Forum - View topicAnswerman - Are UK and Australian Anime DVDs & BDs Any Different?
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MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5312 |
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I thought the UK dub of Secret Life of Arietty was better than the US one.
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jymmy
 Posts: 1244 |
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I've owned a region-free Blu-ray player (technically all-region capable, as there is no region-free setting as there is for DVD). Got it direct from a local online company. No third-party firmware, and there's no way to accidentally update it anyway. If there were an issue, you could have it resolved under warranty because you bought a region-free Blu-ray player. Rather than "Oh, region-free Blu-ray players are really dicey", I'd suggest to not buy from sketchy brands that won't support your purchase. (I haven't taken a look at what's on Amazon, or what's available now anywhere, just going off previous posts.)
Nowadays I just use a PC and the program AnyDVD, which sorts out region. Too easy, it keeps things centralised, and I have total control over my player. |
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wonderwomanhero
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I had no idea Millennium Actress had an english dub. Is it bad in a "so bad its horrible" type way, or a "they just didn't care" type way?
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Polycell
 Posts: 4623 |
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@ consignia:
VLC also has the ability to decrypt Blu-rays, but there's the simple issue of keys: brute forcing them is prohibitively expensive and you won't find any online. The reason for the second bit is that, if Hollywood finds out, the key will be added to a blacklist on every new BD produced - and to make things even better, that key has to be sent to the drive to be used, which updates its blacklist everytime you put a disc with a newer version in, which means you lose the ability to play discs with that key completely. It's a masterpiece of diabolical genius. |
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st_owly
 Posts: 5234 Location: Edinburgh, Scotland |
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Oh absolutely. I was more meaning that they don't create their own materials like AL tend to do. I miss Beez... |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Regarding good UK dubs, there's Xenoblade Chronicles. It's not an anime, but it's one of Nintendo of Europe's rare attempts at an English dub, and they did it with flying colors.
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leongsh
 Posts: 181 |
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Either ANN made an error in posting a wrong UK flag on the main page which leads to the article with only the Cross of St George and the Saltire of St Andrew and left out the Cross of St Patrick (i.e the red "X"), or being subversive in how it sees the UK.
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Ali07
 Posts: 3333 Location: Victoria, Australia |
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Are PS3s region free BD players? Cause my one plays the BDs I've bought from the U.S.
Not surprising, in the least, to hear that the smaller markets in the U.K. and Australia borrow from the U.S. anime distributors. I am wondering how different the upcoming Madman release of Sailor Moon will be. As, apparently, Madman will be using different masters than the ones that have been used in the U.S. |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4570 |
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For anyone who actually owns them, are there any good recommendations for an all-region BD player? (Legality permitting of course; if direct links are too sketchy to post on here I completely understand!) I've been vaguely thinking about getting one at some point ever since a Retail thread turned me onto the possibility of pulling an end-around and going the UK route for some AoA titles. I know the format in general is really locked-down in both the hardware and software senses (even my go-to PotPlayer can only play unencrypted BDs), so I'd imagine that a lot of those Amazon results can be pretty dodgy. At least region-free DVD playback seems much easier; there are a few Australian-licensed titles in particular that I absolutely need to import someday.
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Razor/Edge
Posts: 607 |
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Really need to get my hands on region free player so I can import Aniplex titles for cheaper than the BS prices they charge. So i'm looking for player recommendations as well.
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PurpleWarrior13
 Posts: 2025 |
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Manga UK dubs really did suck. They had a few gems like the first two Patlabor movies (though the newer US Bandai Visual dubs are better) and Lupin III: Mystery of Mamo/Bye Bye Liberty Crisis, but also "classics" (i.e. of the so-bad-they're-good type) like Mad Bull 34, Violence Jack, Angel Cop, and Cyber City Oedo 808. Their Project A-Ko dub sucked, but for some reason it fit the film's style well. There are also alternate dubs of Wicked City and Space Adventure Cobra that aren't as good as the US equivalents.
Notably, most of those dubs had lots of gratuitous language inserted in order to get a 15+ rating by the BBFC since they were worried a PG or 12 would make the shows seem "kiddy." Most of the actors had American accents too since many of the actors were from the US or Canada, or Brits faking American accents. Occasionally, you will get a real British accent, but that was rare. For some reason, they wanted American accents. But yeah there's no reason for alternate English dubs anymore. Back in the 90s, it was a bit more difficult to exchange materials and use the same dubs. Now with the internet and digital technology, it's the norm. Just keep the same dub. Last edited by PurpleWarrior13 on Tue Sep 01, 2015 10:22 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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But which supposed account is the correct one? (Answers on a postcard please.) |
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Just Passing Through
Posts: 276 |
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I think the last UK commissioned dub was for Musashi: Dream of the Last Samurai, although that was a voiceover for a documentary more than a dub. Manga commissioned a dub for Welcome to the Space Show, and Anime Limited have commissioned dubs for stuff like Patema, but they're usually recorded in the US for eventual US distribution too.
