Is there any advantage in getting import DVDs?

Jnzk · Post by **Jnzk** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 8:40 am

Willen wrote:At least you CAN get Gunbuster in PAL/SECAM R2 DVD, even though the video quality IS crap.

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 12:33 pm

Keeper of Hellfire wrote:
R2 dvds are usually better quality...
That's a wrong generalization. R2 is whole Asia and Europe, the majority of them use PAL/SECAM, so that the majority of R2 Anime releases suffer at least field blending. The japanese R2's have mostly good quality.

Since the original posted specifically asked about Japanese DVDs, it should go without saying that I was referring to *JAPANESE* R2 discs.

Qyot27 · Post by **Qyot27** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 1:47 pm

I'd look into the Japanese R2's for at least the possibility of the discs having a pulldown flag so you don't have to do IVTC operations in AviSynth.

The answer as to why American releases tend to be so bad is that the majority of release companies here (Manga Entertainment, Central Park Media, Media Blasters, old ADV releases, old Viz releases - i.e. Ranma, some of Funimation's, etc.) are/were lazy cheapskate bastards. I really can't see any other alternative, considering the Japanese companies surely had better quality prints than the ones the American companies obtained. Heck, on ADV's release of the Rurouni Kenshin movie, it states outright that the source was, quote, "Digitally Mastered VHS Tape".

Willen wrote:NGE: Death & Rebirth (I want this in ANAMORPHIC WIDESCREEN, DAMMIT!)
NGE: End of Evangelion (SAME AS ABOVE, DAMMIT!)

Don't count on it until Manga's license expires, and hope that they don't renew. It's a sure bet that ADV would get the license if - and when - that happens. I just can't see why they couldn't pull what Funimation did with Slayers, except not in the case of an auction. The only thing I dread about ADV releasing it Stateside is that the telecining is surely going to be screwed up just like on the Platinum discs. The Japanese release has a pulldown flag. Oh, and Death & Rebirth has this effed-up border around it for some reason, despite the fact that the actual viewing area is the same aspect ratio. Doesn't make any sense to me. EOE looks nice, though. It's possible to get the set for like 74 bucks, which is only about 7 bucks more a piece than the American releases were (that's if you opt for the most expensive shipping option, of course; going for the Economy Mail option it's just about the same as buying the American releases for 30 bucks a pop, but it's not insured). Unless of course, you want the DTS edition instead.

Example (Unfortunately I couldn't get the PNGs uploaded without them getting resized, so here are HQ JPEGs):
Death & Rebirth (note the border) - http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b235/ ... death2.jpg

EOE - http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b235/qyot27/eoe2.jpg

As an aside, it is completely possible to take the English tracks from the Manga Entertainment release and align them into rips of the R2s, but it's tricky because the R2 of EOE doesn't have some of the footage before the movie that the R1 does, so it requires cutting the audio a little - I didn't try with the subtitles, but that's easier to take care of; most people wouldn't care if the subtitles were the originals or an OCR processed/transcripted copy anyway. I'm not sure how to do modify the actual DVD files, though - at least not without transcoding. But heck, even that would look vastly better than the R1s.

Willen · Post by **Willen** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 8:14 am

Qyot27 wrote:I'm not sure how to do modify the actual DVD files, though - at least not without transcoding. But heck, even that would look vastly better than the R1s.

Just substitute "NGE: EOE" for "Macross: DYRL?"

http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.p ... opic=13965

And since we are also talking about japanese R2 DVDs, and IVTC came up, and I mentioned Macross: DYRL?, i feel the need to post this link also.

http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.p ... opic=13642

janzki wrote:
Willen wrote:At least you CAN get Gunbuster in PAL/SECAM R2 DVD, even though the video quality IS crap.
There is still hope for R1...

Why do they have to TEASE US?!?!?!?!?!

I'm still wondering why Manga sat on the Gunbuster license for so long without a DVD release. Maybe they didn't have DVD rights? Or Bandai Visual vetoed Manga's wish for a DVD version all these years?

I like how Bandai Visual wanted so much to renew these licenses that Manga gave up.

If they released remastered Patlabor movies in anamorphic widescreen like they did with Ghost in the Shell, I think more people would have bought the DVDs (I know I would have) and they might have been able to afford to renew the rights for Gunbuster and the other titles they lost. Although I think I'm in the minority in liking the Patlabor movies more than the GitS movies.

I hope that the Patlabor movie releases from Honneamise/Bandai Visual are up to the Criterion Collection standard that they trying to emulate. If they live up to the expectations, and Honneamise/BV do release Wings of Honneamise and Gunbuster I'll be VERY happy.

AnnaMayBelle · Post by **AnnaMayBelle** » Sun Mar 05, 2006 9:16 am

devilmaykickass, the screenshots you posted reminded me of something I heard back when the uncut Sailor Moon DVDs first got released, stateside. I'd heard that supposedly the DVD quality was rather low, and many customers were upset; Toei insisted on this because they hadn't made a Japanese release yet, and wanted to make sure that Japanese buyers wouldn't import the cheaper American disks instead of waiting on the more expensive R2s.

