Are all american DVD releases so ugly?

[kenshin-dono]

I actually buy a lot of R1 DVD releases, i like to support the companies that bring stuff over. One thing has always bugged me though; American subtitles. The translations are usually decent enough, though some make me wish id stuck to the fansubs =P The real problem is the friggin font. Most use that big ugly yellow font. Maybe its because i havent watched any in a while but some of the newer ones ive stared on seem to be even brighter yellow than i remember and even bigger and more intrusive font. Hell i just started moribito and the subtitles on that series are so bad to me im watching it dubbed. Theyre huge, bright, and worst of all seem to be placed quite high up on the screen. Almost 1/4 of the way up it seems which blocks the screen and is very intrusive. I have no idea why its so high up, maybe they were afraid of overscan and overcompensated?

Are all animeworks subs this bad? I didn't think id ever watch another series dubbed but these forced me to. Are there any companies out there that actually use a GOOD font/color for their subs? Im really worried to check out some of the other newer dvds ive picked up

My dvd player is kinda old, i was wondering if maybe newer ones actually give you a font color option or anything. That would help a lot, i just hope the positioning and size is better on these other dvds

I really thought companies would have improved their subs in the years ive been away, im very disapointed that it actually seems worse than i remember it being. You'd think companies would want to put more effort into this kinda stuff and give people a reason to buy the DVDs. Especially since most people just d.load fansubs and never suport the industry. This is certainly not giving people incentive to do so.

[Neco]

Its long been a problem,  I have plenty of  yellow subs,  seems to be a common theme with Animes for sure.   But approaching it from their perspective,  its likely not considered a main feature because  whatever they invest in translation is probably little compared to both the taste of the core demographic and the cost of producing the DVD that way.   The Japanese track on Gall Force Eternal Story is horribly noisy almost to the point where it hurts to watch it.   The english dub on the other hand is very clean, and has remixed (stupid) music in some scenes and overall sounds much better.

Its a sure bet that the majority of people that buy R1 DVD's are not buying them to watch the series in Japanese with subtitles.   Otherwise companies would never have started doing dubs in the first place, and just kept releasing subtitled stuff.    

I hate to sound like a prick about it, but it seems to me like people who prefer subs are in the minority as far as the North American market goes.   It doesn't help the cause though, that instead of focusing their energies on pressuring companies to actually change stuff (you know, letter writing campaigns,  organized presence at Anime conventions, etc)  that  people who like subs either just silently accept the quality,  or worse choose to let the the vocal minority of sub-nazis just prefer to troll the Internet  repeating "dubz sux0rz kekeke!" over and over again  speak for them instead.

[Drew]

I can't wait for DVDs to go away forever. Way too many problems with them. Everything needs to be Blu-ray or digital.

[ant900]

I can't wait for DVDs to go away forever. Way too many problems with them. Everything needs to be Blu-ray or digital.

The fact that they are physically on DVDs has nothing to do with it, in fact for the most part Blu-Rays aren't even really needed since true HD anime is still not that common.  Though having an entire series on one disk would be nice.


As for Yellow subs from what I hear the main reason why they use those is because it is the easiest color to see, so no one will have any trouble reading them.

[Takeshi]

I can't wait for DVDs to go away forever. Way too many problems with them. Everything needs to be Blu-ray or digital.

Vobsubs don't exist on 'da blu-rays? Makes me wonder why they needed those vobsubs in the first place? Because anime is full of color or something? Regular dvds don't contain them AFAIK. Yes, I really can't remember. *checks*

I saw Bad Boys II last weekend, pretty sure no yellow vobsubs was evident.

[Zalis116]

TL;DR Version: DVD subs are limited by hardware standards from 1997, and designed for readability on old CRT screens. Look at the linked screenshots below to see if all of them are like Moribito or not.

-----------------

DVD players may get newer, but unfortunately the specifications for fonts and colors remain stuck in 1997. So no options for changing color/placement, afaik. And many fonts that fansubbers freely use are copyrighted and require payment to use commercially, which is why CrunchyRoll subs are also limited in their font choices. As for the yellow colors, I heard an explanation from someone who works in the DVD subtitling field at the "World of Fansubbing" panel at Anime Central 2008. Basically, that particular saturation of yellow is a color that doesn't appear much in anime or other media. Thus it doesn't have much risk of blending into the background, especially with black borders as insurance. Personally, I don't see why yellow is inherently worse than any other color, and I'd rather have it over fansub-style white subs with one-pixel borders and no shadows that don't stand out from the background at all.

