UK Anime Distributor Anime Limited Discussion Thread

Seronas said:
What did Madman and Funimation do? I'm a bit out of the loop on those issues.
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Funimation changed the colour timing on Akira, made the colour more 'poppy', they also DNR'd Cowboy Bebop and then added artificial grain. Madman applied DNR to their Ghibli releases. It's not bad, but noticeable in comparison screenshots, especially on the older, film source titles.
 
Seronas said:
Do the UK releases suffer from the same issues or should I just import the US sets?
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The more recent Studiocanal releases of Ghibli titles were authored locally, and aren't affected, films like Marnie, The Wind Rises, Grave of the Fireflies, The Red Turtle. It's the ones that use Madman masters that might be cause for concern. Note that the US releases aren't perfect either. Fans have have complained in the past about Disney's subtitling, the audio, the dubs, and have hoped that GKids would fix everything, only it seems that GKids aren't fixing everything. It's six of one, half a dozen of the other...
 
Just Passing Through said:
Had a look at the check disc...

Dual layer, 42.2 GB used. Now I don't know about brightness, as I haven't seen any other version to compare. So I went to that scene, played it through... then I got close up to the TV and played it through... then I pressed pause and frame advanced through the scene... which is when I noticed that the compression is evident. I haven't yet seen the rest of the film to comment, but if you're watching it on a TV at 10 feet, then it's probably good enough to watch. If you're watching it on a laptop screen at 12 inches, your mileage may vary. But that single frame makes it look a lot worse than it actually is.
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In short, you have checked your disc and you confirmed that, that screenshot comparison is real.
Welp, time to cancel my order then.
I don't get why AL is still working with Madman, they do a uterly **** job in encoding, cost saving I suppose...
99% chances that the french release (by AL french branch) will be better since they will not use this ****** Madman encode.
 
Devastated by the quality issues on the your name front. I'll live with it for the £25 steelbook version for now but that quality on the deluxe edition is a deal breaker for me :(
 
Hanners said:
Hi folks! We were just made aware of that image comparison ourselves, but to be honest it's the first report we've heard or seen from anyone suggesting any issues, so at this stage we're not sure whether the image in question is indicative of a broader problem and certainly don't want to jump to any conclusions on that front.

Although the master used for the UK release of Your Name wasn't authored by ourselves, we'll certainly investigate more thoroughly once we're done with London Comic Con though and report back if necessary.
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Good luck with the rest of London MCM and thanks for agreeing to take a thorough look when you get back and for giving us an update - fingers crossed it's not a broader issue.

Before we all jump to conclusions - we should remember that AL replaced Cowboy Bebop discs for more minor visual glitches so I'm sure they will take the best action once they know what the rest of the master is like ^_^
 
I don't think they can afford to replace discs every time this happens, they do need to actually make some money on these projects after all.
 
qaiz said:
I don't think they can afford to replace discs every time this happens, they do need to actually make some money on these projects after all.
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Not to sound overly harsh, but if they can't afford to replace discs every time this happens, maybe they should be QCing releases a little better so this doesn't happen to begin with. If the anime community can spot flaws in your releases quickly, surely the QC team/person whose job it is to spot these issues should be able to, no?
 
Sadly a lot of home video distributors cheap out on QC. I recently paid a visit to a Dutch film distributor and the people in charge of the home video department told me the video QC is done by a computer. They only manually QC the menu, subtitles and chapter markers.
 
IncendiaryLemon said:
Not to sound overly harsh, but if they can't afford to replace discs every time this happens, maybe they should be QCing releases a little better so this doesn't happen to begin with. If the anime community can spot flaws in your releases quickly, surely the QC team/person whose job it is to spot these issues should be able to, no?
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Especially considering the heavy push they've given it over the last 12 months. Honestly, at this stage I've become sick of the constant updates and felt like their constant promotion, while understandable, at times seemed disproportionate to the point of neglect towards other catalogue titles. If this turns out to be the end result of nearly 15 months of relentless hype... damn.

