The Region 1 Pokemon DVDs are terrible and yet nobody cares

[Moe]

You'd have to consider the different target audiences that the different series have - the Kanto stuff would largely sell to an older demographic of people who are nostalgic for the older episodes they saw when they were young, before the fad of Pokemon died down. While the releases of current episodes would be more to parents buying it for children who started with the current series - and would watch it with very little deep interest in storylines, let alone the technical quality of the release.

Obviously there's the people who have stuck with the series for a long time and remain fans now - but that's likely a small minority of the people buying the current releases. Even then, there's the question of how much replay value the episodes have. People can simply DVR the episodes as they air, and then just keep ones they might want to see again, there's a decent chunk of the episodes on Hulu and Netflix as well - leaving little reason to own them.

Though that goes back to the bonus content issue - whether there'd be an amount of bonus content that would make people want to purchase the DVD releases that wouldn't make them uneconomical to produce. I'd imagine that if they started releasing the DVD version with unedited music you'd probably get more complaints about them changing it in the first place - as then they'd be essentially changing something about the show just to sell more DVDs.

Subtitled versions of the Japanese episodes is possibly what that is for some fans, but we don't even get Pokemon on any of the streaming services - Crunchyroll in particular which has a huge amount of TV Tokyo content, or even Viz's own website that seems to host dubbed and subbed versions of a lot of their other shows.

 

[Yoshi1001]

It'll be interesting to see what happens when those two audiences collide over the next 5-10 years as the original fans get married and have kids.

I can't give figures on the DVD sales, but I think it's worth noting that there seems to be yet another release of the movies 4-7 DVD compilation coming out in March:

Pokemon Collectors Set:Amazon

This is the third or fourth time this has been put out, so at least this one is selling.

 

[DVDs]

On an interesting side note of Movies 4-7, they will be airing on Dinsey XD (US) this January.

Jan. 5: Pokémon 4Ever [7 a.m. and 12 p.m. EST]
Jan. 6: Pokémon Heroes
Jan. 7: Jirachi: Wish Maker
Jan. 8: Destiny Deoxys

I'm just curious, when will Disney ever lose the rights to these movies?

 

[Charmelizard]

On an interesting side note of Movies 4-7, they will be airing on Dinsey XD (US) this January.

Jan. 5: Pokémon 4Ever [7 a.m. and 12 p.m. EST]
Jan. 6: Pokémon Heroes
Jan. 7: Jirachi: Wish Maker
Jan. 8: Destiny Deoxys

I'm just curious, when will Disney ever lose the rights to these movies?

Disney actually sold Miramax about 4 years ago, but I guess they still have TV rights to certain Miramax titles. I also saw the listings for 4Ever, Heroes and Jirachi, and they are all airing at 7am and Noon.

 

[DVDs]

On an interesting side note of Movies 4-7, they will be airing on Dinsey XD (US) this January.

Jan. 5: Pokémon 4Ever [7 a.m. and 12 p.m. EST]
Jan. 6: Pokémon Heroes
Jan. 7: Jirachi: Wish Maker
Jan. 8: Destiny Deoxys

I'm just curious, when will Disney ever lose the rights to these movies?

Disney actually sold Miramax about 4 years ago, but I guess they still have TV rights to certain Miramax titles. I also saw the listings for 4Ever, Heroes and Jirachi, and they are all airing at 7am and Noon.

The only thing standing in the way of a complete movie collection being released in North America like it was in Japan is the rights to the first seven movies. I already own all the movies, so it's not a big deal for me, but it would still be nice to see it eventually come to fruition.

 

[Charmelizard]

On an interesting side note of Movies 4-7, they will be airing on Dinsey XD (US) this January.

Jan. 5: Pokémon 4Ever [7 a.m. and 12 p.m. EST]
Jan. 6: Pokémon Heroes
Jan. 7: Jirachi: Wish Maker
Jan. 8: Destiny Deoxys

I'm just curious, when will Disney ever lose the rights to these movies?

Disney actually sold Miramax about 4 years ago, but I guess they still have TV rights to certain Miramax titles. I also saw the listings for 4Ever, Heroes and Jirachi, and they are all airing at 7am and Noon.

The only thing standing in the way of a complete movie collection being released in North America like it was in Japan is the rights to the first seven movies. I already own all the movies, so it's not a big deal for me, but it would still be nice to see it eventually come to fruition.

Wouldn't that apply to the Giratina movie as well, since Universal released that one? I mean, I already have the movies I want (1-4, 6-8 on DVD, 4-7 on Blu-ray), but I saw that the Giratina movie is out of print on Amazon. The prices haven't gone up yet, but it's only a matter of time.

 

[Yash]

I think the true crime of how the Pokemon anime is handled in the US is that the Japanese music is still being replaced.