On the placement, they're placed up higher not only for overscan considerations, but also because they're easier to read that way. If they're too low (again, like most fansubs), then you constantly have to bounce your eyes down to the bottom of the screen, and risk missing out on action taking place elsewhere in the image. Really, a line of X characters at a margin of 10 takes up the exact same amount of space as the same line at a margin of 40. Imo low margins make subs more obtrusive, since you have to expend more effort scanning your vision to read them. Yes, they can be too high. But my point is, there are reasons why DVD subs are the way they are -- to make subs readable against any color of background, on any display no matter how crappy, and for a wide range of viewer eye/vision quality.

 In my experience, Media-Blasters' (AKA Anime-Works) subs are higher and larger, relative to other companies' releases. For the sake of convenience, I went ahead and prepared screenshots to show off the range of styles used by different licensing companies and adaptation studios.
ADV: Old | Middle | New
AnimEigo
Bang Zoom (Geneon/Bandai - 2002-05)
Bang Zoom (Geneon/Bandai - 2006 - present) [I blame this large size for the R1 Haruhi subs sucking so badly]
Captions Inc. (Geneon/Bandai/Viz ~1998-2001)
Central Park Media (old; other titles use yellow in similar styles or the AnimEigo-type subs)
Funimation (up to 2003)
Funimation (2004-present)
Manga Entertainment
Media-Blasters/Anime-Works (before 2002 or so)
Media-Blasters/Anime-Works (~2003-2005) **note how the height of the subs is at roughly the same height where the Japanese placed the song lyrics for viewers to read**
Media-Blasters/Anime-Works (2005-present) [I would assume this style is used in Moribito]
New Generation Pictures (mostly Geneon)
Ocean Group (Bandai/Geneon)
Odex (Singapore outsourcing - Geneon/Bandai)
Rightstuf/Nozomi (up to 2004)
Rightstuf/Nozomi (2005-present)
Viz

And for Takeshi, a few examples from non-anime DVDs: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon || Star Wars Episode III

Unlike many around here, I don't see DVD-style subs as that bad. But also unlike many around here, I continue to watch everything on low-res CRT screens, which is what DVDs were made for. So that's probably why I see them differently. At the same time, I do think companies are foolish for sticking to their practices in the face of all the complaints about them. It's not like it would cost them anything in terms of money or readability to make the subtitles white instead of yellow, a little smaller, and a little lower in the image. I would suggest taking complaints to the Anime on DVD forums, as companies are more likely to listen to things posted there than on torrent sites.

[Havoc10K]

  Though having an entire series on one disk would be nice.

:3

something l know hahahah

tough, l preffer fansubs still, DVD releases are at least uncensored, but as said above, they are only released on a DVD, it's just a medium, it would be the same as releasing it on a pendrive, the content is what matters, and some DVD releases have bad hard subs, in this factor l like releases done in my country, l have them done in :
English Dubs (wich suck most of the time)
Japaneese Dub + Speaker Translation (Wich is a lot better than eng bullshit)
Japaneese Dub + English Hard Sub/Fansub (usually selected by order of some really good group, eventually fixed)
we don't have Polish subs on most of our DVD releases for Anime, wich l am glad for, kinda feel weird to read it that way ahahaah.

[Xiong Chiamiov]

I can't wait for DVDs to go away forever. Way too many problems with them. Everything needs to be Blu-ray or digital.

Funimation offers decently-priced downloads, but they're DRM-protected (so I can't even play them since I don't use Windows), not to mention hardsubbed SD Windows Media files that look like they were encoded by... me.

At least, that was my experience from the trial episode I bought when they first started that.  I sent a longish email to them complaining about how they didn't list specs on the site (!) and they had them up within a few days, so if you email them, know that they do in fact read your messages.

But yes, the fact that I cannot get official releases that are near the quality of unofficial ones (for most modern shows) disturbs me a bit, and shows that there's something wrong with the market.

[deciduous]

A list of images that has me burning my eyes out.

It makes me wonder why they don't turn up the neon knob a little more and introduce the fabulous lime green or orange. The last anime DVD I bought was Blue Submarine No. 6 and, I have to admit, the subtitles were far uglier than the fansub equivalent. Not to mention the timing was... off. Here's to hoping they kick it up a notch and forget ye olden days of yellow unicode.

