Really? Who thought that this was a good idea?

[Firewind]

So I was browsing through play.com earlier and saw that they sell Suzumiya Haruhi DVDs there. I'm a big fan of the show and thought it would be nice to be able to watch it on an actual TV screen instead of in either squint-o-vision or "oh dear lord my eyes are hurting o-vision" on my laptop because the episodes I downloaded like to turn into pixelated messes if I maximise them on my laptop but stay in a tiny box smaller than a DS screen if I don't.

So I checked the prices for the DVDs and surely enough they cost a lot. They aren't expensive expensive but to a college student where every penny counts I did recoil a little when I saw the prices,

Play.com (UK) : The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya: Vol.1 : DVD - Free Delivery
Play.com (UK) : The Melancoly of Haruhi Suzumiya: Vol.2 : DVD - Free Delivery
Play.com (UK) : The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya Vol.3 : DVD - Free Delivery
Play.com (UK) : The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya: Vol.4 : DVD - Free Delivery

But then in the list I saw a complete collection DVD which would be considerable cheaper than buying all of the volumes. But then I saw a message in the item description

Region 1 DVD - Will only play on North American Region 1 or multi-region DVD players.

Whoever thought that would really be a good idea? It basically means that it would be cheaper for my to buy an American DVD player and that one DVD set then it would for me to buy each individual volume in a format that will play on DVDs here in the UK. Well I would probably import an American DVD player if Amazon would ever ship anything larger than a toothbrush to the UK. When a site won't ship a CD to the UK because it's "too big to ship" according to the helpline you know something is up.

It doesn't even begin to make sense when you think of it. Selling Region 1 DVDs in the UK. How many people in the US own a Region 2 DVD player just to watch some BBC show that hasn't had a DVD release in the US yet? Though I do have American friends in FFXI who like Doctor Who enough to do that since apparently we get the DVDs before you even get the last season's episodes (I was also shocked to hear this. We actually are getting something before the Americans ).

It might be cheaper yet for me to just import the German version of it though I'm about 4-5 years out of practise so it probably won't be worth the money.

Honestly I dread to think of how much the Lucky Star DVDs will cost if they ever come out over here (The Region 1 imports on that site cost something like £40-50 total so they will probably cost that much each when they come out here). I think I may have to sell a kidney if they do. Then again I remember having to pay £70 (about $100) for my Excel Saga DVD box set when that came out over here (and thanks to the box art make it look like I was buying a hentai series in the process) when it costs something like $70 in the US.

[Jarre]

Re: Really? Who thought that this was a good idea?

Well best thing I can say is get this [ame="http://www.amazon.co.uk/BBK-DV991-DVD-player-DivX-Xvid/dp/B0010DQ2N0/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1242039607&sr=1-2"]DVD player[/ame], good write up etc plays all regions and also as a bonus plays divx, xvids etc so you can commit to disk anything you download and watch it.

[Elwynn]

Re: Really? Who thought that this was a good idea?

Selling Region 1 DVDs in the UK. How many people in the US own a Region 2 DVD player just to watch some BBC show that hasn't had a DVD release in the US yet?

Is there anything worth watching on the BBC these days other than Doctor Who? (lol) I can get that off the internets within a few hours of broadcast anyhow.

Multi-region players are much more common outside the US (especially in the UK) because of delayed releases and such, mostly by the major movie studios. And multi-standard TVs (these will be NTSC videos, when the PAL versions would probably have been scan-converted anyhow) are much more common in Europe simply because the TV standard usage areas are so much smaller. And because of import NTSC videos.

There was some interest in region-unlocked players in the US back when DVD was new, particularly among anime fans wanting to see R2 NTSC back when things took 2-4 years to get released over here, but I just don't hear about people wanting it here these days. R1 is just where it's at. R1 gets almost everthing, and usually first. Even the Mexicans (the ones who aren't dirt poor, that is) would rather drive across the border and buy their DVDs in Texas, rather than being stuck with NTSC R4.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: Really? Who thought that this was a good idea?

Is there anything worth watching on the BBC these days other than Doctor Who? (lol) I can get that off the internets within a few hours of broadcast anyhow.

