The News Thread (for news that does not need a thread)

Nintendo UK are the same - they have their own online store but they never price anything that can be obtained at the usual places competitively. I imagine this is done so as to not undercut retail partners and sour relations. However, they do offer exclusive merchandise and bundles though (like the new Mario Kart 8 one which I remember calculates to just more than a £50 saving).
 
I'm still waiting for their dumb system to pick up that I linked my Club Nintendo account with my new Wii U (Shut up, MK8 is too good to not get) so I can get the thousand disney dollars needed for that deck of cards.

As an aside, anyone want that seven day trail thing for the Kareokie?
 
ConanThe3rd said:
I'm still waiting for their dumb system to pick up that I linked my Club Nintendo account with my new Wii U
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Same here. That whole not including a scratch card with the console thing is working out splendidly.

(Shut up, MK8 is too good to not get)
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Aye. MK has been a big factor in my purchase of every Nintendo system since the N64. They got me good.

With their Patema Kickstarter and their store pricing, it would seem AL see cutting out the middleman as much as possible as a worthy long-term goal. If prices are equal or thereabouts I know I'd prefer to give the money directly to the distributor.
 
Mangaranga said:
Would anyone who has MVM's release of Fate/Zero be able to post the BDMV sizes of each disc? (Either by viewing it on PC or using certain BD players e.g. BDX3200)
I might pick it up for the English LPCM Audio track, and I do honestly feel like I should buy the LE considering they put the effort in.
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Sent you a mail with the info. Give it a look. :thumb:

P.S - I'm looking forward to getting my Blue Shell MK8.
 
Another update from Anime Limited about their KickStarter! ^_^

I find the proposed new tier much more interesting as add-ons for any tier.
I don't think there are an awful lot of die hard Patema Inverted fans who'd love to pay £125 for just an extra tote bag, mug and USB-stick alone over the £75 tier.
Project Update #5: It's Golden Week in Japan, But We Have Some News For You!

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As we edge ever nearer to meeting our first stretch goal of £25,000 (for a commissioned piece of artwork for the boxset), we're looking at ways to add even more value to your pledge!

We here at Anime Limited HQ have pulled together quite the list, which has been sent off to Japan for approvals/agreement from the licensor. The reason we've not had an update on this for all you dear backers yet is that it is Golden Week in Japan! Lucky them :) Golden Week, for those of you unaware of the term, is a week of official holidays in which many companies shut up shop and employees have a nice, long holiday!

One of the major items we're investigating is creating a special tier that includes the Definitive Edition, Quad and a merch pack! As we prepare to make our offer to the licensor, what we want to know is, would you guys like the merch items listed below as part of that tier?

£125 Merch Tier includes:

- Definitive Edition of Patema Inverted and all that comes with it
- Quad poster
- Limited Edition Kickstarter-only tote bag with Patema Inverted image + logo (design tbc)
- Limited Edition Kickstarter-only Patema Inverted mug
- Limited Edition Kickstarter-only Patema Inverted 8GB USB Key

What do you guys think? Is there something else you'd rather have added to the merch pack in place of any of the above mentioned items? Now is a great time to have your say!

Please remember, we're still pitching this to the licensor so there is still a possibility that it may be rejected. We just wanted to gauge your feelings on the ideas listed above.

Once Golden Week is over, I'm sure we'll have an update for you all which, hopefully, will contain many tempting thingymabobs and whatnots. So stay tuned!

What else is going on?

As we mentioned in yesterday's update, we've opened up the option for would-be backers to pledge to the Ultimate Edition of Patema Inverted via PayPal. This is currently set up via our newly launched online shop at shop.alltheanime.com. All pledges via our shop will be counted towards the final figures and definitely count towards the stretch goals! We'll keep you all posted on exactly where we are with PayPal so you can monitor the situation too :)

Aaaaaaand, that's everything from us today! We hope to have some pretty snazzy news for you very soon, so please stay tuned and spread the word!

Keep it real.

