More Blu-ray news

[melonpan]

Bandai Japan are releasing a Yukikaze boxset, including an English dub in TrueHD format, this will be on Blu-ray, very limited, and will include many extra's.
It is from an 'upconverted source', I don't however have a clue what that means, I guess it's good though as it's 1080p.

EDIT: The bad news is. Of course this was bound to happen. It's encoded with region A only, which means it is for Japan and America. Lucky us :?

In other news, I found the sheet music for many anime's, including the Haruhi OP and ED.

These can be found here:

http://www.alphatrance.com/0engine/music/anime/

ANOTHER EDIT:
Just to make a comment on this.
It's such a shame Bandai haven't stuck to their word by saying they will do worldwide releases. It really is a great shame. Oh well, that's how things go I suppose.

UPDATE:
Just to add some information here.

Not to give any false hope, but I reported that this [Yukikaze box set] will be a Region A title (N. / S. America, Japan). I got this information from AnimeOnDVD, and there is no information to confirm that this release is not actually Region A, but all regions.
However, with the recent information on the French release of Paprika, AnimeOnDVD wrongly lists it as Region B (Europe, Africa), when it is in fact a region free release.

So one can assume that in fact this Yukikaze boxset might actually be region free.
This of course applies to all the other previously only Region A titles.

There is still hope on the Blu-ray front!

 

[Sakimori]

I hate Blu-Ray and hope it fails. Its whole new VHS vs Betamax again this time HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray. But about the region encoding i'm sure some company somewhere will create a region free Blu-Ray player. But this is all in all bad news v_v

 

[melonpan]

I hate Blu-Ray and hope it fails. Its whole new VHS vs Betamax again this time HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray. But about the region encoding i'm sure some company somewhere will create a region free Blu-Ray player. But this is all in all bad news v_v

It's just a shame Bandai lied to us. It's even more of a shame that Blu-ray is Sony's product, as Sony are selfish and will do anything to get money. It's a shame Blu-ray is better than HD-DVD, at least HD-DVD is region free.

 

[Sakimori]

I hate Blu-Ray and hope it fails. Its whole new VHS vs Betamax again this time HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray. But about the region encoding i'm sure some company somewhere will create a region free Blu-Ray player. But this is all in all bad news v_v

It's just a shame Bandai lied to us. It's even more of a shame that Blu-ray is Sony's product, as Sony are selfish and will do anything to get money. It's a shame Blu-ray is better than HD-DVD, at least HD-DVD is region free.

Yes v_v. Also Blu-Ray is so expensive.

 

[thekendyman]

It's just a shame Bandai lied to us. It's even more of a shame that Blu-ray is Sony's product, as Sony are selfish and will do anything to get money. It's a shame Blu-ray is better than HD-DVD, at least HD-DVD is region free.

Better is not always best, HD is cheaper, is not region specific and a decent HD player is hella cheaper than Blu Ray

 

[melonpan]

It's just a shame Bandai lied to us. It's even more of a shame that Blu-ray is Sony's product, as Sony are selfish and will do anything to get money. It's a shame Blu-ray is better than HD-DVD, at least HD-DVD is region free.

Better is not always best, HD is cheaper, is not region specific and a decent HD player is hella cheaper than Blu Ray

The biggest thing for me is the way the discs can be used. Blu-ray uses the best codec around, and is much bigger than HD-DVD, therefore it has potential for anime with massive bitrates and extreme quality, which is great. That sways me to Blu-ray, even though it has so many cons.

 

[Sy]

People won't be happy until they can walk into the TV and interact with movies at perfect quality.

 

[melonpan]

People won't be happy until they can walk into the TV and interact with movies at perfect quality.

They'll be happy if they get closer to the quality of the original, like with Funimation's Dragon Ball Z - Broly movies it's taken from the original film, and that's what HD does.

 

[Liquid Skin]

I'm for Blu-Ray personally, (seeing as i have a PS3 i kinda have to )

Ok I'm taking a step into the dark here seeing as i have veeeery little knowledge on such things but isnt the fundamental difference (ignoring quality, size, cost etc) between HD and Blu that Blu is technically backed by Japan with its Sony links and HD by USA with Microsoft?

So shouldnt we be rooting for Blu in this light? Seeing as how Japan pumps out the anime at least we'll get our anime that little bit quicker than waiting for it to the US to get it and if we're extra lucky, Europe? Don't eat me, this is just a shot in the dark for me.