I watch quite a bit of UK shows. In fact, I'll say I that 50% of what I watch is UK. Primeval, Life on Mars (though its over), Robin Hood, Antiques Roadshow (where they have the best antiques), Ashes to Ashes, many BBS Specials (currently watching one on Henry VIII), Footballer's Wives, I Claudius, Life On Earth, Torchwood, etc etc (I d/l all my tv shows so some shows are no longer on.)

[Raydeus]

Re: Really? Who thought that this was a good idea?

Firewind, does your laptop have DVD drive? Because in that case you can simply grab the DVDs you get and convert them to avi or mkv format.

There are many programs on the internets that allow you to back up and convert, and the resulting file usually ranges from 200MB to 400MB depending on the quality you choose.

Edit > Or you can simply play them using said programs without region restrictions.

[Firewind]

Re: Really? Who thought that this was a good idea?

I have a freind ingame who actually yelled at me because it takes so long for Doctor Who to be aired over there. I think Mexico actually gets it before you. Oh and about Ashes to Ashes, the latest season of it started up over here a few weeks ago. They are pretty good sp far

Well best thing I can say is get this DVD player, good write up etc plays all regions and also as a bonus plays divx, xvids etc so you can commit to disk anything you download and watch it.

Thanks for showing me this. £70 is a lot of money for a DVD player considering you can get one from Asda for about £10-20 now but looking at all of the formats it supports it's also very tempting. I'm more of a person who downloads a show I'm interested in and then goes on to buy the DVDs if possible since I like having an actual copy of the discs. That and I trust professionally paid translators to subtitle and/or a dub show more than some random people from the internet who put up those bloody translators notes every five minutes which to me is basically thier way of saying "you can't speak Japanese so you suck baka gaijin". It's more annoying when you have to pause the show when a charater is mid sentence just to read these bloody notes.

[Feba]

Re: Really? Who thought that this was a good idea?

Now, don't go overestimating the value of paid labor. Don't forget that every single horrible Engrish you saw in a video game was done by someone paid to translate. Everything from All your Base to The Truck Have Started To Move. Professional translators can suck just as badly (and quite a few official translations do have translation notes, because there are some things you just can't translate)

You might want to look in to having someone stateside buy you a cheap little DVD player and shipping it to you, although I'm not sure how the PAL/NTSC stuff would work.

[Raydeus]

Re: Really? Who thought that this was a good idea?

Paid translators eh? There are way too many examples but the easiest would be to just watch Dattebayo's Naruto subs and then go watch the "official" ones.



PS > If you want to help the studios simply import the japanese DVDs (many include english subtitle options) and soundtrack, don't give money to all those morons who license anime just to gut it and "localize" it to make a quick buck out of people's lack of understanding of the japanese language.

[Firewind]

Re: Really? Who thought that this was a good idea?

Well there is a bit of a difference between something getting translated for a DVD release and a localisation for a TV network. Straight to DVD dubs are usually aimed at anime fans and tend to just be a direct translation released with reletively little fanfare for the anime fan.

Localisations made to be mass marketed...Well just look at some of the stuff 4Kids did

And the horrible Engrish in old video games is less to do with bad translators and more to do with very few publishers having either the financial ability to afford good translators or them simply not being able to get one who fully understands English Grammar. Technically "All your base are belong to us" is the correct translation but it's not gramatically correct.

Now video games have much larger budgets you see less blind idiot translations. I've noticed a similar thing with anime shows. Heck Lucky Star has had every single thing directly translated even if half of the jokes don't make a little bit of sense to the average person o nthe street.

I also like having an English audio option. I'm not exactly fluent in japanese here, my Japanese is frankly terrible due to me being several years out of practise and if I find myself watching something in Japanese and the subtitles are either badly translated or just not there I regularly find myself having to slow down the playback on Japanese audio tracks just to understand what is being said as the average Japanese person speaks way too fast for me to understand XD

Firewind, does your laptop have DVD drive? Because in that case you can simply grab the DVDs you get and convert them to avi or mkv format.

There are many programs on the internets that allow you to back up and convert, and the resulting file usually ranges from 200MB to 400MB depending on the quality you choose.

Edit > Or you can simply play them using said programs without region restrictions.

Sorry I missed this. I'll have to try it out though the idea of actually buying the DVDs it to to be able watch it on something other than my laptop

My rant was also about the fact that the Region 1 DVDs are considerably cheaper for no logical reason and me venting my frustration about that. You should see how much the special edition box sets cost if you want all of the extra goodies with it. I'm seriously tempted to get the Vol 2 on purely because of the brigade chief armband XD.