- Kerry
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I find the Patema Inverted USB-stick the most interesting new item, and find the tote bag something I wouldn't use ever to avoid getting it dirty.
Neither do I really think I'd use a mug if it were only one, due to the fear of breaking/denting it (especially if I'd only get "one").
I won a mug from Disney Channel once, it's still in its safe packaging it arrived in 3 years ago. Unused. I don't trust others with it.
Don't get me wrong here, if I had a job I'd be all over this tier. I know the collector in me would love owning that Merch Pack!
 
Agent-347 said:
Another update from Anime Limited about their KickStarter! ^_^

I find the proposed new tier much more interesting as add-ons for any tier.
I don't think there are an awful lot of die hard Patema Inverted fans who'd love to pay £125 for just an extra tote bag, mug and USB-stick alone over the £75 tier.
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Whilst I think it's nice that they're making an effort to add more tiers, I personally do not see the value in paying £85 more for a Movie Poster, Tote Bag, Mug and 8GB USB Stick. That's also why I'm not bothered about missing out on Funimation's Attack on Titan Collectors edition since I just can't personally justify the price difference. Hell, I bought the premium edition of Psycho Pass for the OST + Box. I couldn't care about the rest.
 
I've been asked about it so I'll post the BDMV info for Aniplex's and Madman/MVM's Fate/Zero BDs. Thanks to Sinthetic providing the info on MVM's discs.

Madman/MVM
Disc 1 (BD50)
Disc 2 (BD25)

Aniplex
Disc 1 (BD50)
Disc 2 (BD50)
Disc 3 (BD50)

It'll be interesting to see how Madman/MVM's release stacks up visually against the flawless presentation of Aniplex's release.
 
Mangaranga said:
I've been asked about it so I'll post the BDMV info for Aniplex's and Madman/MVM's Fate/Zero BDs. Thanks to Sinthetic providing the info on MVM's discs.

Madman/MVM
Disc 1 (BD50)
Disc 2 (BD25)

Aniplex
Disc 1 (BD50)
Disc 2 (BD50)
Disc 3 (BD50)

It'll be interesting to see how Madman/MVM's release stacks up visually against the flawless presentation of Aniplex's release.
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Looking forward to a few comparison shots

Interesting to note how much free space the Aniplex Disc 1 and 2 has compared to the 3rd disc, better sound would of pushed it up to 4 discs by the look of things, which quite frankly they should of done given the price of the sets.
 
Rosencrantz said:
better sound would of pushed it up to 4 discs by the look of things, which quite frankly they should of done given the price of the sets.
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Agreed. Especial because of the price.

If I recall from a BDinfo scan of one of the Japanese releases the video is 39 something mbps. So lets say it's at the max the video can be which is 40mbps, the total mux rate of the audio and video is 42,496, lets round it to 44 to include the subs. That would mean there is still 4mbps of mux room, allowing a lossless English 2.0 2304kbps track.

Some assuming the above is correct as I haven't seen a BDinfo scan showing the full technical details, going on just the info posted (thanks Mangaranga and Sinthetic by the way) it would seem the English audio being lossy is because of the size of disc 3, possible disc 1 too due to it being just under 40GB.

With Madmans/MVMs release. I recall Madman saying they was using 2 discs as a third would cost to much. So I assumed they would use 2 BD50's and split the episodes like they did with the DVD, 6/7. But instead the go with 1 BD50 and 1 BD25 and they have put what is basically 10 episodes on disc one. I know it's 9 but the first episode is 45 minutes, so it's basically the same as 10. I guess at least they used 47GB of the BD50, unlike Funimations Psycho-Pass discs.

I too wait to see some comparison shots.
 
The thing with BDs is that you can exceed that 40mbps video limit for short periods of time. The Japanese video may be at 39mbps, but that doesn't mean it's at a constant bitrate. It's pretty much always at a variable bitrate and I believe there are points in F/Z which go as high as 45mbps, then you have to remember the maximum transfer rate at one moment for Video/Audio and Subtitles combined is 48mbps. Aniplex probably were hitting that limit with F/Z, hence something had to be downgraded to meet requirements.

Don't get me wrong, the dub for Fate/Zero was pretty damn great, but I'd rather have degraded English audio over the Japanese track any day, and if anyone is wondering why Blue Exorcist had two PCM tracks - well the video for the TV series is ~36mbps if I remember correctly, so they probably had the space to include two lossless tracks.

