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Answerman - When Did US Anime Publishers Transition from VHS to DVD?

@leafy sea dragon

Yeah, you will still have compatibility issues from time to time with modern bluray players. They're not as common as they once were though. When Avatar debuted on bluray, it feature new copy protection and simply wouldn't play on a lot of older players without an update. The constant phone calls about that were a major headache for retailers.

It still occasionally pops up, but usually in very limited circumstances and for a very limited amount of players. I've had issues with bluray playback once or twice on my PS4, where it required an update before it would play a new movie. I haven't had that happen in well over a year now.

The format and requirements are pretty secure now, and movie studios are focusing more and more on streaming and digital downloads. With DVD sales declining, and bluray sales not experiencing any major increases recently, they don't have as much emphasis to expand the technological aspects of the format. Not to mention, major distributors are now working on 4K blurays, and that is where much of their research and focus is going at the moment.

Ah, I see what you mean. I got into anime at around the time things switched over to DVDs, so I missed that really bitter part of it. Never really thought of it that way, that it was an extension of availability.

Some people still get incredibly bitter over it all...but then again, people get incredibly bitter over anything. But yeah, you're right, now that I'm thinking about the incredible splitting of hairs considering much of the dub-hate going on right now on YouTube seems to be from people who want dub actors to pronounce things in Japanese accents (which I consider incredibly trivial compared to other things that can go wrong).

Huh, I thought HD-DVD lost the war because its encryption was cracked first, and having created the encryption, the MPAA made a big hissy-fit over it.

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.

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].

The thing is, even in DVD era, we still sometimes get sub-only and dub-only discs. Good example was Cardcaptos, or Cardcaptor Sakura, where Geneon released separate discs for dub and sub. Interestingly, when NIS released their version of Sakura, with both dub and sub in 2014, but dub from Animax Asia instead of the original Cardcaptors dub, there were people who complained that they'd rather see the original crippled Nelvana dub of Cardcaptors on separate disc set, instead of what NIS actually did, which would've cost NIS a fortune and IMO wouldn't justify the expenses. Another more recent case was Monster Rancher, where Discoteq too released separate dub and sub sets. Fortunately, these cases are more and more rare these days.

That surely played a role, but there were bigger issues, like less sold units (let's face it, PS3 was more successful than Xbox 360), as well as the fact HD-DVD wasn't region locked, which was also big no-no for some studios and/or distributors. Interestingly, most of the Blu-Ray discs these days aren't region locked or are all regions. Only handful of discs are region locked, unfortunately for me, most of them are anime discs

I hate to break it to you, but the sub vs. dub conflict is still going on.

Huh, I thought HD-DVD lost the war because its encryption was cracked first, and having created the encryption, the MPAA made a big hissy-fit over it.

I probably did not make myself clear enough, for which I am sorry. When talking about Xbox 360 vs. PS3 I was talking merely in the context of HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray. While every sold PS3 was automatically Blu-Ray player and was defined as such statistically, Xbox 360 only had DVD drive and to play HD-DVD you needed external HD-DVD drive for $199, which was only to play HD-DVD discs, no other purpose it had. And only a few people bought that. That's what I meant before, though I should may it clear. And that's surely what played role in the whole units sold statistics. If Xbox 360 had internal HD-DVD drive, just like PS3 had internal Blu-Ray drive, I am sure Blu-Ray wouldn't have it so easy.

As you are probably aware we have or had a couple of posters in this forum who seem to feel that the very existence of a dub is an affront to the show. We also have at least one person who claims that dubbing a show is a waste of money the company could use to support what he wants. That is kind of funny as I really doubt any company has dubbed a show under the impression that they would lose money.

That surely played a role, but there were bigger issues, like less sold units (let's face it, PS3 was more successful than Xbox 360), as well as the fact HD-DVD wasn't region locked, which was also big no-no for some studios and/or distributors. Interestingly, most of the Blu-Ray discs these days aren't region locked or are all regions. Only handful of discs are region locked, unfortunately for me, most of them are anime discs

Actually, HD-DVD players sold very well, and outsold bluray players for nearly two years due to the fact that they were considerably cheaper (usually $100-200 less). However, HD-DVD movies never sold as well as bluray releases.

Ultimately, what killed the format was Waner Brothers. They were the last studio to produce and promote releases in both bluray and HD-DVD. They even planned a "Total
HiDef" disk with HD-DVD on one side and bluray on the other, though it never made it to market.

It ultimately came down to a financial decision on their part. If they went with HD-DVD, Disney and Sony would have been the only studios still making bluray. If they went with bluray, Universal would be the only company left in the HD camp. Paramount/Dreamworks were HD-DVD only, but their deal with Toshiba allowed them to cancel their contract should WB shift to bluray. Since it was felt that the format wars were holding back home video sales, Warner went with bluray to allow it to end more quickly.

Warner believed that whichever format they chose would ultimately win. However, since Sony was one of the creators of the bluray format, they would be unlikely to dump it. So the format would have lasted longer.

Actually, HD-DVD players sold very well, and outsold bluray players for nearly two years due to the fact that they were considerably cheaper (usually $100-200 less). However, HD-DVD movies never sold as well as bluray releases.

Ultimately, what killed the format was Waner Brothers. They were the last studio to produce and promote releases in both bluray and HD-DVD. They even planned a "Total HiDef" disk with HD-DVD on one side and bluray on the other, though it never made it to market.
It ultimately came down to a financial decision on their part. If they went with HD-DVD, Disney and Sony would have been the only studios still making bluray. If they went with bluray, Universal would be the only company left in the HD camp. Paramount/Dreamworks were HD-DVD only, but their deal with Toshiba allowed them to cancel their contract should WB shift to bluray. Since it was felt that the format wars were holding back home video sales, Warner went with bluray to allow it to end more quickly.

Warner believed that whichever format they chose would ultimately win.

That also makes sense for different major Hollywood studios to be split on the matter, and it'd also make sense that majority wins in this case. (And not in the same way as Everybody vs. Redbox.) Any reasons for these studios to pick HD-DVD or Blu-Ray?

Certainly, for me, I wanted the matter to be decided before I got something that could play these, because I didn't want to pay for two different devices, one of which would stop getting support after a little bit.

As I mentioned above though, based on my personal experiences, the Xbox 360 had a clear edge over the PS3s in the town where I lived when they both came out, with most of the interest in PS3s being that it was a Blu-Ray player. But it was an unusual place where you have to actively seek out news about the outside world to get it, so I always figured anything I saw happening there probably didn't reflect what was going on outside the town's borders.

By the time Toshiba ceded the market, about 10.5 million of the Sony consoles had been sold worldwide versus an estimated 1 million HD DVD players—including both standalone units and the add-on player for Microsoft's Xbox 360 console, which did not use the HD DVD add-on for gaming unlike the PS3 which had games that used the Blu-ray's added storage capacity. This equipment gap was a factor in Blu-ray titles (including the ones bundled with the PS3) outselling their HD DVD counterparts two to one in the United States and three or four to one in Europe.