I mean really, it is pretty unfair that the Region 2 DVDs will total up to more that it will cost to buy the unplayable Region 1 DVDs here

[Feba]

Re: Really? Who thought that this was a good idea?

Technically "All your base are belong to us" is the correct translation

No, it's not. The correct translation would be something like "All of your bases are now under our control".

If you go through a sentence and swap everything out using a bilingual dictionary, you're not translating, you're converting. It's absolutely useless. And yes, they had limited budgets, but that doesn't mean the translations have gotten any better. They might be better at catching the errors, they might employ translators who are more specialized towards fiction writing than business documents, but so do many fan subbers.

[Jarre]

Re: Really? Who thought that this was a good idea?

I watch quite a bit of UK shows. In fact, I'll say I that 50% of what I watch is UK. Primeval, Life on Mars (though its over), Robin Hood, Antiques Roadshow (where they have the best antiques), Ashes to Ashes, many BBS Specials (currently watching one on Henry VIII), Footballer's Wives, I Claudius, Life On Earth, Torchwood, etc etc (I d/l all my tv shows so some shows are no longer on.)

an you access the BBCi player TGM?

BBC iPlayer - Home you can watch live BBC tv on that from all 4 BBC channels (BBC1, BBC2, BBC3 & BBC4) so on saturday you could watch the latest episode of Robin hood Live in HD (assuming your connection can take it) I think you can access from the US, never tried myself to be honest. you can also access all the radio stations as well including BBC7 which has a ll the classic comedy etc on i.e. Hancocks half hour, round the horn, the goons etc.

[LadyKiKi]

Re: Really? Who thought that this was a good idea?

Firewind if you didn't know VLC Player can play any region DVDs regardless of your DVD drive on your PC/laptop's region settings. Well, it worked for me on a few American DVDs I mistakenly brought off my eBay sprees. But I remember PowerDVD failed to play the DVDs and I randomly opened VLC to try and it worked.

Best to find an American DVD to test with first if you're not ready to dump money into something that might not play. But I know it does not change your DVD drive's region settings (I'm still at 4 changes. It was 4 when I brought the laptop).

[Elwynn]

Re: Really? Who thought that this was a good idea?

I also like having an English audio option. I'm not exactly fluent in japanese here, my Japanese is frankly terrible due to me being several years out of practise and if I find myself watching something in Japanese and the subtitles are either badly translated or just not there I regularly find myself having to slow down the playback on Japanese audio tracks just to understand what is being said as the average Japanese person speaks way too fast for me to understand XD

Try watching more raws. Yes, I'm serious. When some series were on that I wanted to watch badly enough not to wait two days for fansubs, I started downloading raws, and now I usually understand half of what's going on, instead of one quarter of what's going on. (lol)

My rant was also about the fact that the Region 1 DVDs are considerably cheaper for no logical reason and me venting my frustration about that.I mean really, it is pretty unfair that the Region 2 DVDs will total up to more that it will cost to buy the unplayable Region 1 DVDs here

Want to know why those R1 box sets are so cheap? It all has to do with shelf space here in the US. Because of the big boom in anime DVDs a few years ago, older titles were getting crowded off the shelf, and it was difficult to stock every volume of older titles even when they were still in print. So the anime companies started making "thin-paks", with a whole 12-26 episode series/season for a lower price, sometimes with the original discs in a box, sometimes the original discs in thin cases, sometimes thin cases with bonus materials removed. The only thing I think they did wrong was to release some of these way too soon after the original run.

Sometimes you'll see a random old-stock middle-season disc on a shelf next to a thin-pak of the series, and the thin-pak is only twice the price. But lately the old stock has been getting remaindered, and random singles show up in the $3 bins at closeout stores.

Firewind if you didn't know VLC Player can play any region DVDs regardless of your DVD drive on your PC/laptop's region settings.

In fact, the presence of VLC is now the official way that Handbrake will rip protected DVDs.

[Bassman]

Re: Really? Who thought that this was a good idea?

Bit late on this I suppose, but other than the big name (Sony etc, which can be zapped with a special remote) most cheap DVD players can be "hacked" for multi-region playback from the remote control. For that matter DVD drives in PC's are not beyond hacking (though I have never tried).

Check this page out...

DVD Hacks - UK DVD Player Hack List and Forum