As many people have suggested however, Aniplex could use DTS-HD MA over PCM to reduce the audio bitrate down a bit and increase the English track's quality (Both formats are lossless). I'm assuming this generally doesn't happen because their discs are authored by QTEC back in Japan, so they probably use the Japanese BD master they have as a base and work around that. Generally when Aniplex Japan do dual audio releases like Bacanno, Durarara and Gurren Lagann, they reduce the video bitrate presumably to fit everything in.

Just remember, I'm not saying anything I've said is 100% true, it's just based on observations, looking at the disc specs and doing a bit of reading. It just seems to make a bit more sense when you add it all up than the vague answer AniplexUSA gave.

I applaud anyone who managed to get through my nonsense rambling and crap talk... >_<

Rosencrantz said:
better sound would of pushed it up to 4 discs by the look of things, which quite frankly they should of done given the price of the sets.
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Better sound wouldn't have pushed up the disc count. I can't remember exactly, but I think the PCM audio takes up around either 400 or 600mb per track, per episode.
 
Mangaranga said:
The thing with BDs is that you can exceed that 40mbps video limit for short periods of time. The Japanese video may be at 39mbps, but that doesn't mean it's at a constant bitrate. It's pretty much always at a variable bitrate and I believe there are points in F/Z which go as high as 45mbps, then you have to remember the maximum transfer rate at one moment for Video/Audio and Subtitles combined is 48mbps. Aniplex probably were hitting that limit with F/Z, hence something had to be downgraded to meet requirements.
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True, and I know the bitrate is variable so you get spikes that are higher than 40. I have read of people seeing Blu-rays spike in to the 50s. I have also seen DVD's spike higher than there maximum. That's why I am going on the assumption that as long as the bitrate that BDinfo gives(which I think may be the max bitrate set when encoding), plus the audio and sub titles doesn't exceed 48 to keep within specification when authoring(when authoring dvds with scenarist, if the subtitles, audio and max bitrate used when encoding exceeded the dvd max mux rate it would complain), then you are within spec regardless of any spikes that happen during playback.

I am only going on information I have read and how I interpret it.

Mangaranga said:
As many people have suggested however, Aniplex could use DTS-HD MA over PCM to reduce the audio bitrate down a bit and increase the English track's quality (Both formats are lossless).
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Only problem is, generally when you see a DTS-HD MA track at a lower bitrate the sample rate has been dropped from 24bit to 16bit. Saying that I would rather a 16bit lossless track over a lossy track.

Mangaranga said:
I'm assuming this generally doesn't happen because their discs are authored by QTEC back in Japan, so they probably use the Japanese BD master they have as a base and work around that.
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I still reckon if Aniplex America had got QTEC to do an encode of Fate/Zero exactly the same as before(settings wise) but at say 35/36Mbps to make room for a lossless 2.0 English track no one would see a difference. I would take a guess that with that small of a drop there probably wouldn't be a difference. It's not as if they are dropping it by 20Mbps or more.

This is just my opinion though.

Mangaranga said:
Just remember, I'm not saying anything I've said is 100% true, it's just based on observations, looking at the disc specs and doing a bit of reading. It just seems to make a bit more sense when you add it all up than the vague answer AniplexUSA gave.

I applaud anyone who managed to get through my nonsense rambling... >_<
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All the companys give vague answers, except it seems Anime Limiteds Andrew. For example, he actually explained why Perfect Blue had a lossy English track over on Blu-ray.com.

Wasn't ramblings to me. Good reading.

Hope you can post some comparison screen shots when you get MVM's release.
 
I ordered Tiger & Bunny: The Beginning late on the 6th and it just arrived.
As well as giving more money straight back to AL, their shop is cheaper and faster than Amazon - definitely have my future orders.
 