As for DVDs, I kind of like them despite the fact that they're about to become as archaic and outdated as cassette tapes. However, I still have Chobits burned onto 8 or so CD-ROMs. I shouldn't be talking. I'm all for going digital. The beauty of an external is unbelievable (since I'm reduced to lugging a laptop to classes). Anime just "needs" something like iTunes to step it up a notch and aggregate downloads for the popular series.

[kurandoinu]

iTunes have started to offer a few series's available for download (in the UK at least, no idea how many are available in the US). They are however rather expensive and I have no idea what the quality is like. And they're only available dubbed.

[Zalis116]

A list of images that has me burning my eyes out.

It makes me wonder why they don't turn up the neon knob a little more and introduce the fabulous lime green or orange. The last anime DVD I bought was Blue Submarine No. 6 and, I have to admit, the subtitles were far uglier than the fansub equivalent. Not to mention the timing was... off. Here's to hoping they kick it up a notch and forget ye olden days of yellow unicode.

I know it's not a serious question, but... unlike yellow, lime green and orange would have a fair chance of blending into backgrounds and becoming unreadable, fansub-style. And what about the screenshots of subs that were *shock* white and not yellow? Given that Funimation dominates the current R1 market, the majority of subs on new releases will be white. Or does a completely neutral color like white burn people's eyes out, too?

I can understand the aliasing and resolution issues that people have with vobsubs, but I've never understood the virulent hatred for yellow as a color as opposed to other colors. I don't see how yellow is "old" either; I'm pretty sure all the other colors have been around just as long. I'm half-convinced it's got more to do with not wanting to pay for anime than an honest objection to the color. After all, I haven't seen one complaint about gg's Nyan Koi using a similar color. Granted, that's a pretty new release that many haven't seen, but I also haven't seen that many complaints about BOX-Subs' or Anime-Classics' releases that use similar color schemes. Or for that matter, AIP's Rizelmine, which is practically R1DVD-subs in a fansub.

[DaggerLite]

@ Zalis116
I won't argue much that yellow with black outline is easier to read than most others, but I don't understand why it has been such a common thing in releases as opposed to white with black outlines. I am personally fine with the white subs.

Things I don't like about American releases is that they make DVDs that are compressed way too much in order to fit more episodes per disc. I'm not sure if they're even allowed to do that over here. Another thing I'd bring up is that the extra material and dubs are usually horrible. I can't speak for every anime out there, but there are very few dubs I'm pleased with. The dub cast on one of my series is composed entirely of the friends and family of the studio, and the general dub "culture" in English-speaking countries is horrible, in my honest opinion. I've almost bought a DVD without Japanese audio on it even.

Now that they've tried to move on to digital distribution, they end up doing it in the worst possible way. The encodes are amateurish, with 2 GB files per 20 minutes last time I checked. One would think it actually looked good, but it doesn't, and it's supposedly watermarked along with being DRM-protected. While I understand that standards are important in most cases, there's something horribly wrong with this industry. Computers evolve every month, so there's no reason to be stuck with standards from '95.

Ghibli and Disney are doing a great job with their DVDs, by the way. I guess they can spend more than certain other companies who are doing half-assed work, but in the end I guess it means that those certain other companies are just taking on way too much for their own good. I'd appreciate if they took only a handful of series and did a proper job in stead.

I have paid for subbed/dubbed anime several times, but for certain groups I'm not thinking about doing it again until I see significant improvement. It's simply a fact that some good subgroups do things much better and much faster than the legit groups. I wouldn't mind paying them (fansubbers) a fee (which the original studios earned royalties from) if that somehow made it legit. I'd buy Japanese discs to support the industry, but in addition to Blu-ray zones not matching with Europe most companies for some reason don't like to ship here, and the postage fees cost about as much as the the disc itself when they do ship here. I have bought Japanese music CDs for instance.

[Mag-X]

DVD = waiting months or years to pay money for ugly subs, a dumbed down translation, a dub I won't watch, all in ugly standard definition.
Fansubs can be hit or miss depending on the group, but they usually have better translations (I think), better picture quality, better looking subs, I don't have to get up and change disks, don't take up room on my shelves, come out days after episodes are shown in Japan, and I don't have to pay for them.
I haven't even thought about purchasing any DVDs in quite a long time. If they want me to pay for something, it needs to be better than the free version, not worse.

[Neco]

It's not that simple though.