Adding an alternative audio track to the DVD releases would rectify both of these issues. Would it really cost that much? TPCI already has some episodes with all Japanese music (XY001/002 cough) and they clearly have the rights to everything, they just choose to be dicks about it.

 

[JacobYBM]

The more of Miyazaki Shinji's music they use the more they have to pay him. Why pay some schmuck they don't know when they can make money off of their own music?

 

[BlackButterfree]

As someone who has both Kanto and Orange on DVD and X&Y on iTunes, I can definitely say that the DVD's are s**t. Simple. They're such bad quality and on top of that, it's near to impossible to find them! I ordered Kanto + Orange the day after Christmas like two years ago. I didn't get all the DVD's until early February. And I was supposed to buy the first two movies alongside them, I couldn't even find them USED! (Not that I'd buy used movies anyway. Ew.)

Meanwhile, the XY anime on iTunes is amazing. Contrary to what someone said on the first page, it is NOT streaming and you DO keep a copy of the file on your computer. I have many episodes of the XY anime saved on my computer. The quality looks identical to that of what I see on Cartoon Network, and I would gladly keep buying the anime online. And I would gladly do so with the movies, if any of the 17 were online, which they're not... -_-

But with the Hoenn episodes... Pokémon.com has higher quality episodes for streaming of the Hoenn seasons than the ones iTunes has for sale. It's pretty bad, I remember someone posted side by side screencaps on a thread here and Poké's episodes were much more natural in their coloring and HD in their rendering than iTune's.

I have seen plenty of people complain on Viz Media's comments whenever they post pictures/statuses about Pokémon DVD's, and usually most of the comments are complaints, but these almost always go ignored. Viz Media doesn't even bother to reply. So I honestly don't know if a boycott would make an impact. Considering that, as I mentioned above, the DVD's are already hard to find, it's not like that many people are buying them anyway.

When they're ignoring all criticism, and no one can buy the product because it's so rare, they probably have the erroneous thought that no one's interested, so they have no incentive to make it better. The Johto re-release suggests that they're now aware of that rarity, but only time will tell if they decide to make it better, which the movie releases suggest they won't.

 

[Piplup]

Meanwhile, the XY anime on iTunes is amazing. Contrary to what someone said on the first page, it is NOT streaming and you DO keep a copy of the file on your computer.

Are you sure about that? Do you REALLY get a video file to forever keep on your computer with the possibility to watch it while not connected to the internet, take screenshots from it with your video player, being able to copy it to an SD card / external hd, potentially going to someone else's place and just connect it to his laptop and watch it without any need of your iTunes account or an internet connection, being able to burn it to a disk, etc....... can you do all that? if not, you don't truly own it... if you can though then I'm surprised cause while I never tried iTunes everyone seems to imply it is merely online watching disguised as "owning" it when you don't actually own it in at all.

Anyway, regarding all the comments here: don't get me wrong, I agree with you all about the music changes or things like it'd be nice to have the Japanese audio and all, but it just won't happen. TPCi releases the English-dubbed version of the show the way they want it to be. Why they want it to be this way is a different issue and we may never know the exact reasons, but (as stupid as they might be) they have their reasons, and we're getting the anime the way they intend us to get it.
As far as they care, the English dubbed anime as it is, is how the English-speaking audience is supposed to watch it. I doubt they'd ever even officially talk about the fact they're replacing the background music (so an alternative bgm option on DVDs is not something they'd ever consider) and honestly most of people probably don't care that much about the bgm or the original version the way we do... it might be sad, but it's just the way it is.

 

[Moe]

Are you sure about that? Do you REALLY get a video file to forever keep on your computer with the possibility to watch it while not connected to the internet, take screenshots from it with your video player, being able to copy it to an SD card / external hd, potentially going to someone else's place and just connect it to his laptop and watch it without any need of your iTunes account or an internet connection, being able to burn it to a disk, etc....... can you do all that? if not, you don't truly own it... if you can though then I'm surprised cause while I never tried iTunes everyone seems to imply it is merely online watching disguised as "owning" it when you don't actually own it in at all.

Not all of that, no. There's an authorisation system - each computer (or supported device like an iPad or Apple TV) you want to watch the episodes on has to be signed in to at some point to download a playback decryption key, which then lets you download and watch the episodes (and take screenshots) whether you are online or not - with up to five machines able to be authorised at the one time. It's a one time download, not streaming video.

People have understandable objections to DRM - but in my view for watching Pokemon there's a very good balance - I get an episode in 1080p HD available to download within a few hours of it airing in the US, legally and watermark free. It works out a little bit more expensive than the DVDs, but better quality and without the delay.

