New HK company?

[Ryoku Slayer]

I found these really cool boxsets of Hikaru No Go on ebay. There are three parts: 6 disks each, and has gatefold/plastic slip cover. Anyway I have not seen any of these on online anime dvd shops b4 and I was just wondering if any of you know anything about the quality of these dvds or if you know the company that makes them. I feel like buying these dvds because they look pretty cool and have really cool packaging. Here is the link to the boxsets:

1.http://image.inkfrog.com/pix/rcajapananim/hikaru11.jpg
2.http://image.inkfrog.com/pix/rcajapananim/hikaru21.jpg
3.http://image.inkfrog.com/pix/rcajapananim/hikaru31.jpg
4.http://image.inkfrog.com/pix/rcajapananim/hikaro123.jpg
5.http://image.inkfrog.com/pix/rcajapanani...hin123.jpg
6.http://image.inkfrog.com/pix/rcajapanani...ce1234.jpg
7.http://image.inkfrog.com/pix/rcajapananim/shaman123.jpg

FYI: I checked the info on these and they said that these dvds contain a japanese/mandarin dub and chinese/english subtitles. Can someone tell me if these are licensed products cause the ebay seller said that these were licensed not bootlegs. I love the cover art on these gatefold cases

[matthewmalay]

It looks interesting and I would also like to know the quality of the discs, especially the subtitles. Those screenshots make me think TV-rip though but its hard to tell cause they are so small.

Well I know Hikaru no Go was on TV in Taiwan so that explains the mandarin dub, don't know if they are any official DVDs of them though but I would would be weary of what the dealer says, they look like bootlegs to me and the price of set would agree with me.

Well if you do buy them make sure to update use on the quality of them, Im sure lots of people are looking to get a HnG set with good quality.

[Japschin]

Bootlegs.
Jap/Man audio, chinese/eng subtitles are characteristics of HK/China sets.
From what I know, Japanese Licensed dvds seldom come in gatefolds.
I don't know, might be wrong.

[Elcoholic]

These are most likely mainland china rips (as they are called on arctic nightfall) made by a company called "SIMA culture". There's is a debate on wether they are licensed or not. Noone I've spoken knows for sure. I got one piece ep.1-120 for $14,-(24 discs) and $50,- shipping from ebay. The gatefolds look nice but are made of thin cartboard so there not as sturdy as the sets we normally get from here. No slipcovers on my sets also.

Quality is not perfect as it are 5 eps. on a dvd-5. Video would be VHS quality but very acceptable for the price you pay for it. Audio is fine on my sets. Subs on my one piece set are ripped from the MI sets but there's no way of knowing if your sets have the same treatment. Still, for those prices its an excelent preview method.

[bumperboy]

those dvds have low video quality and a lot of missing lines. the subs are normal engrish. I own some one piece sets like those of Hikaru no Go and all of them are DVD5. I guess they are dvd-rips of the HK versions and they add mandarim audio, or they rip them directly from TV and they do their own subs

[tsunami]

Well I've noticed something else that is a little strange while looking at sets around the net. I've noticed these 8-17 DVD sets. I've seen a couple of good images and they have MI stickers on them.

[CrayonShinChan]

This is an official china version of One Piece which has Jap / Mand audio plus chinese and english subs:

http://global.yesasia.com/en/PrdDept.asp.../did-7448/

[Ryoku Slayer]

Originally posted by CrayonShinChan
This is an official china version of One Piece which has Jap / Mand audio plus chinese and english subs:

http://global.yesasia.com/en/PrdDept.asp.../did-7448/

That picture of the one piece set is the same as the one piece link I put up on this thread. SO does this mean they are licensed?:confused: Chinese anime dvds get me confused a WHOLE lot.....

[Ryoku Slayer]

However I just noticed something, YesAsia is a huge distributor of Asian import dvds. However some of their anime are distributed in VCD format. For example: Hunter X Hunter is in distributed in vcd format in the cantonese dub with no subtitles. I think that those vcds are licensed even though they are vcds, people in china don't like to read the chinese subtitles so they dub it and not sub it. As for us americans some of us prefer english dubs and japanese dubs with subs. I believe this because YesAsia carries official japanese anime dvds as well (Region2). I believe that those sets that I linked are licensed even though they are low quality. If you look at YesAsia's website, they sell NO R1 ripped dvds. I have not seen an fx, mi, av, as, or mac set yet. Just think of it as this: you always see this symbol on everything you use: MADE IN CHINA. How long did the item last for you? I bought a scooter(electric) off of ebay that costed like 99+49 s/h. Anyway got it home and it rode for a little then busted. The parts were DEFECTIVE and had to be replaced. I used this little example because Chinese products aren't as high quality as the american or japanese products so they'll just have to be that way we can't do anything about it. Maybe Mr.Vicious could help us out. He is a genius after all

[Elcoholic]

Originally posted by CrayonShinChan
This is an official china version of One Piece which has Jap / Mand audio plus chinese and english subs:

http://global.yesasia.com/en/PrdDept.asp.../did-7448/

That's one of the sets I'm talking about. If they are licensed products than the chinese probably get much better deals when licensing a show than the R1 companies since I bought up to ep.120 for $64. If the R1 prices will be comparible it would be nice (which ofcourse won't happen ) So, if they are licensed, why are they so cheap (other than being an inferior product which might to true to some degree but there won't be as large an quality drop to justify those prices).

[dvd_master]

I don't think there's a way in hell that the One Piece set is licensed. It would be all over AnimeonDVD, and I don't think it would be so cheap.

Those mainland China sets seem like such a great deal (wow, SIX DVDS for that price!) but they are all DVD-5's (single layer). A standard HK is DVD-9 (dual layer). So for the same price you could get the three DVD set for about the same price, with the same amount of data.

Don't bother with the Mainland China sets.

[tsunami]

I think the only reason people buy them is for the mandarin dubs not for the super good image quality.

[CrayonShinChan]

However some of their anime are distributed in VCD format. For example: Hunter X Hunter is in distributed in vcd format in the cantonese dub with no subtitles. I think that those vcds are licensed even though they are vcds, people in china don't like to read the chinese subtitles so they dub it and not sub it.

Re: HxH
They also come in DVD format. First i got the bootleg dvd set which also had cantonese chinese audio put onto the hk, in addition to the jap audio & eng subs. I liked it so much i bought the official Hong Kong DVD Set which has cantonese audio only. It was only about US$70.

The stuff with cantonese dub only tends to be hong kong licensed stuff. This is presumably cheaper to license since it is for the domestic market (hong kong is the size of a city, albeit with a pretty large population) and overseas chinese. Often they are vcd only since they are cheap and popular. Price is a big issue since bootlegging totally killed off the movie industry for a while but also had the effect of reducing prices of many movies etc to an absolute pittance.

For domestic movies now, the pirates can actually be more expensive or the same price as the official ones.

Mainland china is a little different. Stuff is even cheaper there due to the standard of living. In hong kong bootlegs are efforts to crack down on bootlegs. China - i doubt there is much done about it. Price is king.

Amazingly some mainland China licensed stuff has bootleg quality and at times they even use bootleg sources. :eek: And when they license something sometimes they do not have rights to use english audio on it but do they care?

So in mainland china:
1) Just because it is cheap does not necessarily mean it is bootleg.
I got plenty official hollywood movie vcds & dvds for US$3.
2) Just because they ripped a bootleg does not necessarily mean that it is not licensed.

Confused??

There has been ocassions where the bootlegs have had better packaging and video quality than my official versions of tv series and anime. V_V Go figure. Often they have audio options not available in the official versions too.