Moreover since Blu has a larger capacity that'll mean we'll get more episodes per disc cutting down the cost in the long run? As for price wars, EVERYTHING comes down in price so the difference between Blu and HD doesnt bother me in the slightest, they'll both end up at the same price sooner or later.

 

[melonpan]

Ok I'm taking a step into the dark here seeing as i have veeeery little knowledge on such things but isnt the fundamental difference (ignoring quality, size, cost etc) between HD and Blu that Blu is technically backed by Japan with its Sony links and HD by USA with Microsoft?

The companies that are promoting/developing Blu-ray are:

Apple Inc.
Buena Vista Home Entertainment
Dell
Hewlett Packard
Hitachi
LG Electronics
Mitsubishi Electric
Panasonic (Matsushita Electric)
Pioneer Corporation
Royal Philips Electronics
Samsung Electronics
Sharp Corporation
Sony Corporation
Sun Microsystems
TDK Corporation
Thomson
Twentieth Century Fox
Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group
Warner Home Video Inc.

The companies promoting/developing HD-DVD are the members of the DVD-Forum, it is basically a continuation of DVD, this includes Sony ironically. The companies backing it now though are:

Toshiba
HP
NE C
Sanyo
Microsoft
RCA
Kenwood
Intel

Both have equal amounts of Western and Eastern influence.

So shouldnt we be rooting for Blu in this light? Seeing as how Japan pumps out the anime at least we'll get our anime that little bit quicker than waiting for it to the US to get it and if we're extra lucky, Europe? Don't eat me, this is just a shot in the dark for me.

This really doesn't have anything to do with two media formats, they do not affect the anime industry in this way what-so-ever.

Moreover since Blu has a larger capacity that'll mean we'll get more episodes per disc cutting down the cost in the long run? As for price wars, EVERYTHING comes down in price so the difference between Blu and HD doesnt bother me in the slightest, they'll both end up at the same price sooner or later.

Blu-ray can have a total capacity of 250GB (deca(10)-layer), although this is far off. HD-DVD, using the same 10 layers can have 150GB total capacity.
Both formats support exactly the same codecs, except Blu-ray can support a slightly higher bit-rate for audio than HD-DVD.
Blu-ray has region codes, HD-DVD does not.
Blu-ray has a higher maximum bit-rate than HD-DVD, 40Mbps (BD) to nearly 30Mbps (HD-DVD).

The more-episodes per disc ideology will never come to fruition, Japan has a standard of ~2 episodes per disc, this will not change, that's how the anime industry there makes its money. Likewise for the Western world, 3-5 is the average. There is of course a slight chance of collections having loads of episodes stuffed onto them, but that makes no use for the extra capacity of HD discs, just makes it so you have a collection on 1 disc.

Pleast correct me if I've said anything wrong here.

 

[melonpan]

Just to add some information here.

Not to give any false hope, but I reported that this [Yukikaze box set] will be a Region A title (N. / S. America, Japan). I got this information from AnimeOnDVD, and there is no information to confirm that this release is not actually Region A, but all regions.
However, with the recent information on the French release of Paprika, AnimeOnDVD wrongly lists it as Region B (Europe, Africa), when it is in fact a region free release.

So one can assume that in fact this Yukikaze boxset might actually be region free.
This of course applies to all the other previously only Region A titles.

There is still hope on the Blu-ray front!

 

[Noratav]

Just to add some information here.

Not to give any false hope, but I reported that this [Yukikaze box set] will be a Region A title (N. / S. America, Japan). I got this information from AnimeOnDVD, and there is no information to confirm that this release is not actually Region A, but all regions.
However, with the recent information on the French release of Paprika, AnimeOnDVD wrongly lists it as Region B (Europe, Africa), when it is in fact a region free release.

So one can assume that in fact this Yukikaze boxset might actually be region free.
This of course applies to all the other previously only Region A titles.

There is still hope on the Blu-ray front!

Most Blu-ray releases are region free for the simple reason that companies are only allowed to region code discs for the first year after release. Any discs sold after the first year of release have to be region free.

As for the forces behind each format, both are Japanese developed really. HD DVD is basically a Toshiba technology, although for various reasons Microsoft are also heavily backing it. Blu-ray was developed primarily by Sony and Masushista/Panasonic, it's also more popular among the Hollywood studios, and is currently in the lead in Japan, Europe and North America. From a none technical perspective the biggest difference is capacity a single layer Blu-Ray disc holds 25GB, a single layer blu-ray holds 15GB. Double layer discs are more common for both formats though, larger capacities are being developed but at the moment they're nothing more than rumour. But as the previous poster says more capacity does not mean more episodes per disc.