporting the producers (as I do for series I enjoy), you can import the R2 discs from Japan, bypassing American companies and expensive American jobs, after you've tried it.
<a href="http://www.animetheory.com/" title="AnimeTheory" class="gensmall">AnimeTheory.</a>
<a href="http://www.animemusicvideos.org/search/ ... %20park%22" title="Seach videos NOT by danielwang" class="gen">Make sure you don't download videos that suck!</a>
<a href="http://www.animemusicvideos.org/search/ ... %20park%22" title="Seach videos NOT by danielwang" class="gen">Make sure you don't download videos that suck!</a>
- RootHubController
- Joined: Sat Aug 07, 2004 6:47 pm
Easy, you fool. XP makes a number hash of your hardware and compares it against a previously recorded value every time you boot. You swap out too much hardware, the hash check is exceeded, and XP recognizes it as a new computer, so you have to reenter and activate. It has nothing to do with money, it's protection against installing one OS CD on multiple computers.Z3r01 wrote:Hmm, don't really have any views on bootlegging except the people that bootleg AND sponge off welfare/social security or whatever you want to call it, should be shot.
That's OUR hard earned money and taxes they are getting for free, and they are using it to fund their piracy literally earning thousands a week.
But as far as Microsoft goes, I don't care. Bill Gates has made his money the world over, he undoubtedly could pay his staff for a lifetime and still have millions.
I always would run a legit copy of Windows though until a few days ago...
I installed some new hardware, like you do and I got a message prompting me to re-register XP, I thought OK, so I went ahead and tried it.
I was irate, there was no warning or literature that warns you only get a limited amount of installs. Heck is it my fault their software is flawed and requires a reinstall every so often? NO!
So I've got a legit copy of Windows ME and XP, all my drives are now NTFS, and there is NO way I'm moving back to ME, a 4GB file limit would ruin my day and put an end to my amv editing.
So hell, I own 2 of their operating systems, why should I buy something I already have through no fault of my own?
You took the lazy way out- good for you.
- Scintilla
- (for EXTREME)
- Joined: Mon Mar 31, 2003 8:47 pm
- Status: Quo
- Location: New Jersey
- Contact:
Well <i>duh...</i>danielwang wrote:A Word About DivsuX
Everyone's jumping on the DivsuX bandwagon... compared to the flexibility of WMV and (for open source freaks) MPEG-4 it's performance is stellar in select places. There are peak bitrates to chose if you want performance... <b>on my 350Mhz Dell</b> there's always problems playing DivsuX video.
Out of curiosity, have you tried using ffdshow?
danielwang wrote:and try XviD only if you KNOW you and your clients have <b>high end PCs</b> (e.g. 750Mhz or above and <b>a WHOPPING 512MB of ram! That's alot!!!</b>).

I suggest you get with the times (you also mentioned Real<b>9</b>)...
I <i>could</i> point out that most of us here don't speak Japanese, and that if we all bypassed American companies then English dubs would disappear and the companies would stop bringing titles over, but at this point, my thoughts are best summed up in another image...danielwang wrote:If you want to continue supporting the producers (as I do for series I enjoy), you can import the R2 discs from Japan, bypassing American companies and expensive American jobs, after you've tried it.

- RootHubController
- Joined: Sat Aug 07, 2004 6:47 pm
-
- Village Idiot
- Joined: Fri May 03, 2002 12:17 am
- Location: Denver, CO Banned: Several times!
- Contact:
*sigh* ffdslow's decent, but it's also had some problem with frame lag and the famous "BFRAME DECODER ERROR: NOTHING TO DECODE" or something of that sort. It's really a pain that select pirated episodes of Wolf's Rain aren't working (the A&E/AnimeOne rc' of 12 is known to be bad). Redownloading solved the problems.
<a href="http://www.animetheory.com/" title="AnimeTheory" class="gensmall">AnimeTheory.</a>
<a href="http://www.animemusicvideos.org/search/ ... %20park%22" title="Seach videos NOT by danielwang" class="gen">Make sure you don't download videos that suck!</a>
<a href="http://www.animemusicvideos.org/search/ ... %20park%22" title="Seach videos NOT by danielwang" class="gen">Make sure you don't download videos that suck!</a>