I don't think its fair to compare DVD releases, which usually include dubs, or other features you might get, with a fan sub that is just a video with subtitles and doesn't have to worry about finding voice actors that are good that don't cost a fortune for their time.  You may not use that feature (dubs) but it costs money to put it on the disc so it sells to the core consumers in the first place.


The industry is entirely at fault for the state of things, there is no argument there.  They set up lackluster standards and failed to continue raising the bar.   But you cannot compete against free,  no matter how good your product is.   People will always find a justification, or should I say  rationalization..

I also have to wonder, how much any of us really knows about the production process..  What I mean by that is,  what if their translators are good,  but someone else somwhere is making decisions to dumb down the dialogue?  Do we really know how it works internally I guess..   Also,  there still is the keen point that most likely,  their target audience doesn't care about subtitles in the first place.  

So again, in that sense,  when it comes to discerning fans with discriminating taste,  you can't compete against free.   I just think its more complicated than  "Your products are shit, hire the fansubbers".

I still feel guilty when I watch downloaded Anime,  because  even if the actual people involved in making the product get pennies on the dollar from the publisher/distributor -  that's a few less pennies they get because of me.   But I suppose that's for another thread.

People spend a lot on Anime,  so I would imagine there have to be some high rollers on the "purist" community..  If you want it done right,  start your own studio and hire your own translators / dubbers.   If you have a superior product,  you'll shine,   although I suspect anyone attempting to do such a thing and then charge a fair price at retail, is gonna be in for a rude awakening in the profits department.


On the subject of the dub acting community,  I don't pretend to have any knowledge..  But I doubt the whole  "friends and family thing" is very common place,  and then the questions has to be asked,  was it done to save the project financially?  Or just so they wouldn't have to pay anyone big money and would make more at retail?

Personally,  I watch a lot of dubs and even still I only on ocassion recognize a voice actor from another series.  I would say the community is pretty healthy and has a lot of good people in it.  But I don't have a problem with a particular actor getting a lot of work,  unless they really really suck or I just can't stand their voice..

[kurandoinu]

How many non anime DVDs come with subs that aren't yellow or white though?

[DaggerLite]

I don't think its fair to compare DVD releases, which usually include dubs, or other features you might get, with a fan sub that is just a video with subtitles and doesn't have to worry about finding voice actors that are good that don't cost a fortune for their time.  You may not use that feature (dubs) but it costs money to put it on the disc so it sells to the core consumers in the first place.

When the dub is too horrible to be desirable in the first place, of course it's fair to compare. And the extra features really aren't desirable. If you don't like/want the dub, then you might as well leave it out and save some money off the bat. And for extra features, I rarely see more than the creditless OP/ED and some artwork slides. There's rarely anything interesting. Sometimes, they have video commentary made themselves as the third party (not sure if this is the right term here). But that's no better than me or you making a video of us doing the same. I wish they could include original subbed extras instead.

People will always find a justification, or should I say  rationalization..

I completely disagree with this. If you mean "Some people will...", that might be true. There's always someone that complains. Price is one important factor why many young people would continue to watch fansubs over original releases, even if the quality of the original releases was better.

However, there are many who like to buy, either to support the industry or for collection purposes, even if downloading a fansub might be easier. There are plenty of people who have morals, and understand that not everything in life is free. Think of them as seeders for a torrent. They understand that if they only leech, nothing will work out in the end.

[morrefule]

I normally don't have a gripe about about american DVD releases, but I just finished watching one of my favorate Series on DVD that I just bought in Box set and that is True Tears.

I love the anime, but OMFGJC who in the world approved those Subs, I mean the thing isn't even dubbed. (which is fine by me).  But when 3 characters say "おはよう" (ohayou), it is translated as Good Morning, Hello Son, and hey Shinechiro all in the span of 3 seconds.  WTH!

I'm glad I understand spoken japanesse a bit to look past it and enjoy the series, but it is rediculous.  I cought many others and i don't feel like typing them. I just wonder what other stupid mistakes they made in there beside the ones I picked up on.  I mean come on you can at least spend a little money on the Translation, I mean they obviously didn't on the DVD menues or the dvd's them selves being as there are only 2 disk in the box.  I find it a slap in the face to the anime community that they half-assed such a great series.  Even someone who is a casual fan would easily pick up on these things.  I mean how can you translate when a character says "Ohhh?" as "What was that?" or "hmmm" as "what?" they are obviously not right...  They even missed a few lines of text.  Just left it out entirely. What happened to the Editor on this and post production?  Did they fall asleep or drink to many?

