News
Urusei Yatsura DVD Status Update
posted on
Robert Woodhead, CEO of AnimEigo sent out an e-mail Saturday afternoon about some problems in the UY DVDs.
Specifically, some discs contained "bubbles" and others defects resembling "coffee cup rings".
If you have these (or any other problems) with any UY DVDs, please send an e-mail to uydvdfix (at animeigo.com). Please include your name. and which DVD contains the error.
If you haven't recieved your DVDs in the mail yet, just sit tight until you recieve the DVDs. Shipping is expected to resume August 1st.
--------------
From the AnimEigo DVD Mailing List:
Currently there are two types of UY DVD purchasers - those that are
already received their set, and those that are wondering just when
their set is finally going to arrive.
We are writing to both groups to explain what is going on.
A couple of weeks ago, we received all the UY DVD sets and started
shipping them to you, our most valued customers. Shortly thereafter,
we started getting scattered reports of unusual defects in some of
the discs. These defects included visible "bubbles" or "craters"
inside the DVD, as well as faint "coffee cup rings" on the discs.
You can see some snapshots of these defects at the following urls:
http://www.animeigo.com/images-jpg/dvd/dvdbubbles.jpg
http://www.animeigo.com/images-jpg/dvd/dvdring.jpg
Not all the discs had these problems; they seemed to be random. One
person might get a perfect set of discs; another might get 1
weird-looking disc; and the next person might get 2 or 3. To make it
even more interesting, often discs with quite visible defects would
work perfectly in the customer's DVD player (but not, perhaps, in
another player). This is a tribute to the robustness of DVD error
correction.
After much detective work by the disc manufacturer, they have
determined that what happened was that somehow, the machine that
checks discs for defects before they are packaged failed, and it
wasn't rejecting ANY discs. So discs that should have been rejected
were in fact included in the final product.
Upon learning this, we immediately ceased shipping the UY DVD box set
and returned all our remaining unshipped sets to the manufacturer.
The DVDs are being checked, replaced as needed, and will be shipped
back to us as soon as possible. We expect to resume shipping around
August 1st.
Thus, if you haven't gotten your UY DVD set yet, it's because we
haven't shipped it due to this manufacturing error.
Next, for those who have already received your UY DVD Set, we have
arranged for the manufacturer to provide us with replacement discs.
Please check your discs and if you have any that exhibit the
anomalies described above, email us at
mailto:uydvdfix@AnimEigo.com
Please tell us your name., and which DVD in the set need replacing.
We MAY ask you to send the discs back in (in which case we'll pay the
postage).
PLEASE DO NOT RESPOND DIRECTLY TO THIS EMAIL TO LET US KNOW WHAT YOU
NEED. Please use the uydvdfix@AnimEigo.com email address.
Please DO NOT DISCARD your packaging! We will be sending replacement
discs only, not replacement cases, liner notes, etc.
If your disc has only a few bubbles or a very faint ring, and plays
perfectly in your player, it's probably not worth getting the
replacement. We will honor replacement requests at least until the
end of 2000, in case you change your mind or a disc suddenly starts
misbehaving.
As you might imagine, we are rather upset that after all the paranoid
checking we did while authoring UY-DVD, a manufacturing error has
caused this problem. We are instituting procedures to spot check new
pressings of all future DVDs so as to prevent this from happening
again.
Finally, while we have your attention, we'd like to clear up some
minor areas of confusion about the DVD set.
Q : What's with the "flippy" plastic insert in DVD cases 1, 3 and 5?
A : That's so buyers with little space can "double-up" their DVDs and store their UY set in half the space. With 50 TV DVD volumes coming out, it adds up!
Q : How come the dub of episodes 1 and 2 isn't on the volume 1 DVD?
A : Well, since everyone says they hated it, we figured that the bits would be better spent on maximizing the video quality. Since UY was made in the early 80's and transferred to video using older analog technology, every bit counts. That's why the menus are simple, as well.
Q : Some of the episodes in Volume 4 don't look quite as good as the rest of the DVDs. Why?
A : When the original transfers were done, those episodes were transferred in a different way, and the quality wasn't quite as good. Some NTSC artifacts crept in. We did some work to minimize them, but you'll still see some "rainbow" artifacts. All the Japanese releases have the same problem. You can minimize them by turning down your brightness and contrast settings a bit (most people have them cranked way too high). Please note that this is not an authoring problem, but a consequence of the original source materials we were provided with.
Q : I have a very old DVD player and when it reaches the end of a title, it just hangs instead of going to the menu (or the next episode).
A : Early DVD players didn't quite implement the DVD spec correctly, so they often screw up on more "challenging" DVDs. We authored our DVDs so that each episode (and the opening copyright screens) is a different title, which keeps the chapter marks in each title consistant (1 = op song, etc). If your DVD player seems to hang when going between titles, hitting MENU will get you to the menu.
Q : What's with the morse code subtitle track on volume 1?
A : We're weird. But you already knew that.
