It isn't just the Region 1 DVD releases from Viz Media, the English version of Pokemon lacks good DVD releases in general. The DVD releases by Beyond Home Entertainment (formerly Magna Pacific) in Australia aren't much better overall.
The DVD releases in Australia have many issues:
The initial DVD release of Pokemon season 1 (Super Wallet) was missing 4 episodes.
The DVD releases of older Pokemon seasons suffer video quality issues due to too much compression. It is worse in the action scenes, like the first image shown in comparisons above.
The DVD releases of Pokemon movies are just as bare bones, lack English SDH subtitles and still could have much better video quality.
The DVD releases for Pokemon DP: Galactic Battles, Pokemon DP: Sinnoh League Victors were cropped, even though produced for widescreen.
We gets all sorts of strange packaging which doesn't protect discs, won't last long term, and can be difficult to actually use.
The only real advantages are we get the Pokemon movies in widescreen and sooner in Australia, along with a few extra Pokemon titles (Pokemon Chronicles, Pokemon Origins) been released.
Only the Blu-Ray releases of the Pokemon movies in Australia actually offered good video quality, in my opinion. But Beyond Home Entertainment dropped the Blu-Ray releases of Pokemon movies, because they were not selling well enough. Beyond Home Entertainment have a really nasty habit of dropping any cartoon series they think isn't selling well enough, they have dropped so many cartoon series over the years, and are even worse than Viz Media in that way.
Beyond Home Entertainment frequently re-releases the Pokemon series on DVD in various new packaging, but they never actually change the content on the discs. The early seasons are still using the old discs originally released by Magna Pacific, with no attempts to improve the video quality at all. Beyond Home Entertainment and Viz Media are just as bad in that way, with Viz Media re-using older discs for their re-releases of the Indigo league on DVD too.
I don't think there is any hope for better releases of the Pokemon movies or series, unless other companies take over the English rights, which is very unlikely to happen.
The DVD releases in Australia have many issues:
The initial DVD release of Pokemon season 1 (Super Wallet) was missing 4 episodes.
The DVD releases of older Pokemon seasons suffer video quality issues due to too much compression. It is worse in the action scenes, like the first image shown in comparisons above.
The DVD releases of Pokemon movies are just as bare bones, lack English SDH subtitles and still could have much better video quality.
The DVD releases for Pokemon DP: Galactic Battles, Pokemon DP: Sinnoh League Victors were cropped, even though produced for widescreen.
We gets all sorts of strange packaging which doesn't protect discs, won't last long term, and can be difficult to actually use.
The only real advantages are we get the Pokemon movies in widescreen and sooner in Australia, along with a few extra Pokemon titles (Pokemon Chronicles, Pokemon Origins) been released.
Only the Blu-Ray releases of the Pokemon movies in Australia actually offered good video quality, in my opinion. But Beyond Home Entertainment dropped the Blu-Ray releases of Pokemon movies, because they were not selling well enough. Beyond Home Entertainment have a really nasty habit of dropping any cartoon series they think isn't selling well enough, they have dropped so many cartoon series over the years, and are even worse than Viz Media in that way.
Beyond Home Entertainment frequently re-releases the Pokemon series on DVD in various new packaging, but they never actually change the content on the discs. The early seasons are still using the old discs originally released by Magna Pacific, with no attempts to improve the video quality at all. Beyond Home Entertainment and Viz Media are just as bad in that way, with Viz Media re-using older discs for their re-releases of the Indigo league on DVD too.
I don't think there is any hope for better releases of the Pokemon movies or series, unless other companies take over the English rights, which is very unlikely to happen.
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