Media Blasters News

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###This is the Media Blasters News thread.
Effective April 2, 2015

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###Media Blasters Changing Release Approach
So long, singles
By Chris Beveridge April 16, 2010

The times they are a’changing as Media Blasters’ John Sirabella has talked about some of the things they’re going to be doing different going into the near future with releases:

“In the USA we are trying to change our model and even at MB we have decided that the time has come for us too. We have no choice to go boxsets initially, cheaper and even blu ray boxsets so Kanokon will be our last series of DVD singles. There may be some Blu ray singles but no more DVD. We also have to try and get people out the episodes initially for free on the web. Hope than later they will buy it. We have to see how the numbers will work…if they will work.”

Media Blasters and Viz Media are the two companies that are still doing standard 4-5 episode single disc releases, though Viz primarily does it for some legacy and top tier titles like Bleach and Naruto. Bandai Entertainment does singles of a sort with double disc sets that have 6 or 7 episodes on them, but Media Blasters has been the last holdout on doing box sets up front. The company has managed to keep it this way for awhile by doing cheaper priced singles but many people for years have been holding back on buying the singles because the company tends to solicit a full box set sometimes even before a particular series has ended, either for the same full price or less.

I bought the Ah My Buddha singles, I couldn’t believe the boxset was releast right after. I am going to buy Queens Blade, but any other anime I need to watch an episode or two to see if I want to buy. If they can show the animes on Animenewsnetwork, Crunchyroll, and Youtube I think it would help them out alot. yay for blu-ray!

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Unfortunately, streaming stuff on the internet really isn’t profitable for anyone. Even the king of the hill YouTube can’t make money from streaming. If they go the route of selling the clips to places like YouTube or others, it might do okay for them. But there isn’t a lot of money on the internet for content companies.

With the changes in the retail market, the over decline in the economy, DVD markets, and anime in particular, they really didn’t have much of a choice. Unfortunately, the move away from singles will probably decrease the number of series they are able to dub. It will ultimately decrease their profits, which will make things tougher on them. But if they can make it through that, then they should be a stronger company.

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[quote=dragonrider_cody]
Unfortunately, streaming stuff on the internet really isn’t profitable for anyone. Even the king of the hill YouTube can’t make money from streaming. If they go the route of selling the clips to places like YouTube or others, it might do okay for them. But there isn’t a lot of money on the internet for content companies.

With the changes in the retail market, the over decline in the economy, DVD markets, and anime in particular, they really didn’t have much of a choice. Unfortunately, the move away from singles will probably decrease the number of series they are able to dub. It will ultimately decrease their profits, which will make things tougher on them. But if they can make it through that, then they should be a stronger company.[/quote]

Everyone keeps saying how bad the dvd market is I think one big part of that is I know people that will not buy dvds anymore and just holding out for the blu-ray to be releast, but these people I know are not into anime. once I start double dipping alot I to will switch to only blu-ray, That would be awile since I don’t own any blu-ray animes yet. :frowning:

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[quote=chrisc]

[quote=dragonrider_cody]
Unfortunately, streaming stuff on the internet really isn’t profitable for anyone. Even the king of the hill YouTube can’t make money from streaming. If they go the route of selling the clips to places like YouTube or others, it might do okay for them. But there isn’t a lot of money on the internet for content companies.

With the changes in the retail market, the over decline in the economy, DVD markets, and anime in particular, they really didn’t have much of a choice. Unfortunately, the move away from singles will probably decrease the number of series they are able to dub. It will ultimately decrease their profits, which will make things tougher on them. But if they can make it through that, then they should be a stronger company.[/quote]

Everyone keeps saying how bad the dvd market is I think one big part of that is I know people that will not buy dvds anymore and just holding out for the blu-ray to be releast, but these people I know are not into anime. once I start double dipping alot I to will switch to only blu-ray, That would be awile since I don’t own any blu-ray animes yet. :([/quote]

I think your dead wrong Chrisc. I know a lot of people with Blu-ray players, and their going with the cheaper DVD’s.
Slick

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Chris, no that is not the case. The slide in DVD sales is a problem across the board, not just in the anime area. In the case of most mainstream Hollywood movies, the bluray is already available, but still less people are buying. Bluray sales aren’t anywhere near what most industry reps were hoping, and they’re bad enough that retailers are counting less and less on their growth. Even Hollywood studios are dumping the bluray editions for slower selling movies and series because they aren’t moving enough units.