I guess i'll just burn the Fansubs to Disk and watch them instead...  It is sad really... Because I love supporting the anime community and Anime on DVD here in the states.

Ok... that's it i'll step off my high horse now...

[kenshin-dono]

(click to show/hide)

TL;DR Version: DVD subs are limited by hardware standards from 1997, and designed for readability on old CRT screens. Look at the linked screenshots below to see if all of them are like Moribito or not.

-----------------

DVD players may get newer, but unfortunately the specifications for fonts and colors remain stuck in 1997. So no options for changing color/placement, afaik. And many fonts that fansubbers freely use are copyrighted and require payment to use commercially, which is why CrunchyRoll subs are also limited in their font choices. As for the yellow colors, I heard an explanation from someone who works in the DVD subtitling field at the "World of Fansubbing" panel at Anime Central 2008. Basically, that particular saturation of yellow is a color that doesn't appear much in anime or other media. Thus it doesn't have much risk of blending into the background, especially with black borders as insurance. Personally, I don't see why yellow is inherently worse than any other color, and I'd rather have it over fansub-style white subs with one-pixel borders and no shadows that don't stand out from the background at all.

On the placement, they're placed up higher not only for overscan considerations, but also because they're easier to read that way. If they're too low (again, like most fansubs), then you constantly have to bounce your eyes down to the bottom of the screen, and risk missing out on action taking place elsewhere in the image. Really, a line of X characters at a margin of 10 takes up the exact same amount of space as the same line at a margin of 40. Imo low margins make subs more obtrusive, since you have to expend more effort scanning your vision to read them. Yes, they can be too high. But my point is, there are reasons why DVD subs are the way they are -- to make subs readable against any color of background, on any display no matter how crappy, and for a wide range of viewer eye/vision quality.

 In my experience, Media-Blasters' (AKA Anime-Works) subs are higher and larger, relative to other companies' releases. For the sake of convenience, I went ahead and prepared screenshots to show off the range of styles used by different licensing companies and adaptation studios.
ADV: Old | Middle | New
AnimEigo
Bang Zoom (Geneon/Bandai - 2002-05)
Bang Zoom (Geneon/Bandai - 2006 - present) [I blame this large size for the R1 Haruhi subs sucking so badly]
Captions Inc. (Geneon/Bandai/Viz ~1998-2001)
Central Park Media (old; other titles use yellow in similar styles or the AnimEigo-type subs)
Funimation (up to 2003)
Funimation (2004-present)
Manga Entertainment
Media-Blasters/Anime-Works (before 2002 or so)
Media-Blasters/Anime-Works (~2003-2005) **note how the height of the subs is at roughly the same height where the Japanese placed the song lyrics for viewers to read**
Media-Blasters/Anime-Works (2005-present) [I would assume this style is used in Moribito]
New Generation Pictures (mostly Geneon)
Ocean Group (Bandai/Geneon)
Odex (Singapore outsourcing - Geneon/Bandai)
Rightstuf/Nozomi (up to 2004)
Rightstuf/Nozomi (2005-present)
Viz

And for Takeshi, a few examples from non-anime DVDs: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon || Star Wars Episode III

Unlike many around here, I don't see DVD-style subs as that bad. But also unlike many around here, I continue to watch everything on low-res CRT screens, which is what DVDs were made for. So that's probably why I see them differently. At the same time, I do think companies are foolish for sticking to their practices in the face of all the complaints about them. It's not like it would cost them anything in terms of money or readability to make the subtitles white instead of yellow, a little smaller, and a little lower in the image. I would suggest taking complaints to the Anime on DVD forums, as companies are more likely to listen to things posted there than on torrent sites.

jesus christ bro, tnx a lot thats an elaborate comparison

ya the one you showed here
http://i533.photobucket.com/albums/ee336/Zalis_116/MedaBlasters_New.png

is pretty close to how moribito was, except moribito seemed even a bit higher! Look how big and ugly that is and how distracting? yeesh. No wonder i switched to dub. Luckily the dubs not too bad in this series.

i have no idea why theyre still using specs from the early 90s if what you say is true, thats just idiotic. Why isn't it smaller and cleaner? And give people font color options. Really, bright yellow is just ugly and distracting. Your explination that it doesn't bleed into backrounds as much because of its color and boarder makes sense i guess but that also makes it espeically ugly and really distracting. I actually prefer thin boardered whitish colors like you say you dislike lol. Most TV's these days have high enough rez where that shouldn't matter.

