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Answerman - What Determines Whether An Older Show Should Be Released as SD-BD?

SD-BD has its disadvantages too. They're very difficult to produce, with as many moving parts as 8 or more regular discs.

(Some of my early SD-BDs had compatibility issues with Playstation 4s, but once I upgraded my authoring software that wasn't a problem anymore.)

so it's likely a case of the Japanese companies being stingy & not giving Maiden Japan & Hidive HD masters. I'm still going to buy Ideon regardless, but this is an odd situation, nonetheless.

Quote:

(Some of my early SD-BDs had compatibility issues with Playstation 4s, but once I upgraded my authoring software that wasn't a problem anymore.)

Were these released? Or did you find out during production?

Samurai Pizza Cats, Wizard of Oz & Fist of the North Star are the discs in question.

But what really P*sses me off is stuff like Ideon getting an SD-BD. It does have a Japanese Blu-ray, which is really nice looking- Bandai Visual spares no expense on their restorations and encoding. I would rather have a compressed BD with 13 episodes per disc (for a total of 3 discs, 4/5 if you count the films) than SD-BD here because it was HD Native to begin with.

Justin wrote:

However, I'm sorry to say that for the DVD hold-outs, the war has already been lost.

Surely the final battle won't conclude until there is a way to overcome regional restrictions that is as effective on BD as it is on DVD. The industry itself has been outright unsporting to this end.

But what really P*sses me off is stuff like Ideon getting an SD-BD. It does have a Japanese Blu-ray, which is really nice looking- Bandai Visual spares no expense on their restorations and encoding. I would rather have a compressed BD with 13 episodes per disc (for a total of 3 discs, 4/5 if you count the films) than SD-BD here because it was HD Native to begin with.

Ideon is odd, though, because there is an HD-BD release in Japan, but apparently Hidive's streams are also SD, so it's likely a case of the Japanese companies being stingy & not giving Maiden Japan & Hidive HD masters.

Some of my early SD-BDs had compatibility issues with Playstation 4s, but once I upgraded my authoring software that wasn't a problem anymore.

I can see it now.
Detective Conan on SD-BD.
100 episodes per set.

Your move, Discotek.

Shades of the "blue tint" Layzner and (Giant Gorg?) masters from Sunrise that were reported back in the day.

It seems they already are for a few upcoming releases. I have Zillion and A Sister's All You Need both as BluRay + Digital only in my pre-orders, thought that coudl change. And I have some other Funi preorders that clearly will include a DVD still.

SD-BDs are awesome if you're weird like me and still keep a CRT around, just put them into a PS3 hooked up to one and you got a 1/3 of Fist of the North Star or both Eat-Man shows on one disc without any upscaling.

The whole Ideon situation is pretty disappointing though, the show has an absolutely gorgeous BD remaster in Japan. I'm going to give Maiden Japan the benefit of the doubt and assume they just don't have access to the HD materials, but I hope this doesn't become the norm for niche series that DO have good HD masters (a trash upscale from Japan being passed up in favor of an SD-BD release is fine by me).