>From: Tomar <tomar@brain.ames.net>
>Subject: Re: finall watched american STM...
>Tenchi ML,
>
>At 02:20 AM 12/25/98 -0700, you wrote:
>>
>>
>>>oh yea, Merry X-mas and all that jazz! I was gona ask Santa for a shiny
 new
>>>DVD player, but decided screw it cuz of all that regional bull shit
>>
>>< smacks you up! > I'll give you one reason why to buy DVD.  Tenchi Muyo
>>Remastered 5.1 Dobly digital Surround Sound OAV Box set due out in late
>>March/ April.  Shall I smack you again?  Also, regoinal stuff doesn't
 really
>>matter because foreign DVDs hardly put any english subs on the disc
 anyways.
>
>Ahh....but it does.  I enjoy the fact that all I've got to do
>is talk to my contacts and I can get the first editions LDs with
>all of their goodies from Japan.  With DVD, I'll get the disk and
>the goodies but will have to hack on my player unless I want to
>wait months for a release.  Besides, that means that everyone over
>here will have to wait months, maybe years, as well.

I can't speak from experience how simple or easy it is to mod a DVD player,
but it's not very expensive. A chip from England costs less than US$50 for
most players. (I've no idea what customs charges are, but it's probably
pretty minimal.) Techtronics sells chips for many players
(http://www.techtronics.com/ttn/shop/51-dvd-multimod-table.htm), and
they'll also install it for you for extra (plus shipment to the U.K.).
(Though my DVD-A300U isn't modable. ;( ) Another source of info is
http://www.aeug.org/~chip/dvdchip.html , or you can just do a search in
HotBot.

[snips parts about stuff you've already got on LD]

Obviously, if you've already got this on LD, there's no good reason for you
to get them on DVD without any extra incentive. This is not a vaid reason
for anyone else not to get a player, though. (I realize that he was
smacking you around, not everyone else. :) That the Japanese packaging is
nicer on Japanese releases (and particularly LDs) is probably a fact that
most American DVD owners will have to live with. The Japanese releases are
always nicer anyway, and LD has the advantage of LP-type packaging.

>Besides being somewhat harsh and rude in this post, you didn't
>give very convincing arguments to getting DVDs.

I can think of a four reasons to get DVD that the original poster didn't
mention, and two reasons not to get it you didn't. Pro: Getting a (U.S.
release) DVD is better than either LD or VHS because you get a high-quality
digital soundtrack for both sub and dub. Another benefit from this: you
won't accidently buy the dub version when you meant to buy sub. (I did this
once on a Macross Plus VHS--I won't do that again!) DVDs are cheaper than
LD, and when they're mastered correctly, they're slightly better in picture
quality. And they're much easier to store, IMO.

Con: DVD hasn't taken off in Japan the way it has in the U.S., and thus
you're not going to be able to get a lot of stuff from there (even with a
mod chip), as long as LDs are very popular. If you're interested primarily
in getting stuff from Japan, get an LD player. Also, DVD has brought up a
large crop of pro-DVD zealots, similar to the Mac and Amiga. :) (I know
that's not an actual reason not to get DVD. :)

And if someone's intersted in collecting primarily anime, DVD is still a
horrible choice, even though Pioneer and Manga have done a great job
putting out a few scant titles. The only good reasons to buy it, IMO, are
that you like the titles that are out there (there are some good non-anime
titles, beleive it or not! ^_-), you don't like VHS, and you perhaps think
it's better than LD. (Assuming you've got one--I wouldn't recommend LD
anymore to non-Anime people. I think the new titles will stop coming out in
1-2 years, and my local LD rental place is liquidating their old LD stock.)

>Tomar
>aka tomar@ames.net


Peace,


<> David

http://www.lightlink.com/drogers/
-------------
"People, who eat people, are the loneliest people in the world!"
=96Barbara Streisand, slightly skewed