basically it sounds like theyre so big, yellow, ugly and HIGH, to cater to the lowest common denominator of displays which really sucks. Making it crappier for everyone to cater to people still using cruddy old SD tvs

This is just very disapointing to me. I support the industry and have a pretty big collection but generally hate most subtitles, Moribito was especially bad. Its looking like all media works DVD's are going to flat out suck, i'll probably just pass on any of their other stuff. Honestly not too many look decent from your links. Funmation actually looks like one of the better ones o_O These companies really aren't making much of a case for people to buy their DVDs when the fansubs are higher res, and have MUCH better subs

*sigh* im worried about hitting more of this backlog of DVD's i bought to play catch up

Oh and i disagree with the guy thats all for getting rid of disks all together. Im actually NOT a fan of digital downloads. I enjoy having a physical copy of my stuff. Data gets corrupted, stuff happens. If you take care of your media it lasts a long time. I.e. My NES cartriges would be long gone if they were just data on a HD back when i got them. I never buy DLC for games

I dont see BD/DVD's going anywhere anytime soon, theres a LOOTT of people who feel like i do. Actually i dont see DVD's going anywhere anytime soon. BD's are still pretty expensive and especially for anime most stuff is still only on DVD. Very little BD out there for anime

 

[kenshin-dono]

christ lotta posts since i made this. Been away for thanksgiving/bday, and been playing a lot of Dragon age heh

I know it's not a serious question, but... unlike yellow, lime green and orange would have a fair chance of blending into backgrounds and becoming unreadable, fansub-style. And what about the screenshots of subs that were *shock* white and not yellow? Given that Funimation dominates the current R1 market, the majority of subs on new releases will be white. Or does a completely neutral color like white burn people's eyes out, too?

I can understand the aliasing and resolution issues that people have with vobsubs, but I've never understood the virulent hatred for yellow as a color as opposed to other colors. I don't see how yellow is "old" either; I'm pretty sure all the other colors have been around just as long. I'm half-convinced it's got more to do with not wanting to pay for anime than an honest objection to the color. After all, I haven't seen one complaint about gg's Nyan Koi using a similar color. Granted, that's a pretty new release that many haven't seen, but I also haven't seen that many complaints about BOX-Subs' or Anime-Classics' releases that use similar color schemes. Or for that matter, AIP's Rizelmine, which is practically R1DVD-subs in a fansub.

question: it was mentioned a few times in this thread but what are VOsubs?

i certainly prefer white.  You dont understand why people hate yellow? Its very simple. Its friggin hidious and very distracting. I want my subs to be low key and unobrusive. A giant neaon yellow font a quarter of the friggin way up the screen is as far away from that as possible.  Its 'old' because its the old style you saw a lot back in the day.

i dont view it as an excuse to not buy dvds by pirates at all, its a legitimate complaint. I WANT to buy dvds, i prefer them to having something on my HD and like suporting the industry, but when theyre as horrible as this
http://i533.photobucket.com/albums/ee336/Zalis_116/MedaBlasters_New.png

i have to seriously consider just sticking with the fansub

and that link you provide for nyan koi may be yellow but its much better than most american DVD subs. First of all its not super bright neon yellow! its a lower key duller color that doesn't slap you in the face, and second the text is lower in frame and not blocking half the screen!


@daggerlite
Im not sure about the newer DVD releases, like i said i bought a bunch and am going through them now but the older stuff had some kinda neat little extras usually. I did notice moribito didn't look visually that good. It only had like 3 epps on it too i think which makes no sense. I saw what almost looked like interlacing issues o_O Overall horribly disappointed with Mediablasters im hoping the other groups aren't as bad. I remember ordering spice and wolf season 1. Luckily thats Funmation. Im not a fan of them monopolizing the industry, but if all the other companies are this terrible then maybe its not so bad. Im not planning on buying anymore Media blasters stuff. I'll have to look over the screenshots closely that zalis posted to see if any others are REALLY bad (most were but not as bad as MB)

As far as dubs go, they have never been very good and probably never will be. Occasionaly you get a good one, like bebop, but the vast majority are just terrible. They either dont use professionals or the professionals pretty much suck, and they reuse the same few people over and over again. Ive heard the guy that does Ichigo in bleach about a kajilion times in various video games lately im willing to bed he does tons of dubs in anime as well

anyone know of any other companies that are especially bad, or others that actually have good subs? I gotta check out clannad but its not even dubbed i think, so id assume the subs are good.

