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purplepolecat wrote:

HeeroTX wrote:

That said, as a developer of several decades who knows nothing about DVD/BD authoring, is it straightup more "complex" (and time consuming) or is it a case that the DVD authoring process is so refined and the BD process is comparatively new?

Justin breaks it all down in this super-interesting ANNCast. It's probably just all BS to protect his job security and preserve the "pretend BD authoring is hard" conspiracy, though. Wink

I can't tell whether that statement was in jest or not, but if not, don't be an ass to the staff, man. If you think professional quality BD authorin is easy, come in and politely give some evidence that it is, rather than just firing shots.

jsevakis wrote:

I, uh, LITERALLY make anime DVDs and Blu-rays for a living. But I guess why do I even go to the forums but for nerds to "well actually" me? Rolling Eyes

Is that called "fansplaining"? Smile

I bought my first DVD player specifically to use Netflix, which seemed like a dream come true. Oddly enough, I only learned of its existence when the post office delivered someone's disk to me by mistake. I nearly threw it out, thinking it was some promo disk, like the ones AOL saturated the world with, and when I found a real movie inside, I still couldn't believe it wasn't a scam. Very Happy

Although I had watched some anime on rented VHS, it was almost entirely due to Netflix that I became an anime fan, since the local rental shops didn't carry a very good selection of anime in any format.

Last edited by Aphasial on Mon Aug 22, 2016 6:52 pm; edited 1 time in total

I remember the first season Utena DVDs felt like the VHS masters had basically been recorded directly onto the discs, complete with hard-subtitled songs and spurious "end of tape" credits 4 episodes in on a 6 or 7 episode DVD.

That said, aside from the video/audio quality improvements (even on SD), random access, and the vastly increased durability, being able to have the dubbed and subtitled versions on the same medium usually was more than worth it. Consider what Pioneer had had to do with the Sailor Moon S/SuperS VHS releases. For each set of episodes, no less than THREE separate versions for each tape!

* Subtitled and uncut: https://www.amazon.com/Sailor-Moon-Hearts-Uncut-Version/dp/B000055WJ8/
* Dubbed and uncut: https://www.amazon.com/Sailor-Moon-Hearts-Uncut-Version/dp/B000055WJ7/
* Dubbed and edited for content: https://www.amazon.com/Sailor-Moon-Pure-Hearts-Version/dp/B000055WJ9/ (different cover)

Talk about fragmentation!

This also resulted in an odd problem where some of the Bowdlerization that was done in the dub (like the cousins) ended up worse for the wear. With edits for content, you could perhaps buy Uranus and Neptune being cousins, but when you put the full video back in underneath the dub, now you end up with pretty obvious incestuous overtones.

There was a similar problem in Sailor Moon SuperS: Fish Eye had been made a female character (which makes complete sense, btw) but they didn't realize there'd now be a full on topless scene for "her" in the "dubbed, uncut" version. D'oh!

Sometimes the saving grace of VHS is that a few shows never made the jump to DVD or Blu-Ray, hence limiting them to a kind of holy grail status in VHS form.

TurkeyPotPie wrote:

Either the Street Fighter anime movie or Tenchi Muyo in Love were the first US anime DVDs. They were both released in 1997.

According to the internet (doing some quick research based on the UPC codes of the original DVDs), Street Fighter II was released in July of 1997 and Tenchi in Love was September of 1997 (sources giving release dates disagree on exact days, but they all agree on the months). I have no idea what their sources are for reporting those dates, though, so take it with a pinch of salt.

The oldest DVD I have in my collection is CPM/US Manga's first edition of Wrath of the Ninja, which I'm pretty sure was released in 1999 (I didn't buy it back then, though, it was a used copy I picked up for like $2 a few years ago - plays perfectly, though).

Gina Szanboti wrote:

Is that called "fansplaining"? Smile

OMG THAT IS FANTASTIC AND I AM ABSOLUTELY STEALING THAT. Very Happy

Galap wrote:

purplepolecat wrote:

It's probably just all BS to protect his job security and preserve the "pretend BD authoring is hard" conspiracy, though. Wink

I can't tell whether that statement was in jest or not...