 

[Piplup]

Are you sure about that? Do you REALLY get a video file to forever keep on your computer with the possibility to watch it while not connected to the internet, take screenshots from it with your video player, being able to copy it to an SD card / external hd, potentially going to someone else's place and just connect it to his laptop and watch it without any need of your iTunes account or an internet connection, being able to burn it to a disk, etc....... can you do all that? if not, you don't truly own it... if you can though then I'm surprised cause while I never tried iTunes everyone seems to imply it is merely online watching disguised as "owning" it when you don't actually own it in at all.

Not all of that, no. There's an authorisation system - each computer (or supported device like an iPad or Apple TV) you want to watch the episodes on has to be signed in to at some point to download a playback decryption key, which then lets you download and watch the episodes (and take screenshots) whether you are online or not - with up to five machines able to be authorised at the one time. It's a one time download, not streaming video.

People have understandable objections to DRM - but in my view for watching Pokemon there's a very good balance - I get an episode in 1080p HD available to download within a few hours of it airing in the US, legally and watermark free. It works out a little bit more expensive than the DVDs, but better quality and without the delay.

The illegal method is still extremely superior then. This is paying for a slightly-improved online watching. You still don't really own the ep the way you would if you had the DVD or the illegally downloaded DVD rip / web rip...
It's a shame, cause they're supposedly giving a legal way to own the eps on your computer, yet they don't REALLY do that... it's so dumb cause people will inevitably rip their releases and upload them, so why not give the nicer fans who are willing to pay a file that would be as good as the free illegally downloaded file? fans who are willing to waste their money on this deserve way better than they get... we're about to enter 2015 and the approach to this whole thing is SO outdated...

 

[Hidden Mew]

I had to delete a lot of posts due to the discussing a fan movement. Fan movements like trying to get better quality DVDs for the movies aren't allowed here in the Anime section. Please don't bring up that topic again. Thank you.

 

[zw94]

I had to delete a lot of posts due to the discussing a fan movement. Fan movements like trying to get better quality DVDs for the movies aren't allowed here in the Anime section. Please don't bring up that topic again. Thank you.

Can't you save the posts and move them to another area of the forum? That's rather disappointing.

 

[Hidden Mew]

Can't you save the posts and move them to another area of the forum?

No. If you or anyone else has any disagreements/questions regarding this decision, please send me or another Anime mod a PM. Do not bring it up in this thread again.

 

[DVDs]

Wouldn't that apply to the Giratina movie as well, since Universal released that one? I mean, I already have the movies I want (1-4, 6-8 on DVD, 4-7 on Blu-ray), but I saw that the Giratina movie is out of print on Amazon. The prices haven't gone up yet, but it's only a matter of time.

I always forget about that one. It makes me so curious how Universal got the distribution rights to Movie 11. After TPCi took over, Viz Media handled all of it's releases except Movie 11. It didn't get released in theaters, so why didn't Viz Media get the distribution rights?

 

[Yoshi1001]

Viz's Logo does appear on the disc label for the Giratina movie. I generally consider it the "beginning of the weirdness" for Pokemon DVD distribution in the US.

 

[Charmelizard]

Viz's Logo does appear on the disc label for the Giratina movie. I generally consider it the "beginning of the weirdness" for Pokemon DVD distribution in the US.

You mean the Arceus Gap?

 

[Yoshi1001]

One other thing I've been meaning to mention is that a likely partial reason for some of these issues is that TPCi is understaffed, judging from my interactions with them on the TCG side. The folks who do work there put in good effort, but there simply aren't enough of them, and some things slip through as a result. I suppose you could call that being cheap, but I still don't think it justifies the harsh tone of some of the criticism I see out there.

 

[Dogasu]

I think the tone in this thread is fine. TPCI consistently puts out a garbage product. I don't care about excuses and I don't care about how hard working and passionate they are about the work they do. When it comes to the DVDs the thing I care about is the final product and the Pokemon DVDs fail to deliver in nearly every possible way.

The illegal method is still extremely superior then. This is paying for a slightly-improved online watching. You still don't really own the ep the way you would if you had the DVD or the illegally downloaded DVD rip / web rip...
It's a shame, cause they're supposedly giving a legal way to own the eps on your computer, yet they don't REALLY do that... it's so dumb cause people will inevitably rip their releases and upload them, so why not give the nicer fans who are willing to pay a file that would be as good as the free illegally downloaded file? fans who are willing to waste their money on this deserve way better than they get... we're about to enter 2015 and the approach to this whole thing is SO outdated...

I still think you misunderstand the way iTunes work. The signing in on-line to verify that you're the one who actually owns the video is a one-time process. You could unplug your Internet for the rest of your life if you want and you'd still be able to watch any episodes you download.

It's not perfect and there are restrictions, yes, but the same is true of illegal downloads and DVDs as well.