The slide in anime and DVD sales has a lot of complicated reasons. Media formats are aging, and many people are less likely to buy something they may only watch once or twice. (I know this is part of my reasoning for buying less Hollywood DVDs.) The economy still sucks in large parts of the country and the nation as a whole, so people are less likely to spend money on physical media. You have competition from On Demand, streaming, and digital downloads. (I’m even looking at purchasing things like BBC’s Survivor’s from iTunes, because it’s cheaper and I don’t have to make space for the discs.) You also have things like Netflix and Blockbuster online offering cheap unlimited rentals, as well as Blockbuster’s kiosks and Redbox offering $1 per day rentals. Why would someone blind buy a DVD now, when you can rent it tonight for a buck?

Anime is getting hit even harder by the cutbacks in ordering at retail. Anime DVDs are high profit, but their small sales don’t justify their shelf presence. With less product available, sales slide even more, which causes space to be cut back more, which in turn cuts sales even more. Anime blurays are failing at retail, particularly at places like Best Buy. Even Right Stuf has said they have been disappointed by the sales so far.

There are many problems with niche markets like on Bluray. They just don’t move the units to justify the significant increase in authoring costs, with a few exceptions for movies like Appleseed and Ponyo. They still only make up a small portion of the market overall. Also, the added cost of doing things like lossless audio, pop up menus, and flawless transfers as many bluray buyers demand are extremely time and capital intensive. Just look at all the complaints piling up over Funimation and Manga’s bluray releases. There are even complaints about the upcoming Appleseed bluray, because it does not feature lossless audio (though it does include surround mixes for both languages, which is something Funi’s releases have been missing.)

Many people thought the switch to boxsets would save the anime industry in North America. That clearly has not been the case. Now some people seem to think that Bluray will be the savior, and I seriously doubt that will be the case. Honestly, I think the approach of Sentai may be the wave of the future. More titles will need to be released subtitled only and with limited print runs, to avoid retailer sendbacks. There will need to be an increased focus on online sales, and well as digital distribution, such as streaming and downloads like iTunes. Only shows with significant sales numbers, TV deals, or those with international support (like the recent Sentai shows Clannad and Blue Drop) will be dubbed. Simulcasting of shows is also very important, but even that will never stop fansubs (a few people are already complaining about the subs on both CR, Funi and TAN’s streams.) The increased adoption and sales of bluray will be part of the solution, but only a small part, as they are unlikely to ever make up the sales we are loosing in DVDs.

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[quote=slickwolfie]

[quote=chrisc]

[quote=dragonrider_cody]
Unfortunately, streaming stuff on the internet really isn’t profitable for anyone. Even the king of the hill YouTube can’t make money from streaming. If they go the route of selling the clips to places like YouTube or others, it might do okay for them. But there isn’t a lot of money on the internet for content companies.

With the changes in the retail market, the over decline in the economy, DVD markets, and anime in particular, they really didn’t have much of a choice. Unfortunately, the move away from singles will probably decrease the number of series they are able to dub. It will ultimately decrease their profits, which will make things tougher on them. But if they can make it through that, then they should be a stronger company.[/quote]

Everyone keeps saying how bad the dvd market is I think one big part of that is I know people that will not buy dvds anymore and just holding out for the blu-ray to be releast, but these people I know are not into anime. once I start double dipping alot I to will switch to only blu-ray, That would be awile since I don’t own any blu-ray animes yet. :([/quote]
I think your dead wrong Chrisc. I know a lot of people with Blu-ray players, and their going with the cheaper DVD’s.
Slick[/quote]

Could just as well be, but I would always buy a blu-ray over a dvd.

Edit: dragonrider_cody thinking about what you said, People I know that use Netflix don’t buy dvds. I tried to rent animes from Netflix and boy does that suck but a lot are now on the internet.

7

[quote=chrisc]

[quote=slickwolfie]

[quote=chrisc]

[quote=dragonrider_cody]
Unfortunately, streaming stuff on the internet really isn’t profitable for anyone. Even the king of the hill YouTube can’t make money from streaming. If they go the route of selling the clips to places like YouTube or others, it might do okay for them. But there isn’t a lot of money on the internet for content companies.