I bought what turned out to be the steelbook as part of a '£10 off orders over £50' amazon promotion, back when it was £19.99, meaning it will only cost me £9.99, and even now I'm juggling whether to commit. Granted, I never fell for the buzz like some did, & am personally far more concerned about the loss of recent titles, but I know a lot of people were really excited about this. It'd be a shame to see them left so disappointed.
 
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IncendiaryLemon said:
Not to sound overly harsh, but if they can't afford to replace discs every time this happens, maybe they should be QCing releases a little better so this doesn't happen to begin with. If the anime community can spot flaws in your releases quickly, surely the QC team/person whose job it is to spot these issues should be able to, no?
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Never said otherwise, just talking about the feasibility or lack-thereof! :p
 
PilibO said:
Before we all jump to conclusions - we should remember that AL replaced Cowboy Bebop discs for more minor visual glitches so I'm sure they will take the best action once they know what the rest of the master is like ^_^
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Disk replacement on a 1000 unit run is one thing... But what kinda run would your name be? 10k? painful just thinking about it. Agree I expect them to do the right thing (whatever that may be) but it just seems such a painful result for them...
 
Hey folks,

Thought I’d chime in on this one and give some context.

== Why did we use Madman’s authoring? ==

Basically as simple as we all had short notice to make our releases and meet print demand for the release date we all had been cleared for. So we agreed a split of the work - we’d handle the book (translation and print design) and Madman would tackle authoring to make it happen.

We trust them to do the work as they do us and in fairness have never had a significant issue in the past.

== Why were examples like the ones linked not changed before release? ==

Given their high level of repute and market size in Australia, we do treat discs from Madman as ones that are pre-QC passed once spot checked for upload issues (wrong region code, bad upload by mistake etc) as we have never had cause to query it to date.

At Anime Ltd we do take these issues seriously and will examine it. What I can also say is I find it extremely unlikely these discs count as defective by any of the counts of our standards though. The key question for us during this examination will be: “Is this disappointing for us?” given we shipped a LOT of discs to reviewers and not one raised a flag to us.

== Re Deluxe ==

I’m going to be completely honest here and call this out as entitlement when people say if the disc quality is not enough to justify buying it there (aka good enough vs excellent whatever the arguments on that). The reason the Deluxe is more expensive than the other editions isn’t because of a different video quality it is because of the extras.

You should never have to pay more than the base price for a different video experience within the same medium of release (aka DVD : DVD, BD : BD, 4K BD : 4K BD).

What your money for the deluxe covers is:

A) The cost of translation and layout of the book.
B) The extra packaging (rigid case, digipack, both costing more than the steenbok)
C) The cost of the art cards inside
D) The cost of serialisation of the art card certifying the release
E) The cost of the poster that goes inside
F) The design time, cost of production, cost of royalties of the extra item to be announced soon.

All of that is for an extra £24.99 of cost (vs SRP or current price actually).

I am sure that makes me an unpopular person here but I want to call it as it is as I have been called out for that before and I listened to the arguments. You can’t have it both ways there on it.

== What next? ==

We’re going to do a full look through the master when back from MCM as it is the first time anything has been flagged on this and it’s gone out to a wide-range of reviewers.

I’d like to reassert that Madman do put a lot of care and love into their releases, rarely getting complaints themselves too from what I’ve ever seen.

Nothing is going to change just now though or in the foreseeable future on this one folks too - but we’ll do a run through of the discs and then form our own opinions. Always open to listening to fans too!

I have a few theories of my own about master material used in Japan and the rest of the world too based on the HK reviews of discs too by the by that may impact things too if I corroborate it... Appreciate everyone's passion here though and please note I am as passionate as you :).

If you do cancel your Deluxe more power to you, but note we're dangerously close to sell out on frankly the best LE release in the English speaking world of the film so there may not be a copy about later if you change your mind.

Best and speak soon!

Andrew
 
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