Sorry, I thought the "winky smiley" made that fairly clear. I had no intention of denigrating Justin's profession, and I did find the ANNCast on this subject genuinely interesting.

I'm not sure what the last anime VHS in the US would've been, but I feel pretty sure that the last anime VHS tapes in Australia were probably for Dragon Ball GT.

Last edited by AholePony on Mon Aug 22, 2016 9:53 pm; edited 1 time in total

I found it amazing in THIS Japan Video Software Association report there is an inflection point in 2007 where 100% of the sales in the video animation for adults (covers much of the anime market) category were on DVD. In 06 there were VHS sales and 08 BD sales. This is only in the Japanese market of course but numbers rarely have stark breaking points like that!

I collected VHS for many years, but when DVD came along, it seemed like a godsend. No more having to deal with rewinding, the tape getting wrinkled or eaten by the machine. Better picture quality, way better audio, and less space taken up by them. As soon as I could afford one, November '99, I grabbed one and a copy of Saving Private Ryan, and was quite happy to start building a new library of movies. Eventually, my DVD collection dwarfed my VHS collection by a considerable margin. Later, my VHS tapes all got ruined and that was the end of that.

I did wait for a gaming console, the PS3, to jump to blu-ray, but that was still fairly early in the format's life in April of '07. Now, my BD collection dwarfs my DVDs by an even considerable margin. Now, we have a new format just starting out. Thing is, I just can't see myself going through the process again. I'm sure I will be picking up UHDs sometime down the road, but I have absolutely no desire to replace practically any of my BDs: a few early Warner titles that have lossy audio, and something like 2001: A Space Odyssey that would get a significant improvement from the higher resolution, but that's it. I'm pretty sure my days of re-buying Blade Runner, The Terminator and many others yet again are behind me.

I think it was in 2000 or 2001 (I still had my bookstore, so it couldn't have been any later), that Blockbuster announced that they were starting to switch over to 'all-DVD'. IIRC, at the time they intended to purchase no VHS after 2005.

Netflix was well into it's slow rise by that time, and they were already feeling the pinch I suspect. Only a couple of years Netflix was practically a household word and an all-out war between the two was in progress.

I got my first DVD player in either 1998 or '99. It was a Panasonic and it could handle PCM and Dolby Digital audio, but not DTS. It couldn't even output DTS to an external decoder. I think RightStuf's complex Kare Kano DVD's were a little much for it though. It couldn't keep up with rendering the subtitles.

Speaking of Dolby Digital, I remember Bandai's early DVDs having a bunch of different Dolby Digital intros. I used to enjoy watching those and looking to see which disc would use which scene.

The first anime DVDs I remember buying were Evangelion and Tenchi Muyo in Love. I had to settle for VHS to get my Sailor Moon fix since seasons 1 and 2 weren't available on DVD until years later.

Back in the early 2000's I would make a monthly trek to Media Play and Suncoast looking for the new releases that month. I remember seeing the DBZ VHS tapes on the shelves and the cool murals the spine art of the tapes made. Then I would look at the DVDs and be disappointed that the spine art never made any larger artwork when they were lined up next to each other.

I remember renting my first anime VHS back in the day.
It was Tenchi Muyo the Movie 2: Daughter of Darkness.

Fond memories of that one. There were other anime VHS boxes when I used to visit Blockbuster, although I don't remember if they had the actual tapes or not, since I was too obsessed with Tenchi to even care.

Looking back that was a rather dumb move of me not renting more. I rented that movie, I think twice.

I think the first anime DVD I remember having, or it was actually my older brothers, was a bootlegged Chinese DVD copy of Ikki Tousen with bad eng subs for the first disc and good subs for the second disc. Or maybe it was one of the Volumes of the DB GT Baby saga(the one where Goku becomes a golden ape for the first time).
My brother was in high school and I don't know where or how he got these DVDs.