With the changes in the retail market, the over decline in the economy, DVD markets, and anime in particular, they really didn’t have much of a choice. Unfortunately, the move away from singles will probably decrease the number of series they are able to dub. It will ultimately decrease their profits, which will make things tougher on them. But if they can make it through that, then they should be a stronger company.[/quote]

Everyone keeps saying how bad the dvd market is I think one big part of that is I know people that will not buy dvds anymore and just holding out for the blu-ray to be releast, but these people I know are not into anime. once I start double dipping alot I to will switch to only blu-ray, That would be awile since I don’t own any blu-ray animes yet. :([/quote]
I think your dead wrong Chrisc. I know a lot of people with Blu-ray players, and their going with the cheaper DVD’s.
Slick[/quote]

Could just as well be, but I would always buy a blu-ray over a dvd.[/quote]

I normally would too, but in some cases, it just doesn’t make sense. Why would I spend $30 on the bluray release of a 20 or 30 year old movie that will look just as good on a $10 DVD in my upconvert player? I bought Labyrinth on bluray, primarily because I have the original DVD release with no surround sound. It was on sale, but I figured “What the Hell?”. I was deeply disappointed by the video quality, as it looked nearly identical to my 7 year old DVD. Was it worth the $20? Not really, but at least I got surround sound this time.

Compare that to DVD. When DVD came out, it didn’t matter what the movie was or how old it was, there was always an improvement in video and sound quality. Not to mention, DVD’s had things like Flawless pause, no need to rewind, and extra features that VHS lacked. Even within a few years, DVDs became cheaper to replicate due to a less complicated production system. It became the norm for most people to upgrade many of their VHS movies to DVD, just because it was easier. That isn’t the case with bluray, because they are backwards compatible. The improvements also are as noticeable. A lot of people can’t see that much of a difference between DVD and bluray releases, especially if you have a bargain basement TV like Vizio or Westinghouse brands.

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Thou I hate to think, let alone type it, I think this is MB’s last ditch, and I mean THE LAST, effort to stay profitable in today’s anime hobby market. And it’s not gonna work. Another anime com. R.I.P. And that makes me really sad… :frowning:

And like I said on AOD forums, the only solution to save the anime industry is for Japan to stop making anime period…for a while…LOL.
But I say that, or similar solutions, for a lot of things.

Save the economy? Wipe out the Fed. Reserve.
Save the auto industry? Stop making cars.
Save the evironment? Wipe out the human race.

:lol:

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Personally, I’ll never buy a Bluray.
Not when upconverting looks perfectly fine and works for me.

http://img682.imageshack.us/i/amgupcvtl.jpg/http://img682.imageshack.us/img682/5153/amgupcvtl.th.jpg

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Sadly, in some cases like Witchblade, the upconverted DVD actually looks better than the bluray… :stuck_out_tongue:

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I wonder if people that say upconverting is better have a true 1080p tv?

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I have a 40" 1080p Sony. Hell, even most 32" today are 1080p.

No one said upconverting is better. Coffee said it was good enough for him, and I simply cited one example where the blurays were done quite poorly and looked worse than the DVDs. The filters Funimation chose to use removed quite a bit of detail from the animation.

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[quote=dragonrider_cody]
No one said upconverting is better. Coffee said it was good enough for him, and I simply cited one example where the blurays were done quite poorly and looked worse than the DVDs.[/quote]

Exactly.
I never said upconverting is better than 1080p, however, it truely isn’t worth the added extra cost to me when upconverting is perfectly fine for me.


Of course, the day I want to compare 1080p to upconversion, the online player isn’t working for HD streams.
So I guess I’ll come back to this topic with a comparison image of Area 88 later when it is.

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Honestly don’t understand the difference in Blue-Ray enough to know how to tell if it will actually be better. With DVD I know it depends on the source material. I bought a movie in the dollar store a while back because it was a movie I didn’t even know existed, and it played on the upconverting player looking like an old VHS tape on the slowest speed setting. Probably because that was the source for the bootleg. I did some research later and found no really clear legit release of this movie to DVD.

