ADVision asked to have titles that they have licenses for to be taken off the site, s

[Vicious]

For those of you that are visully stimulated, here's a map that shows the regions.

http://www.animeondvd.com/reviews/index.php

[beboprules]

Originally posted by Vicious
the copyright treaty or whatever that they all signed at the Berne Convention. Everyone except Hong Kong signed it. So they are allowed to have bootlegs because they never signed the treaty. However, they are not allowed to export those out of Hong Kong.

That doesn't make sense. Hong Kong does not have right to sign into any international policy. Maybe that signing thing happened before China took HK back. If so, that is no longer valid. Any HK policy falls under China's jurisdiction. If China signed the treaty, so goes the HK.

[Vicious]

Originally posted by beboprules
That doesn't make sense. Hong Kong does not have right to sign into any international policy. Maybe that signing thing happened before China took HK back. If so, that is no longer valid. Any HK policy falls under China's jurisdiction. If China signed the treaty, so goes the HK.

Go do some leg work and look up Berne convention or Berne treaty or something and figure it out. I'm just repeating what I've been told over and over again.

EDIT: Found it. It took me all of 2 minutes to find out the answer, but I'd rather people do their own research.

[hbk101]

Here?s the summary of facts as to the best of my knowledge.

Copyright treaty of 1996 at Berne Convention is a part of World Trade Organization (WTO). Indeed, Hong Kong did not sign the treaty back then. However, the issue became irrelevant as Hong Kong was annexed into China in 1997 and is covered under China?s copyright law. When China was allowed to enter WTO in 2001, one of the conditions was to sign the treaty and update its copyright law to international standards, which China complied.

This means that Hong Kong copyright law is also under the jurisdiction of China?s copyright law as governed by international copyright standard. The law is in place. However, the enforcement is another matter. China has been under growing pressure from other countries to better-enforce the law, which means that it at least has to put up an appearance that it is trying so. As a consequence, MAC gets raided once a while. I read somehwere that even Hong Kong became too uncomfortable for MAC that they eventually moved their production plant out of HK. I guess that HK police does not bother MI too much because MI is a legitimate company and makes some official R3 titles.

[tsunami]

I guess we can't stress enough how seasons of U.S. shows are $40 and then shows like Slayers are $120 a season. Plus they show slayers on U.S. TV so whats with the high price? The only reason I even consider HK DVDs is because that is all I can afford. I did at one time try to buy anime but all I got is various volumes here and there of shows and none of them is complete and I still can't find the rest of the volumes to them. I don't have a gotta buy them all attitude.

Plus why do they price these shows so much? Greed I believe but come on if it is a good show a cheap price will bring much more people to buy and they get more money that way. Plus even japanese buy HKs so it is more then R3 and R1 users who scramble for HKs.

[Seijuro Hiko]

Originally posted by tsunami
I guess we can't stress enough how seasons of U.S. shows are $40 and then shows like Slayers are $120 a season. Plus they show slayers on U.S. TV so whats with the high price? The only reason I even consider HK DVDs is because that is all I can afford.

ThTS WHt I've been trying to say, most recent anime dvds are from 20$-30 (average) and thats OK with me but not when it includes 4 episodes, I'm ok with one part of dragonball (original), the red ribon saga has 17 eps and it cost from 35$ -40 so thats affordable, but why put the same price for the next saga that has only 10 episodes. It dosen't make any sense. So HK is the way to go for me, because they're cheaper.

[Zagatto]

For people looking for a great deal on a classic series, pick up the limited edition Speed Racer DVDs.
They've packed half a season on each disc and charge less than $20 (got mine for Can$17.99). To top it off, the packaging is super cool on them. The first disc has a rubber tire tread on the front of the slip case and the second disc lights up and plays the theme song when you squeeze it.

If all TV series were released with this quality at these kind of prices the only reason to get HK DVDs would be to pick up series not yet released in North America (this is the whole reason I got into HK DVDs to begin with).

[Seijuro Hiko]

Do the speed racer dvds have the japanese track? I think not but I'm not sure can anyone clear this up for me, thats why I haven't bought them

[DarkKnightBob]

Despite the percieved popularity of anime it is still a somewhat "cult" market status in that it is only really popular amongst a small demographic. This has been slowly changing over the years (for those that remember how hard it was to get decent anime in UK/US in the 80's early 90's) but from a business standpoint it can still be quite expensive.