Quote:

The anime publishers dutifully kept putting out VHS releases (albeit in very small quantities) until around 2005. Bandai Entertainment was the first company to go DVD-only with their release of Avenger, and everyone else followed suit not long after.

At the risk of fansplaining, there is some evidence that DVD-only anime releases have existed at least since mid-2001, with Pioneer's NieA_7. I don't know what the last US anime VHS release was either, but I'd bet moderately good money that it was something for younger/casual audiences, like DBZ/Pokemon/Yugioh.

Allen Divers wrote:

Being a DVD only release, there are no VHS copies to be compared against. While this is good for the overall growth of the DVD medium, it does prevent a wider audience from being exposed to [NieA_7].

I did rent a few anime VHS tapes from Blockbuster in 2003-04 when I was first getting into the medium. But I'd bought a DVD player in 2001 after the prices came down from the stratosphere, and it wasn't hard to see where the future of home media was headed. I still have a working VCR bought in the early 00s, though sadly it's decided to stop playing some VHS tapes that used to work perfectly well. Face/Off, you will be missed Crying or Very sad

Aphasial wrote:

I remember the first season Utena DVDs felt like the VHS masters had basically been recorded directly onto the discs, complete with hard-subtitled songs and spurious "end of tape" credits 4 episodes in on a 6 or 7 episode DVD.

That "recycle dub VHS versions on DVD" tactic was somewhat common back then, as also seen on CPM's Maze and Pioneer's Fushigi Yuugi. ADV's Evangelion and Nadesico featured some rather controversial sign overlays, as well. Though in some ways, that approach was better than the early DVD releases that followed them -- many of those discs had no hardsubbed song lyrics or sign translations, but had only one subtitle track. Thus, dub watchers were left with the choice of (A) keeping the full subtitles on the whole time (which could be quite distracting and/or amusing with some liberal dubs of the era, like Steven Foster's Generator Gawl), (B) missing out on translations for song lyrics and onscreen text completely, or (C) rewinding at certain points and switching the subs on and off as necessary.

The aforementioned NieA_7 DVDs split the difference, with hardcoded subs for onscreen text, but only one subtitle track containing all the dialogue and song translations. It was something of a revolution when Pioneer/Geneon's I My Me Strawberry Eggs (mid-2002) revealed that DVDs could have TWO separate, entirely softcoded subtitle tracks: one with just song lyrics and sign translations for English-audio-watchers, the other with everything for Japanese-audio-watchers. And for most non-Viz publishers, that's the format still recognizable in discs today, minus the anti-reverse-importation language selection lockouts.

Zin5ki wrote:

Galap wrote:

They say you're used to what you grow up with, so the way VHS looks doesn't actually bother me at all, and I kind of even manage to ignore its video artifacts (while those of DVD are glaringly annoying to me).

I am still quite satisfied by DVD, for the very reason you state! That said, a Blu-Ray release of my favourite anime has finally been announced, which may be the requisite spur for me to finally consider adopting the newer format.

I always find this incredibly odd. I also grew up with VHS, but even as a kid, I could tell the video quality was horrible. When DVD came around I was thrilled, but even that wasn't enough for me after I watched my first Blu-ray around 2008 or so. Since then it has been increasingly difficult for me to justify buying anything at less than a 1080 resolution. I can't imagine being okay with less quality than that, personally.

Gina Szanboti wrote:

I bought my first DVD player specifically to use Netflix, which seemed like a dream come true. Oddly enough, I only learned of its existence when the post office delivered someone's disk to me by mistake. I nearly threw it out, thinking it was some promo disk, like the ones AOL saturated the world with, and when I found a real movie inside, I still couldn't believe it wasn't a scam. Very Happy

Although I had watched some anime on rented VHS, it was almost entirely due to Netflix that I became an anime fan, since the local rental shops didn't carry a very good selection of anime in any format.

That's remarkably similar to my story, though at the time, it was my parents who bought the DVD player in order for us to all sit down and watch Ghibli films that my sister in law brought over. After that I signed up for a Netflix account and rented tons of anime through it. Netflix disc rentals were the sh** back then.

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