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Madman to "Restart" Australian Dragon Ball Z Release

An Assistant Brand Manager at Australia's Madman Entertainment posted the following Dragon Ball Z release details on the company's forum:

SURPRISE! We would like to formally announce that we will be redoing the entire Dragon Ball Z series again, presenting them in the newly remastered widescreen format as announced recently by Funimation.

WHAT? - Yes, you heard it right, after some careful consideration and forward planning, we have decided that in order to hopefully in the long run lessen the confusion of the DVD Release of Dragon Ball Z we have decided to restart over and release it in the new format. It will be presented for the first time:

UNCUT 3 Audio tracks featuring Japanese, English with English Score and English with Japanese Score, something we have not been able to do at all. This also means that for the first time in Australia, ALL seasons of Dragon Ball Z will be presented in both English and Japanese, a much requested feature from fans for many years.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN WITH THE CURRENT SETS? They will continue to be available on the market until such a time that we have released the season we are replacing it with. From that point on the older sets will be discontinued and go out of print.

PRICING We will be releasing these new sets for the new low price of $59.95 and will also be in a Fat-Pack Packaging from the day of release.

BUT YOU SAID.... Yes, we did indeed state that we would only release Season 1 parts 2 and 3 in the new wide screen formats only, but we figured that we might as well redo the entire series while we are at it. We had originally intended on re-releasing the currently available sets as Fat-Packs, and after some careful considerations we thought "might as well" and offer a new product, discounting the price at the same time presenting DBZ for the first time in it's entireity in English AND Japanese plus some fancy features as well.

THE WIDESCREEN ISSUE. This has been a much debated and talked about subject. It will still continue to be a topic of debate for many years to come and here's what we can establish. The newly remastered sets are sourced from Japanese film stock i.e. Film reels like those you see at cinemas. They have been digitized, cleaned up and captured at 24 frames a second in 1080p. It is then mastered down to a standard definition 480p format suitable for viewing on regular DVDs, this also means that these new sets will be PRESENTED IN A TRUE PAL FORMAT, something that is unprecedented for such a long TV Anime series. You do in some cases lose some vertical image, BUT you now also gain horizontal footage that has never been seen before. While, we would have ultimately been happier with a 4:3 release, this is out of our control and is a decision that FUNimation has made but will present some interesting ways to view DBZ.

BUT I'M STILL NOT HAPPY! We do understand that you may be fustrated that you now have yet ANOTHER set of DBZ DVDs to buy, but we believe that fans will utlimately in the long run be happier with this choice that we have made, by doing this there is now much more benefit for the fans of the series, with multiple options in audio for the first time, and also a new way to see DBZ.

The first set is due for release in June containing the entire Vegeta Saga episodes 1-39 Season 2 containing episodes 40-74 (Namek and Captain Ginyu Sagas) Season 3 containing episodes 75-107 (Frieza Saga)