A reminder of the latest BBFC ratings were from the past few weeks:

Accel World: Part 2 (overall 15) - Blu-ray and DVD
- Episodes 13-18 ~ 15 ~ strong language
- Episodes 19-20 ~ 12 ~ strong language, moderate sex references
- Episodes 21-24 ~ 12 ~ strong language, moderate violence, nudity

Chrome Shelled Regios: Part 2 (overall 15) - DVD
- Episodes 13-18 ~ 15 ~ sexual assault scene
- Episodes 19-24 ~ 12 ~ strong violence

Fate/Zero: Season 2 (overall 15) - Blu-ray and DVD
- Episodes 14-19 ~ 15 ~ strong bloody violence
- Episodes 20-21 ~ 15 ~ strong violence
- Episodes 22-25 ~ 15 ~ strong bloody violence

High School DxD: Season 1 (overall 15) - Blu-ray and DVD
- Episodes 01-07 ~ 15 ~ strong sex references, nudity, strong language, violence, sexual threat
- Episodes 08-12 ~ 15 ~ sexualised nudity, strong sex references, strong language, violence
- Additional material such as the OVA Specials are TBC

Ikki Tousen Great Guardians: Season 3 (overall 18) - Blu-ray and DVD
- Episodes 01-07 ~ 15 ~ strong sexualised nudity
- Episodes 08-12 ~ 18 ~ strong sexualised nudity, sexual fetish, strong violence

Nekomonogatari Black: OVA Collection (overall 18) - Blu-ray and DVD
- Episodes 01-04 ~ 18 ~ strong gory images, sex references

We Without Wings: Complete Collection (overall 18) - DVD
- Episodes 01-07 ~ 18 ~ strong sexualised nudity, sex references
- Episodes 08-11 ~ To Be Rated
 
Another update from Anime Limited!

I wonder whether they are still talking Patema Inverted with the mention of "pretty interesting videos".
I mean, okay, a dub sample video. But what else?! An "Anime Ltd Blooper Reel"-video? (Honestly would love to see this actually. xD) I'm curious, that's for sure! ^_^
Project Update #6: Feedback Is A Many Splendored Thing: In Which We Discuss Merch!

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Yesterday we floated the idea of creating a Merch Tier with some ideas of what we would include in said Merch Tier. We got A LOT of valuable feedback from all of you, so thank you so much for that!

One major bit of feedback was instead of an extra tier at a higher amount, the idea of having some of the more popular merchandise ideas (the idea of mugs especially) as an add-on option to backers' pledges. This allows backers to pick and choose what they want to see added to their reward tiers. This is a great idea and one we're definitely going to be pitching to the licensor when they are back in.

A second nifty idea from the discussion was the inclusion of items such as limited edition prints, artwork, signed artwork etc. Again, all very good suggestions and we've definitely taken it in and will also be pitching this to the licensor shortly!

This kind of backer feedback is great for us! We would rather offer you guys extras you'll actually value and want to keep and treasure as a reward for backing Patema Inverted on Kickstarter. So at least now we have a firmer jumping off point and we'll take it to the licensor to see what we can do!

In the meantime, we are so close to hitting our first stretch goal! It's all very exciting - we hope to be able to move on to the second stretch goal of the film's soundtrack very soon!

And finally, we've got some pretty interesting videos coming up in the next week to share with all of you on here! Keep an eye out for those as well.

I guess that's it! Thanks again for feeding back in such a constructive and honest way. We really do care what you think - help us create the best definitive edition of Patema Inverted for you.

Until tomorrow.

- Kerry
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Emulsion said:
Wasn't ramblings to me. Good reading.

Hope you can post some comparison screen shots when you get MVM's release.
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I'll try and get some comparison shots up later. My copy actually came today - something I wasn't expecting since I never got a dispatch email.
At an initial glance it doesn't look to be too bad. There's some banding but I can't really comment at this stage.

There are two differences I've noticed so far. One minor, one which will either be minor or major depending on how much of an audiophile you are. The first is that Madman removed the Romanji Subtitles which were displayed on the top part screen (above the english translation) in the OP/ED of each episode, and the second is the Japanese audio which is 24bit PCM @ 2304kbps on Aniplex's release, whilst both tracks are 16bit PCM @ 1536kbps on Madman's discs.

EDIT: Not sure if it was intentional or what, but Madman actually pulled a Funimation with this release. The brightness/contrast have been messed with to the point that it looks like there's a grey filter over the image.
 
It does look gorgeous.

Forgive my stupidity, is this a re-do of the TV series Fate/Stay Night, like Brotherhood, or just the story told from a different perspective etc?
 
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