The high prices for some R1 dvd's are still quite high but that is mainly because the OAV's Films will sell more units and thus the series dvd's will have a higher markup as they will obviously entail higher costs for printing and distirbuting. Ah yes OAV's and Films. These are standard prices so it's not all bad.

From a moral/ethical standpoint i will buy series on HK's. Not OAV's, because i can buy R2 OAV's and films at pretty much the same prices, but I don't really have the money to feed my addiction for series. But i would pay for full price R1/R2's if i could afford it.

But looking around there are quite a few low priced series coming out. I won't mention the site where i quoted this price from but let's for instance say you wanted to "Play" a dvd of martian succesor you could pick it up on R1 for £45 (about $65-70) that's the whole series boxset! Now this is the same price you can pick up the 24 boxset for at some places so it is hardly an across the board monopoly, but it still IS a small demographic of buyers and not long term ones either. Apart from the few die hard fans of this stuff the large market is with a 2 year span for teenagers around 15 years of age. There is no continuation of sales. This is not an ego bruising thing here. I'm 22 and i love it but i'm not the majority.

I see a lot of youngn's complaining about the prices but you have no idea how far the availability of anime has come along in recent years. You'd be lucky to be able to get a hold of a legit anime VHS that wasn't hideously dubbed some 5-10 years ago. There were some 40,000 titles of ninja croll/ghost in the shell sold between when it came out and 1998.
Any business men would have to be plyed with a whole LOAD of drink and strippers to agree to invest in such a market at that time. Akira was the only one to break decent figures at some 75,000 but that really was the exception.

ADV have got a right to protect their business. You're arguing on very tenuous legal ground when it comes to HK imports. The few arguements being that you have access to anime that never gets released in the west and that the japanese market is in itself almost fully enclosed and so will not be as harmed as western sales. But then we aren't in japan we're in the west and if HK importing gets out of hand we go back to square one and you get to enjoy your anime as "amazing" quality realmedia 5meg files that are badly subbed.

I really think the good to honest compromise here would be for Anime distrubutors to invest in more boxsets like the nadesico one. At least then you can reach a market that isn't willing/able to fork out for the whole series individually. For example releasing the boxset a month or so after all the volumes have come out. That way the people who want their anime NOW and are willing to pay get it. And those that cant afford it aren't completely left out in the cold and aren't taken in by the allure of HK's so much

Sorry for the long post. I know it's my first one and i've tried not to step on too many toes to avoid getting flamed back into the stone age but there you go

[Vicious]

Originally posted by DarkKnightBob

I really think the good to honest compromise here would be for Anime distrubutors to invest in more boxsets like the nadesico one. At least then you can reach a market that isn't willing/able to fork out for the whole series individually. For example releasing the boxset a month or so after all the volumes have come out. That way the people who want their anime NOW and are willing to pay get it. And those that cant afford it aren't completely left out in the cold and aren't taken in by the allure of HK's so much

That Nadesico boxset is even cheaper here in the US. We can get it for around $50. there are quite a few of those 'brick' boxsets out here.

The reason the companies don't release them right away is because they are still making money on the individual volumes. they try to get what they can out of those first. And then when sales slow down, they release the 'bricks'. You have to wait about a year until after the last DVD has been released. That's the price you pay if you want to save some money.

[Rei1781]

Originally posted by Seijuro Hiko
Do the speed racer dvds have the japanese track? I think not but I'm not sure can anyone clear this up for me, thats why I haven't bought them

I have the first volume and it only comes with English audio...

[Shinn Asuka]

At least Bandai is releasing Zeta Gundam as a "brick" first and then singles later. :P

[Zagatto]

Originally posted by Rei1781
I have the first volume and it only comes with English audio...

The second volume is English only as well.
But that's the way I remember it from when I was growing up. I'm watching it more for the nostalgia and to see the cool car designs than anything else. It's actually a pretty lame series when you look at it compared to todays stuff.

[rugrats1]

Originally posted by Seijuro Hiko
Do the speed racer dvds have the japanese track? I think not but I'm not sure can anyone clear this up for me, thats why I haven't bought them

I have the first volume and it only comes with English audio...

The second volume is also English only -- all from the early-1990s Speed Racer Enterprises copies.

To be honest, I don't know if the Japanese version exists in R2 -- if it did, then the HK DVD marketplace would've been flooded with HK copies of them, as many die-hard Speed Racer fans would like to see the original Japanese version.