Is anyone else having a problem with the new Ultraman set released today?

While watching Disc One - Episode One the English dubbing suddenly goes to subtitles and then back again. The disc freezes up and then pixelates and then goes back to an earlier scene.

Episode two also jumped around.

Amazon is sending me out a replacement copy. I hope that I just have a bad one and that it's not a big problem.

I have a Sony DVP-S560D player.

I would love to hear if anyone else is having these or other problems with this disc or discs.

Just picked up this set today and am running into issues with the English audio tracks dropping out or being replaced with the Japanese ones for sections in many of the Episodes (eg. 1,2, 8 & 10). I've looked at the audio selection on the player and it shows that it is on the English track. There are also appear to be some problems with video where a gridwork of small white squares appears on the screen for a section of Episode 10.

This happens on both of my Denon 2900's so I don't think that it's player related unless this model has issues with the mastering. Have I just gotten a badly pressed set or are others experiencing similar issues?

Oddly I had just posted a similar thread (mods feel free to kill it or move it here). Yes my set has similar problems with the English audio tracks dropping out or being replaced with the Japanese ones for sections in many of the Episodes (eg. 1,2, 8 & 10). There are also appear to be some problems with the video where a gridwork of small white squares appears on the screen for a section of Episode 10.

So it sounds like a bad pressing or maybe the English audio tracks were damaged or missing in those sections but they don't seem to mention it anywhere on the package or insert.

From what I understand, US syndication used slightly edited versions of the shows so if these are 'complete' episodes, they would be using footage that was never dubbed. I had some grey market tapes of this show from 10 years ago and this was the case there- save for the fact that the original language passages didn't have subs on the tapes.

A friend of mine is having major problems with his set; at some point it just froze and ejected from his player.

I'm reviewing this set for DVDTalk and I'm not having any problems at all. I'm alternating audio tracks with each episode, and haven't had them switch yet. I've watched the entire first disc.

Could someone give me the episode and time that this happens? I'd like to check the discs out on several players before I write my review.

I agree that there should be some parts that would have this issue if the shows were trimmed for American syndication but these jumps also happen in places that I wouldn't think would be cut such as during fight scenes. I guess that seemless branching to cover this is too much to ask.

I'm still leaning toward a bad audio mastering as some of the episodes have the Japanese theme song as the intro and others have the American one (when the English audio is selected) and I wouldn't have expected that to be an issue.

I've also noted that a few of the episodes seem to end abruptly and there are no end credit sequences for any of the episodes. I remember seeing them when they were in syndication. Any ideas why they were left off?

There are sections in the first two episodes where the drops happen but the most glaring one is in Episode 10 about 1/3 of the way in during the sequence when the doctor is explaining about the dinosaurs (sorry I don't have the time mark)

I noticed this problem too. Sometimes the opening credits (the song in the beginning) would be in Japanese, and sometimes in English. Episodes were also flipping back and forth between English and Japanese language. When it was in Japanese, the subtitles would appear.

The beginning section after the opening credits in episode 14 "The Pearl Oyster Protection Directive" (disc 3, I think) was in Japanese with English subs for a few minutes. It couldn't be switched to English.

I'm pretty sure either it's a mistake or they couldn't find the audio for some scenes. But I think it was in English originally. I could be wrong, since it was 30 years ago since I've seen it, but I'm fairly certain that and some of the other scenes were in English back then.

Some of this may come from the dubious (if still legal) nature of this release; Chaiyo, the Thai company that managed to legally swindle the non-Japanese rights to the series from Tsuburaya, may have supplied BCI with incomplete materials, thus necessitating the switch back to Japanese on occasion. It's also being speculated that Chaiyo supplied copies of the Japanese R2 DVDs as masters for this release, since Tsuburaya certainly wasn't going to allow their restored prints to be used for a product they didn't have involvement in. Tsuburaya also holds all the English language materials as well.

Glad I decided to stick with my years ago ebay versions. But I do hope they clean these issues up.

Ditto here. I've only watched the first episode, but I can confirm the same problems with the lanquage/ subtitle switch as well as the pixelation. Picture does look better than my bootleg videos though.

I was considering purchasing this set but if the problems are common, I might just skip it.

Did anyone get the baseball style collectible cards that were supposed to be in the set? My set didn't have it.

Thanks all, i'm going to skip it too, thanks for letting me (and everyone) know of this problem. I'll wait to see if they fix this issue.

This sucks, I guess I may be returning my copy.

Despite it's flaws, I'm still happy to have the set. I hope they get fixed in the future, though. And I'm happy to show support for one of my favorite shows when I was a kid.

I've seen bootleg VHS copies as well as downloaded copies of the show, and this is LIGHT YEARS better than those, despite the dubbing problem. It's also nice to have the original Japanese language track with new subs/translation. And while the picture isn't as good as the official Japanese release, it's still very good, especially for it's age.

I agree with Heavy Liquid, I like the set.

It is certainly weird that sometimes the opening theme is English and sometimes Japanese, and I'm pretty sure the switching between languages is that with the syndicated versions, some scenes were probably cut and no English dubbing ever recorded. Or something like that.

I didn't have any problems with pixelation or skipping on my Philips.

After taking my set over to a friends house and trying it on his DVD players it appears that the problems are due to poor manufacturing rather than the mastering or missing dubs/cut scenes. Both of his players would play the discs but one made an awful racket while doing so and the other played the disc (including episode 10, which had been the most problematic) without a hitch and entirely in English.

So I guess your success with the set will depend on your DVD player's ability to deal with poorly manufactured discs.

Like others in the thread, I was so happy to see this set get released but feel bad that poor manufacturing may limit its sales and impact the release of future sets.

Hmmm, so you're saying the switching of languages that others have seen is more due to poor manuf. and ability of different players on how they handle it. Sounds interesting, I'd like to hear if any others can also confirm as well.

I've watched the first 5 episodes (in Japanese w/ subs) and the only problem I've seen is a lack of proof reading for the subtitles. It would've been nice if they'd had a native English speaker at least look over the subs before they threw them on the DVD.

I haven't watched an episode in English yet. When I get to episode 10 I'll give that a watch in English and see if I have any problems.

I watched episodes 1-3 and everything was fine. The picture looked a heck of a lot better than the old UHF broadcasts I saw as a kid and the English dubbing sounded the same as it always has.

You can count me among those having audio problems and the only rational reason that I can come up with for three out of the four DVD players that I tried the discs out on having issues would be poor manufacturing of the DVD's.

I'm certainly open to other theories if anyone has them.

Maybe this why so many places have it cheap...Maybe not cheap enough. Brentwood is such a fine producer of quality Dvd's. Cancel my entry (Dvdtalk) in your drawing for a free copy. Crap, I have been entering in these drawings at Dvdtalk since I registered and I just know this is the one.

We watch in the original language for all foreign fims but this was something I wanted to share with my children, little boys (not reading age yet) so it's a little disheartening to hear of the issues. Not having much other choices, I am leaning on keeping the set when it arrives.