Lutga said:
Personally I kind of feel people get too hung up on quality these days - yes of course when you're parting with your hard earned cash you want to be happy with what you're getting and want to see the show in the best possible way.
But equally, I feel uneasy when more time is spent picking over the minutest of details with the product than the show itself. Sometimes I just feel like 'When did we stop caring about the show itself?' Or'Whats wrong with just watching it?' - let's face it, a release will never be perfect, there'll always be something that could have been better.
For me, in the four hours I get between getting home from work and going to sleep, I just want to sit down and enjoy a show - I don't want to stress and pine and pick through a piece of packaging or bitrates with a fine tooth comb. For me, life is too short for that stuff.
It's not about picking over details. I have the original Cowboy Bebop discs from AL and never replaced them (though I was very grateful AL offered) for the small video glitch because I wouldn't notice it. I was disappointed but didn't kick up a stink about the low quality spliced footage in Gurren Lagann (mainly disappointed that we weren't told in advance).
But I pay a ridiculous amount of money each month to Sky for my Sky+ subscription, I pay for Crunchyroll, I pay for Netflix, and I pay for other services. Because I want to watch stuff in HD, because it's a standard way to consume entertainment. Do I have old shows on DVD that I would still watch? Yes. But if they're available in HD I'd rather watch that. I don't watch normal TV shows illegally from those tube sites because I don't want to watch my TV in crappy quality when I know I can watch it in HD. Good for you that you're happy with it, I have nothing against you for it and I wouldn't go around telling you "you MUST watch in HD". So the fact that you and a couple of others are making out that we are nit-picking because we want to watch stuff in HD, when it's available in HD, is just ridiculous.
If I wanted to "just watch it" I could go on Google and quite quickly and easily find a shoddy quality version and watch it. Then why buy it at all? But I am
collecting it, so of course I want the best possible version. And no I don't accept "a release will never be perfect". If someone wants me to spend money on their products, then I expect the product to be the best quality it can be. If we all took this view, we'd still have DVDs that look like crap, with hard-coded signs and song subs, no chapter stops, etc, like the early DVD releases had.
To trivialise wanting a show in HD, when a HD version exists, as "pick[ing] through a piece of packaging or bitrates with a fine tooth comb" is ridiculous. That is not what any of us are saying we do at all.
I feel bad now because I feel like I have partly derailed this thread. I am glad that Gundam is coming back here, and I am super-glad it is through AL. But I am not glad that shows that have BD releases elsewhere are coming here DVD only. I never will be, and I'm not going to buy them if they are, it's as simple as that. I just wanted to make my stance clear in the thread for the distributor since they actually read it.