Anger, hate, despair and the UK anime market...

[Aion]

The difference in quality and effort put into American box set releases compared to what we get is astounding - We pay £40-50 for cack M-lock cases, they pay £20-30ish for sexy looking slimpak box sets. How is that right? We get low quality stuff that costs around double what the yanks pay!

I've now got two ADV slimpak releases and one Geneon - Chrno Crusade, Get Backers and Gungrave. Gungrave was expensive, the other two were dirt cheap, one being £21.29 and the other around £32, both including the silly DVD Pacific box set shipping charges in the price. They look excellent, take up less shelf space and don't look at all cheap. I'd be buying them 24/7 if the UK and US were equal.

Now, the important part: Who wants to join in with my slimpak box set lovin'? *goes back to stroking his new Get Backers: Season 1 set*

 

[Fudce]

There are several differences with UK and US box sets, and unfortunatly the US and UK aren't equal, so we don't get equal treatment.

ADV UK have been asked about thinpaks quite a bit, and recently they have changed to M-lock cases over the old style brick collections. The M-lock cases are apparantly more popular than thinpak cases over here, and also they are cheaper to manufacture.
As for why we don't just get the same "stripped extras thinpak" releases that America gets? ADV UK would actually have to charge more for releases with stripped extras, due to the extra cost of submitting the new discs through the BBFC.
Finally the price. The box sets are still sold at a discount, £70 RRP for a 7dvd set which would have cost £140 to buy at RRP for the seven single volumes, and that is the more expensive sets! The £30 26 episode boxes that America get wouldn't be financially viable over here. It's not as if they don't want to release cheaper boxes, they'd love to lower prices, as it'd get more anime fans interested in buying the DVDs, but at the moment (things are changing, slowly) it just isn't going to happen.

 

[Gawyn]

Also worth noting is that recently MVM have been releasing some of their boxed sets as thinpaks. These, by nature of our economy versus that of the US, are not as cheap as the US ones (with a strong pound and a weak dollar this is going to be true for quite some time) but they are at least one example over here. Personally I am not a fan of thinkpak. They always look a bit cheap to me but again that is personal opinion.

 

[KingJimmeh]

Finally the price. The box sets are still sold at a discount, £70 RRP for a 7dvd set which would have cost £140 to buy at RRP for the seven single volumes, and that is the more expensive sets! The £30 26 episode boxes that America get wouldn't be financially viable over here. It's not as if they don't want to release cheaper boxes, they'd love to lower prices, as it'd get more anime fans interested in buying the DVDs, but at the moment (things are changing, slowly) it just isn't going to happen.

This is one of those annoying catch-22 situations. As long as it is cheaper to buy from the US, that's what people likely will do, this unfortunatly costs the UK market and prevents them from reducing their price...

 

[melonpan]

both including the silly DVD Pacific box set shipping charges in the price.

What "silly" DVD Pacific shipping charge? As far as I have seen, the shipping for full boxsets is the same as artbox editions. So around £3-4.

As for why we don't just get the same "stripped extras thinpak" releases that America gets? ADV UK would actually have to charge more for releases with stripped extras, due to the extra cost of submitting the new discs through the BBFC.

Or they could use their heads and re-use the same discs from the individual releases.

 

[Aion]

What "silly" DVD Pacific shipping charge? As far as I have seen, the shipping for full boxsets is the same as artbox editions. So around £3-4..

£4.29 shipping for 5-disc thinpak set (using Int. Surface Mail!!!) is expensive. I'd only think of that as good it if they marked down all orders sent to the UK over £18 by default.

VG+ charge £3.50 for shipping a single PS2 game. I accept this because A) they mark down by default and b) they're always fast, sometimes getting your order from Canada is 2 days.

 

[Gawyn]

As for why we don't just get the same "stripped extras thinpak" releases that America gets? ADV UK would actually have to charge more for releases with stripped extras, due to the extra cost of submitting the new discs through the BBFC.

Or they could use their heads and re-use the same discs from the individual releases.[/quote]
That is what they do with the M-locks and what MVM did with their thinpak releases. What Fudce was saying that if they did the thinpak in the style of the US releases, with the extras stripped, they would have to resubmit them.

 

[melonpan]

As for why we don't just get the same "stripped extras thinpak" releases that America gets? ADV UK would actually have to charge more for releases with stripped extras, due to the extra cost of submitting the new discs through the BBFC.

Or they could use their heads and re-use the same discs from the individual releases.

That is what they do with the M-locks and what MVM did with their thinpak releases. What Fudce was saying that if they did the thinpak in the style of the US releases, with the extras stripped, they would have to resubmit them.

I meant if they were to do thinpak's, they could just re-use the same discs, which is what MVM is doing, ADV should do the same.

 

[ConanThe3rd]

Finally the price. The box sets are still sold at a discount, £70 RRP for a 7dvd set which would have cost £140 to buy at RRP for the seven single volumes, and that is the more expensive sets! The £30 26 episode boxes that America get wouldn't be financially viable over here. It's not as if they don't want to release cheaper boxes, they'd love to lower prices, as it'd get more anime fans interested in buying the DVDs, but at the moment (things are changing, slowly) it just isn't going to happen.

This is one of those annoying catch-22 situations. As long as it is cheaper to buy from the US, that's what people likely will do, this unfortunatly costs the UK market and prevents them from reducing their price...

Well, it's simple, realy, Untill they get the balls to release it £10 a pop, I'll stick to the £10 a pop US releases.

 

[Gawyn]

Finally the price. The box sets are still sold at a discount, £70 RRP for a 7dvd set which would have cost £140 to buy at RRP for the seven single volumes, and that is the more expensive sets! The £30 26 episode boxes that America get wouldn't be financially viable over here. It's not as if they don't want to release cheaper boxes, they'd love to lower prices, as it'd get more anime fans interested in buying the DVDs, but at the moment (things are changing, slowly) it just isn't going to happen.

This is one of those annoying catch-22 situations. As long as it is cheaper to buy from the US, that's what people likely will do, this unfortunatly costs the UK market and prevents them from reducing their price...

Well, it's simple, realy, Untill they get the balls to release it £10 a pop, I'll stick to the £10 a pop US releases.

Balls has nothing to do with it and economics has everything to do with it. They would not get twice or more sales if they released discs at £10 per volume and many volume 1s sell at a loss even as it stands. It is naive to think that they are releasing at such a markup out of some kind of malice or scam. The anime market is simply not big enough to handle that kind of price. Even Hollywood blockbuster releases get marked up at higher prices than that and they sell a significant more amount than anime is ever likely to.

 

[ConanThe3rd]

Well then, ta than, I have my DVD player, it plays import DVDs, I'll see you with a better bank balance then.

And I didn't call it a malice or scam, I called it lilly-livered.