I haven't even thought about purchasing any DVDs in quite a long time. If they want me to pay for something, it needs to be better than the free version, not worse.

This is my exact feeling. If they want me to pay for this it needs to be better than the free version.. thats not seeming to be the case lately.

this may be my new policy very soon if many more of the DVDs i have to go through are as bad as this Media blaster garbage. Which is really too bad because i want to support those that bring this stuff over.. theyre just doing such a poor job it seems that im not sure why im bothering.
Im glancing at my  'to watch' shelf of stuff i bought right before i stopped watching anime, and recently. This is the backlog of stuff i have yet to see:     
Utawarerumono, Samurai gun, Black cat, Basalisk, Trinity blood, Melody of Oblivion, Mushishi, Best student council, Elfen lied, full metal panic second raid, Infinite ryu virus, moon phase, Hellgirl, Blue seed, Fantastic children, samurai horror tales, Tsukihime, Noein, Desert punk, Tide blue line, Daphne in the brilliant blue, Sola, Clannad, Jubei-chan 2, Ikkitousen, black heaven, All purpouse cat girl Nukku Nukku, Divergence Eve, 009-1

some on the 'to watch shelf' that i had seen in the past and had on VHS or fansub format but snagged on DVD anyway:
Madlax, Scrapped princess, Argento Soma, Haibane Renmei, Full metal panic/FMP fumufu, Chrono Crusade, E's otherwise, Getbackers, Gantz, Nadesico, Mahoromatic

thats not including the other shelves of DVDs i had on fansub in the past and replaced, thats just the stuff i have yet to watch in the above categories.

so i defiantly support the industy, though if many of those dvds listed above turn out to have god awful subs i may just say F it and stick to fansubs unfortunately =(

unfortunately i just ordered midori no hibi and something else i cant remember which is media blasters.. damn

lol i have a couple boxes of oldschool fansubs. You know back when you had to get mail order VHS tapes? Heh I have end of evengelion on that.

It's not that simple though.
The industry is entirely at fault for the state of things, there is no argument there.  They set up lackluster standards and failed to continue raising the bar.   But you cannot compete against free,  no matter how good your product is.   People will always find a justification, or should I say  rationalization..
*snip*

yes there are a lot of people out there that will view free as best no matter what. But there are people out there that really want to support the industry, and these companies are making it very difficult with such a shoddy ass product. When some of the stuff i see would be on the bottom tier of ADB ratings im concerned.

[Neco]

Regarding  dubs or other perks "not being wanted"  that is your preference as a consumer,  and it ends there.  You cannot compare a fansub which exactly catered to your tastes,  to a retail dubbed / subbed product as a whole, which is marketed to a decidedly different mainstream crowd than your own tastes.   I mean its one thing if I were reading  constant comparissons to the subtitle tracks between fansubs,  and I have seen that on ocassion.   But most of what I continue to see around the net is the same  "omg dubz suck  go get the fansub at least they have accurate dialogue" etc..  But I've no intention of starting up the whole "translator's job" debate.


Now you can lambast them for poor subs all day long, however I never see (or hear of) anyone actually trying to send a message to these companies or at least try and start a feedback dialogue.   Usually it has to be the companies that do this it seems,  with the whole focus group thing and what not,  but sometimes the consumer has to step up too.   Consumers have rights of what to expect from a product,  yet when it comes to enforcing those rights they often get lazy all of a sudden and expect the company to magically know what to change about a product, or Ralph Nader to show up dressed as Superman and demand certain changes.   It just won't happen though.

One side is going to have to force the other to meet with them if this is ever going to change.   The Anime industry in America could probably barely be called an industry at all.   I don't know, maybe I just like playing Devil's Advocate or something.    I just don't see either side doing anything to actually bring an end to the problem of poor quality dubs and subs.

You can either sweet-talk your way into the corporate communications office (or whatever) of these publishers with thousands of hand signed petitions,  or you can try and force their hand with an organized boycott...  But we all know how  boycotts usually turn out when organized by idealists...

I don't know..  Maybe I'll just write a letter so I can at least claim I did something  

I'm as frustrated as everyone else..  Do you know what being a fence sitter does to your nerves?