Forum - View topicAnime: The Blu-ray problem.
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Ranma87
Posts: 170 |
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When companies went to publish anime on DVD there were little fears on either side of reverse importing. Japanese DVD's rarely if ever continued English tracks or subs, and while English releases often included Japanese tracks, the region lock between the United States and Japan prevented the majority of Japanese from importing English releases.
However with Bluray that distinction is gone, US released Blurays will play in Japanese Bluray players with ease and vice versa, the barrier is down... Did the BDA ever even think to take this into consideration when they designed Bluray region codes? One thing that worried me was the recent Blu-ray release of Kurokami, while the DVDs are dual audio Bandai released the Bluray as “dub only” due to fear of reverse importation. Not that I necessarily mind but is this a sign of things to come? Are companies going to start releasing “dub only” Bluray releases just because they fear Japanese customers are going to import US releases because they are a lot cheaper? Not that I necessarily mind because I typically only watch the dub anyway but I know there is a lot of anime fans out there who will not be happy if this comes to be. |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18356 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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I don't see this as a big concern. None of the other anime released so far on Blu Ray have done this, so there definitely isn't an overall trend in that direction.
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Ranma87
Posts: 170 |
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Mr Adventure
Posts: 1598 |
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It's certainly a concern. I love anime on Blu, but it started trending toward dub only I'd be pretty pissed. I don't listen to dubs. But yes, the fact that North America and Japan share region encoding was certainly a strange choice. On one hand it's great for cusumers (especially those who have always imported new and rare Japan releases) but for studios it just seems to be a giant hassle of coordiating releases to minimize reverse importation.
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Zin5ki
Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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Note that Japan and Europe fall within the same DVD region, and that this seemingly advantageous state of affairs has not provided any noticeable benefits in our case. The occasional Japanese DVD release includes English subtitles —such as Pale Cocoon amongst others— but matters such as price and importation fees still constitute an effective barrier. Considering that standard European and American prices are generally lower than Japanese ones, the ineffectiveness of Europe being in the same DVD region as Japan ought to be indicative of the same being the case for America regarding Blu-ray. |
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Ranma87
Posts: 170 |
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mdo7
Posts: 6359 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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I don't see the concern if Japan reverse import anime. The Japanese DVD are more expensive and also it turns out they like our dubalso. That could be another reason why we're seeing reverse import. Bandai wants to do a "dub only" Blu-Ray/DVD thing. If they do that, then people in USA will get mad and wants to watch the fansubs and that's not what we want, is it? Just let the Japanese fan do what they want, buy it on their DVD or import ours. They get both benefits like it's cheaper and they get to adore our English dub, and also our English dub anime has been used to help the Japanese learn English. So I don't see the problem. It's a win-win situation for Japan and USA.
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walw6pK4Alo
Posts: 9322 |
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The issue is that if they're not spending 4000 yen on Japanese DVDs which have only 2-3 (possibly 4) episodes, then the studios and distribution companies lose a lot of revenue. They make far more money off of selling expensive DVDs in Japan than they do with licensing it off, if it's a good and well-liked anime. But we do have plenty of shows whose sales were barely triple digits, so a licensing cost might be beneficial there. |
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mdo7
Posts: 6359 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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I can understand what you're saying. Well I'm not arguing on that one. Japanese fan can decide how they want to buy the anime, either by importing the US DVD, or buy the expensive DVD in Japan. 2-3 episode per DVD where USA anime DVD have like 4-5 episode. I can understand why Japanese fan would import our DVD (and end up liking our English dub). Question: Why in Japan, they put 2-3 episode on DVD instead of 4-6 episode as we do in USA per DVD? |
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Ranma87
Posts: 170 |
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In Japan they think buying anime should be the equivalent of paying you're mortgage the prices are just ridiculous.
The prices of Anime in the states falls more in line with that of movies and boxed TV sets sold here, meaning far more affordable than Japanese releases could ever hope to be. |
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Treiz
Posts: 121 |
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anime is FAR too niche a market to play any kind of role in the Bluray forum's decisions. If the anime companies think it will be a problem they won't release it on bluray. As it stands I doubt that companies in Japan would loose too much to reverse importing, illegal downloading is a FAR more serious problem, though not for long I think once these new torrent and download scanners get pushed onto the ISPs.
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2010/05/10/new-anti-piracy-software-scans-and-blocks-illegal-content-from-d/ |
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P€|\||§_|\/|ast@
Posts: 3498 Location: IN your nightmares |
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In the days of DVD only, one of the reasons why region codes were set up (with different region codes for the U.S. and Japan) was to discourage importation into Japan that would subvert internal revenue from foreign made movies (think Hollywood blockbusters). The barrier between Europe and Japan was already established with the NTSC/PAL difference. It really worked in favor for the U.S. (since they orchestrated the region coding system in the first place) for several reasons:
1) Revenue from licensing costs of American films substitute for the loss of international distribution due to the region barrier. 2) The fact that DVD prices in Japan are higher, without region codes retailers in Japan would suffer, even with the costs of importing western films incurred by individual consumers. But this really has no effect on U.S. sales. 3) Think of the message garnered from assigning U.S. (and Canada) #1 and Japan #2? None of these objectives pertain directly to the importation of DVD from Japan to the U.S. so how is removing this barrier (with the onset of BluRay) a problem in terms of Japan -> U.S. importation? The particular concern here seems to stem from discouraging the production of dual audio BluRays as a method to keep American releases out of Japan. Trust me that was never a concern with DVDs, not because they had a different region code, domestic (in Japan) just has a much more marketable appeal than importing. The difference is so significant (and still is) that cost and region codes were only a minor deterrent to prevent importation. If this weren't true, the same region encoding would exist in BluRays as well. The DVD mistake was evident enough to scrap it in favor of the current BluRay arrangement. Last edited by P€|\||§_|\/|ast@ on Sat Jun 12, 2010 3:27 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Ranma87
Posts: 170 |
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P€|\||§_|\/|ast@
Posts: 3498 Location: IN your nightmares |
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Ranma87 read my amended last paragraph in my post above (I decided not to go into the piracy debate). The gist of it is the marketability difference = primary reason why cheaper U.S. versions don't encourage their sales much so region coding is pointless.
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eyeresist
Posts: 995 Location: a 320x240 resolution igloo (Sydney) |
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I don't think region coding was a big factor in reducing US DVD imports to Japan. Getting a region-free player isn't hard, expecially in such a tech-savvy country as Japan. I think the barrier was more cultural - the problem of navigating English language sites (if trying to buy it themselves), and having a package with only English language writing on it (as well as the menus). Faced with that, they'd probably go straight for a Chinese bootleg, which would be even cheaper.
I doubt Blu-ray will change this situation. |
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