I don't know how much of it's true, but it doesn't sound very farfetched, especially after seeing those screenshots!

devilmaykickass · Post by **devilmaykickass** » Sun Mar 05, 2006 11:16 am

AnnaMayBelle wrote:devilmaykickass, the screenshots you posted reminded me of something I heard back when the uncut Sailor Moon DVDs first got released, stateside. I'd heard that supposedly the DVD quality was rather low, and many customers were upset; Toei insisted on this because they hadn't made a Japanese release yet, and wanted to make sure that Japanese buyers wouldn't import the cheaper American disks instead of waiting on the more expensive R2s.

I don't know how much of it's true, but it doesn't sound very farfetched, especially after seeing those screenshots!

Those are the movie DVDs, which are by far the worst DVDs I've ever seen. They make the rest of the SM DVDs look great. The first two seasons ADV released were pretty bad. Horrible audio (I mean REALLY horrible), and so much crap in the picture you could see it when you watched on a tv. The first season was ok other than that, but the second season during most of the Doom Tree Arc looked like they ripped the DVD, ran it through the blur more virtualdub filter twice, then burned it back onto a dvd, and then alot of other episodes like half of the screen was sharp and well defined while the other half was blurry...really strange things. Also, one episode from the first season ran at like 10 frames a second for the first half, and then one of the episodes from R wasn't included at all (episode 67).

As for the second two seasons, S and Super S (released by the same company as the movies, Pioneer/Genon), the S season is rather beautiful. It has film grain, but other than that it's the closest to perfect any of the American releases have come (which is probably why it's used in AMVs more than any of the rest of Sailor Moon). Super S had a ton of noise in it, though it was a nice sharp picture, and every now and then they'd end up looking like this (yes, that's DVD footage you're looking at):

But other than that it was ok.

What angers me about it is, when I first bought them before the Japanese DVD release of the ENTIRE thing started a few years ago, everyone told me either "oh it's because Sailor Moon is old" which I knew was crap because it's only from the early 90s, or "oh it's because Toei doesn't have any better looking copies blah" but yet the R2s are all BEAUTIFUL...even the first season.

Hopefully someday they'll rerelease it all on R1 through a company who knows/cares what they're doing, but I'm not counting on it.

Willen · Post by **Willen** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 5:58 am

devilmaykickass wrote:
AnnaMayBelle wrote:devilmaykickass, the screenshots you posted reminded me of something I heard back when the uncut Sailor Moon DVDs first got released, stateside. I'd heard that supposedly the DVD quality was rather low, and many customers were upset; Toei insisted on this because they hadn't made a Japanese release yet, and wanted to make sure that Japanese buyers wouldn't import the cheaper American disks instead of waiting on the more expensive R2s.

I don't know how much of it's true, but it doesn't sound very farfetched, especially after seeing those screenshots!
Those are the movie DVDs, which are by far the worst DVDs I've ever seen. They make the rest of the SM DVDs look great. The first two seasons ADV released were pretty bad. Horrible audio (I mean REALLY horrible), and so much crap in the picture you could see it when you watched on a tv. The first season was ok other than that, but the second season during most of the Doom Tree Arc looked like they ripped the DVD, ran it through the blur more virtualdub filter twice, then burned it back onto a dvd, and then alot of other episodes like half of the screen was sharp and well defined while the other half was blurry...really strange things. Also, one episode from the first season ran at like 10 frames a second for the first half, and then one of the episodes from R wasn't included at all (episode 67).

As for the second two seasons, S and Super S (released by the same company as the movies, Pioneer/Genon), the S season is rather beautiful. It has film grain, but other than that it's the closest to perfect any of the American releases have come (which is probably why it's used in AMVs more than any of the rest of Sailor Moon). Super S had a ton of noise in it, though it was a nice sharp picture, and every now and then they'd end up looking like this (yes, that's DVD footage you're looking at):

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v190/ ... m_shot.jpg

But other than that it was ok.

What angers me about it is, when I first bought them before the Japanese DVD release of the ENTIRE thing started a few years ago, everyone told me either "oh it's because Sailor Moon is old" which I knew was crap because it's only from the early 90s, or "oh it's because Toei doesn't have any better looking copies blah" but yet the R2s are all BEAUTIFUL...even the first season.

Hopefully someday they'll rerelease it all on R1 through a company who knows/cares what they're doing, but I'm not counting on it.

I know for a fact that a bunch of japanese companies don't give the best looking masters to the US companies because of fears of reverse-importation. If they did, why would japanese people buy their domestic DVDs that only have 2 or 3 episodes per disc for about US$50.

Case in point:
Fruits Basket Japanese DVDs - 9 volumes - US$413.60 from cdjapan.co.jp (+shipping)

Fruits Basket US DVDs - 4 volumes - US$107.92 from rightstuf.com (+shipping outside of US)
and if you buy the box set right now, it's on sale for US$59.99.

Of course, this is a pretty extreme example, most 26 episode series are released in 13 volumes in Japan and 7 volumes in the US.

Now taking Sailor Moon (season 1) for example:
Bishojo Senshi Sailor Moon DVD - 8 volumes - US$263.04 from cdjapan.co.jp (+shipping)

Sailor Moon Season 1: Uncut DVD - 1 set - US$134.98 from rightstuf.com (+shipping outside of US) NO LONGER AVAILABLE!

And if you dig around, you can find examples of where after the US companies finished negotiations and start work on the translated versions, they find out that there are better quality masters available in Japan and the ones they have are maybe 2nd-gen masters, broadcast copies, or un-remastered versions.