Authoring is all over the place. MVM pretty much use all Australian masters. Back in the day of just DVDs, they used to be NTSC-PAL standards conversions, but have since moved on to native PAL with 4% speedup (but with the advantage of being mastered from an HD source making full use of the 576i line resolution, instead of being scaled up from 480i), and even the odd NTSC disc they release comes from Australian distributors who strip the US trailers and release locally. Two exceptions in recent years have been Red Garden and Pumpkin Scissors, which came direct from the US, but NTSC. Blu-ray is mostly through Australia too. They go halves on disc production with Siren/Hanabee/Madman, which usually meant using the US discs switched to Region B, but since Sentai have started geo-locking their discs, Hanabee have started re-authoring in house, which gives us the advantage of discrete white subtitles instead of Sentai's mega-yellow subs. One exception is the forthcoming A Lull in the Sea for which both they and Siren are using NISA's Blu-rays. Anime Limited are quite unique at this time in that they tend to author their discs, DVD and Blu-ray for the UK market, rather than use someone elses's masters. The one time they used Siren's masters resulted in Durarara!! LE. I think they've used US masters once, Sentai's for Garden of Words, but generally they commission their own, often using the services of a certain Answerman. Nice discs. DVDs they release in NTSC format. Manga for a long time had their nuts in a vice by Starz, they weren't allowed to release NTSC in the UK, PAL only. When they were using US and Australian masters for Blu-ray, and Australian masters for PAL DVD, things were as good as those foreign companies could author. It's when Manga author their own discs that things go to pot. Signs only tracks are rare, chapter marking is random, and subtitles are screwed. Occasionally you get a watchable disc, but it's the luck of the draw. Australia's Madman switched Fairy Tail DVDs to NTSC recently, which meant that Manga had to create their own master from volume 11. The Blu-rays had been cancelled after volume 10, so DVD was all their was, and we got a bloody NSTC-PAL standards conversion, with mistimed subtitles. It killed Fairy Tail in the UK. Starz has since sold Manga UK, and it now looks like we might get some NTSC DVDs from them. Starz' leash might be the reason Animatsu spun-off from Manga. They haven't been around that long, but the Blu-ray discs I have seen from them seem to be the US discs reversioned for Region B, superfluous trailers stripped in the case of A Certain Magical Index, and Knights of Sidonia simply switched to Region B, Funi and Sentai logos swapped for Animatsu's. They also release their DVDs as NTSC. That leaves Kaze, who author all their discs in Europe, and they are generally pants. They're the least user friendly, locking everything behind UPOPs, can't change audio or subs on the fly, can't access player timers to navigate discs, can't even drop out to the menu and drop back in. Disc quality is random too, DVDs can be NTSC-PAL conversions, native PAL with a 24th frame repeated to create a 25th, resulting in jerkovision, native PAL with speed-up. One of their early discs, Samurai Girls was a reworking of the Sentai release though. Blu-rays are generally okay, but I have seen a 1080i 50Hz disc... They can't do subtitles, usually having to leave text translations to the dub track, unable to show them simultanously with subtitles (I'm currently rewatching Persona 4 and I have to watch the English dub to get all the screen captions) Their nadir was Bakuman Season 1, where they simply ran the French subtitles through Google translate, resulting in English subtitles that were laughably incomprehensible. And then Kaze give us Magi on Blu-ray, Roujin Z on Blu-ray... and we can't complain too much. Incidentally, those Australian exclusive titles are all on DVD. There aren't any Australian exclusive Blu-rays to my knowledge. All you need is a multiregion DVD player that handles PAL playback. And even with that, Chihayafuru Season 1 might be PAL, but Season 2 is NTSC. |
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daichi383
 Posts: 313 Location: England |
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These days i only ever tend to but Anime Limited releases with the exception of the One Piece, Fairy Tail and Dragon Ball Z releases by Manga UK. I love the collectors editions Anime Limited put out especially since we get artbooks with some of them like was the case with Kill la Kill and Space Dandy.
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yuna49
 Posts: 3804 |
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Depends on where you live. In the US, the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes illegal the use of any device designed to thwart copyright protections. The concept was globalized by the 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty. Even using widely-available software to archive DVDs on a computer violates this provision. Remember that a representative of Sony testified in the Jammie Thomas-Rasset trial that extracting tracks from a CD that you own onto a computer disk constitutes "stealing." CD's have no protections and are not covered by the anti-circumvention provisions. |
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