Sincerely,
Robert Woodhead,
CEO, AnimEigo.
Specifically, some discs contained "bubbles" and others defects resembling "coffee cup rings".
If you have these (or any other problems) with any UY DVDs, please send an e-mail to uydvdfix (at animeigo.com). Please include your name. and which DVD contains the error.
If you haven't recieved your DVDs in the mail yet, just sit tight until you recieve the DVDs. Shipping is expected to resume August 1st.
--------------
From the AnimEigo DVD Mailing List:
Currently there are two types of UY DVD purchasers - those that are
already received their set, and those that are wondering just when
their set is finally going to arrive.
We are writing to both groups to explain what is going on.
A couple of weeks ago, we received all the UY DVD sets and started
shipping them to you, our most valued customers. Shortly thereafter,
we started getting scattered reports of unusual defects in some of
the discs. These defects included visible "bubbles" or "craters"
inside the DVD, as well as faint "coffee cup rings" on the discs.
You can see some snapshots of these defects at the following urls:
http://www.animeigo.com/images-jpg/dvd/dvdbubbles.jpg
http://www.animeigo.com/images-jpg/dvd/dvdring.jpg
Not all the discs had these problems; they seemed to be random. One
person might get a perfect set of discs; another might get 1
weird-looking disc; and the next person might get 2 or 3. To make it
even more interesting, often discs with quite visible defects would
work perfectly in the customer's DVD player (but not, perhaps, in
another player). This is a tribute to the robustness of DVD error
correction.
After much detective work by the disc manufacturer, they have
determined that what happened was that somehow, the machine that
checks discs for defects before they are packaged failed, and it
wasn't rejecting ANY discs. So discs that should have been rejected
were in fact included in the final product.
Upon learning this, we immediately ceased shipping the UY DVD box set
and returned all our remaining unshipped sets to the manufacturer.
The DVDs are being checked, replaced as needed, and will be shipped
back to us as soon as possible. We expect to resume shipping around
August 1st.
Thus, if you haven't gotten your UY DVD set yet, it's because we
haven't shipped it due to this manufacturing error.
Next, for those who have already received your UY DVD Set, we have
arranged for the manufacturer to provide us with replacement discs.
Please check your discs and if you have any that exhibit the
anomalies described above, email us at
mailto:uydvdfix@AnimEigo.com
Please tell us your name., and which DVD in the set need replacing.
We MAY ask you to send the discs back in (in which case we'll pay the
postage).
PLEASE DO NOT RESPOND DIRECTLY TO THIS EMAIL TO LET US KNOW WHAT YOU
NEED. Please use the uydvdfix@AnimEigo.com email address.
Please DO NOT DISCARD your packaging! We will be sending replacement
discs only, not replacement cases, liner notes, etc.
If your disc has only a few bubbles or a very faint ring, and plays
perfectly in your player, it's probably not worth getting the
replacement. We will honor replacement requests at least until the
end of 2000, in case you change your mind or a disc suddenly starts
misbehaving.
As you might imagine, we are rather upset that after all the paranoid
checking we did while authoring UY-DVD, a manufacturing error has
caused this problem. We are instituting procedures to spot check new
pressings of all future DVDs so as to prevent this from happening
again.
Finally, while we have your attention, we'd like to clear up some
minor areas of confusion about the DVD set.
Q : What's with the "flippy" plastic insert in DVD cases 1, 3 and 5?
A : That's so buyers with little space can "double-up" their DVDs and store their UY set in half the space. With 50 TV DVD volumes coming out, it adds up!
Q : How come the dub of episodes 1 and 2 isn't on the volume 1 DVD?
A : Well, since everyone says they hated it, we figured that the bits would be better spent on maximizing the video quality. Since UY was made in the early 80's and transferred to video using older analog technology, every bit counts. That's why the menus are simple, as well.
Q : Some of the episodes in Volume 4 don't look quite as good as the rest of the DVDs. Why?
A : When the original transfers were done, those episodes were transferred in a different way, and the quality wasn't quite as good. Some NTSC artifacts crept in. We did some work to minimize them, but you'll still see some "rainbow" artifacts. All the Japanese releases have the same problem. You can minimize them by turning down your brightness and contrast settings a bit (most people have them cranked way too high). Please note that this is not an authoring problem, but a consequence of the original source materials we were provided with.
Q : I have a very old DVD player and when it reaches the end of a title, it just hangs instead of going to the menu (or the next episode).
A : Early DVD players didn't quite implement the DVD spec correctly, so they often screw up on more "challenging" DVDs. We authored our DVDs so that each episode (and the opening copyright screens) is a different title, which keeps the chapter marks in each title consistant (1 = op song, etc). If your DVD player seems to hang when going between titles, hitting MENU will get you to the menu.
Q : What's with the morse code subtitle track on volume 1?
A : We're weird. But you already knew that.
Sincerely,
Robert Woodhead,
CEO, AnimEigo.
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