I went back later to try to find a copy for a buddy and struck out, but I did find a few vintage anime titles I need to go back and pick up - looks like some from the OVA era, plus one marked Captain Harlock Volume 4. Should be interesting to see what they look like on the TV compared to a recent release. Also to see how terrible they are, lol -

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Biggest issue with HD is…
Blu-Ray and HD-DVD managed to divide a already divided market even more. When the companies started releasing it was way to soon. Same with the push away from CRT TV’s just way to soon to try to force other types on us. CRT was not perfect but it would last a while and was a more adaptable type then LCD and Plasma. Plasma is the most near to CRT ,but it still does not get a full glass of scotch. Though in the Age of make shit that breaks so people have to buy more I’m not really surprised.

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I think there was a demand for bigger TVs that take up less space, though. I know going to an LCD from the old internal projecting big screen we had both looks better and gives more room to store DVDs and things. But the big TV we had before died - it really didn’t last that long, come to find out some internal thing failed because of poor design, basically it gets hot and isn’t well ventilated and eventually it burns out. Yet I can go find a TV that’s 30 years old and that still works. Can’t recieve a signal but it works. Go figure.

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Last Generations of CRT TV’s really were not made that great. Probably to push people to LCD and Plasma. Last Samsung widescreen CRT HDTV’s were constantly having issues from poor workmanship. Sony’s last CRT HDTV Wega’s were pretty well made ,but of course Sony was one of the first to switch to LCD so I don’t think they had many years of Manufacturing. Neither were what I would call heavy TV’s though. Compared to the two CRT TV’s I’ve got in the house at least. Both are well over 10 years old and still function good enough. Picture is starting to show the grid if close to it ,but it still works . Most affordable LCD’s during most normal now a days video gaming , TV , and Movie watching seem to have one little part that will go out in 3 to 5 years. I’m more not a fan of how they pushed then not one of the current tech. I’d love to find a affordable TV that looks good with SD cable signals as much as it does with HD ,but every affordable TV I’ve seen shows way to many of the flaws that should have been fixed long before they went to a tech level that showed them as bad as they do. HD looks amazing ,but not enough to get in a prissy elite level of its got to be on Blu-Ray or I won’t buy. My main reason for wanting Blu-Ray would be for the audio improvements ,but that is at least another $500.00 (probably more) for a decent audio set up to enjoy it.

On the topic of Media Blasters so glad they are getting away from singles now.

18

[quote=rebecca12]
I think there was a demand for bigger TVs that take up less space, though. I know going to an LCD from the old internal projecting big screen we had both looks better and gives more room to store DVDs and things. But the big TV we had before died - it really didn’t last that long, come to find out some internal thing failed because of poor design, basically it gets hot and isn’t well ventilated and eventually it burns out. Yet I can go find a TV that’s 30 years old and that still works. Can’t recieve a signal but it works. Go figure.[/quote]

Must have been a Mitsubishi DLP. It’s heat problems with the light engine are legendary. AS for that 30 year old TV not receiving a signal, just add a digital converter with volume control and you have a functioning TV again!

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[quote=psychopuppet]
Last Generations of CRT TV’s really were not made that great. Probably to push people to LCD and Plasma. Last Samsung widescreen CRT HDTV’s were constantly having issues from poor workmanship. Sony’s last CRT HDTV Wega’s were pretty well made ,but of course Sony was one of the first to switch to LCD so I don’t think they had many years of Manufacturing.
On the topic of Media Blasters so glad they are getting away from singles now.[/quote]

God I remember those things! Damn they were heavy, and the people that bought them always showed up in tiny Hyundais and Cavaliers to pick them up! The 36" sets took about 3 people to lift.

Nice segue back to the topic…lol I have one last thing to say about MB’s switch for now. With less places to sell anime, lower profits from the boxsets, and lower sales overall, I don’t think we will be seeing many dubs from them in the future. It’s not that big of a deal to me, but to some it’s a big problem.

It seems we are going more and more towards an extremely niche hobby product (even more so than now) with very few dubs and extra features. Unless something dramatic happens, I don’t see any other way the market can survive.

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###MB VoiceWorks To Produce English Dubs For Media Blasters
Jan 23rd 2015
MB VoiceWorks To Produce English-Language Dubs For Media Blasters