Forum - View topicAnswerman - When Did US Anime Publishers Transition from VHS to DVD?
Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
Author | Message | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
dragonrider_cody
Posts: 2541 |
|
|||||
@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. |
||||||
leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
|
|||||
All right then. This is actually the first I knew about Blu-Ray players and online updates. It was a thought that never once occurred to me, considering previous home video machines didn't need updates. |
||||||
peno
Posts: 349 |
|
|||||
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 |
||||||
Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
Posts: 7580 Location: Wales |
|
|||||
I've a couple like that - Sol Bianca (the UK sub-only version) had hard subs, and there was this "data blast" of sketches at the end where half of the "pages" were broken because they were blended over two DVD frames. The aforementioned Cardcaptors DVDs made this obvious by stuffing the contents of two tapes on each disc and having two menu buttons, one to play the first tape's worth of episodes and I'll let you guess what the other one was for.
What they heck happened to Allen after he transferred from ADV to Funimation? He just seemed to disappear off the face of the internet. |
||||||
leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
|
|||||
Interesting. Nowadays, as far as anime on disk goes, I only ever see dub-only discs if it's something aimed at kids like Bakugan or something, and I see sub-only discs if it's a series without an English dub at all. Whjen the Xbox 360 and PS3 were both new, it was hard for me to figure out which one was more successful. I always had the impression that the Xbox 360 had the edge in popularity due to all of the Halo junkies I encountered. Then again, I lived in a town where it took about two years for the Wii to start catching on. Nintendo's aggressive marketing campaign utterly failed to reach this town, and people didn't buy the Wii because most people had never heard of it. |
||||||
peno
Posts: 349 |
|
|||||
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.
|
||||||
Alan45
Village Elder
Posts: 9951 Location: Virginia |
|
|||||
leafy sea dragon wrote:
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. |
||||||
dragonrider_cody
Posts: 2541 |
|
|||||
[quote="peno"]
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 [/quote 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. |
||||||
leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
|
|||||
Oh, I get what you mean now. From what I hear, the Wii was going to have an HD-DVD add-on too made by Panasonic, but I never actually saw it on sale. Now that makes more sense about Blu-Ray's victory over the HD-DVD. Definitely, I can see how one format being a lot more easily available than the other can give it a huge advantage. It seems similar to what happened with VHS vs. Betamax.
Yeah, I am definitely aware of them. My response was actually with a tinge of confusion because I encounter dub-haters here and there and so I feel the sub vs. dub wars a lot.
Is that the case? 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. |
||||||
EricJ2
Posts: 4016 |
|
|||||
Actually--around the time that the handwriting was on the wall for HDDVD, after Paramount's "ace in the hole" Transformers release turned out not to have enough room on the disk for home-theater audio, thus clinching Blu-ray's advantage--Warner had openly been stringing Toshiba along just long enough to try and perfect that dual-format hybrid disk they would corner the markets with. The only reason they dropped HD was that the "Total" disk simply wasn't happening, and they just couldn't make the darn thing. So, with its usefulness now ended, goodbye Warner HDDVD. It came as a historic shock to Toshiba: They had been backed into a corner by the entire industry, as every other studio had gone Blu except for Paramount (who had been "bribed" to switch to HDDVD with needed funds to create the Star Trek:TOS restoration) and Universal, who was in Microsoft's pocket at the time (and since the issue came down to movie coding, Microsoft had their horse running in HDDVD, and a more than vested interest in seeing who won). Toshiba's lone protest was that Warner's big industry-influential "loyalty" was clearly their greatest friend through thick and thin, and when, on January 3 2008, that didn't turn out to be true, Toshiba didn't take it well. The word "Jilted" may certainly be applied. Basically, know those "Angry Hitler reacts" YouTube videos that all the young kids are into? The very, very first video ever made was not about Adolf "getting mad and shouting dirty words, huhuh"--It was about Toshiba's reaction. You HAD to have specifically seen the last half hour of "Downfall" (as Adolf learns in his hideaway bunker that his one "loyal" strategic general has abandoned his post against the advancing Russian front) to truly get the joke, and then, it was so, so richly and hilariously true. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frZTf3mX97c (Some NSFW language) ...Now d'you get it? |
||||||
Aphasial
Exempt from Grammar Rules
Posts: 122 Location: San Diego, CA |
|
|||||
It's pretty generally established that the PS3 was one of the big reasons for the format's success. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-definition_optical_disc_format_war#Deciding_factors
To some extent, it's a self-fulfilling prophesy, however. If more units are out there, people will buy more movies for that format, and studios will follow where the money is. I remember several (and probably still have a few) Blu-Rays movie releases coming with big stickers on the cover about how it was "Playable on the PlayStation 3!". That's a lot of free advertising to go back into the combine. The Xbox 360 definitely succeeded early on in the *game console* competition, but I remember several friends who had a PS3 solely because it was the cheapest, most-recommended Blu-Ray player out there, and who basically didn't game at all. (I'd say that this probably has been a factor in the PS3's "long tail" success as a console, though. It's easy to sell someone up on trying out a game you're recommending to them if they already have a piece of hardware they can use it on.) |
||||||
leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
|
|||||
Hmm, you're right--in that town, there was a LOT more interest in movies than video games, and almost all of the success of the PS3 early on was due to its Blu-Ray capabilities. I'd bet the "Playable on PlayStation 3!" tags helped with that.
|
||||||
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
||
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group