I know that Freedom: 1 is coming out since HiDef Digest has a review up

will they release Pat Labor:The Movie and...


Wings of Honneamise

!!!! ??? !!!!

I'd give my left nut for that and I rather not buy the import which I know is coming out.

update: (from High Def Digest):

Wings of Honneamise (BluRay/HD-DVD) Sept. 11



that's is sooooo expensive....

$80????

HD-DVD/Blu-rays are definitely bringing back memories of the laserdisc era....

I really don't know how they can justify this price - I guess Bandai thinks this will be a limited 'niche' release. As I noted before in the 'HD DVD & Blu-ray - Release Calendar 2007' forum, Amazon thankfully knocks down the price to 56 bucks, my extra 10% didn't kick in though, and with a few 25 dollar certificates I could knock it down to $29 or even further down to $4.

I can't help but think they're being required to charge out the ass.

The lack of region coding means Japanese viewers can import this copy of Wings of Honneamise, which would make a regular Japanese release (where regular DVDs still go for around $45, and an $80 price tag on an HD/Bluray isn't out of the question) pointless. So, because of this, Bandai may be contractually obliged to charge what they're charging.

Edit: The Japanese releases of Wings of Honneamise, Patlabor, and Patlabor 2 The Movie are going for 9800yen/$79. (All Pre-order)

Man, I really want to see Wings of Hollandaise but I can't justify that price. I'm even hesitant to pay $27 for Children of Men and I love that movie.

Note that Bandai Visual USA is a division set up only a couple of years ago as, basically, a proxy of the Japanese Bandai Visual. Though the situation isn't entirely clear, the generally held belief at Anime on DVD is that there aren't any licensing contracts involved as such - they're releasing their own titles that they have the licenses to by default.

That said, based on reports from their convention panels (such as this one), the pricing is a conscious decision they made to enable them to release titles in the US day-and-date with Japan without having to worry about reverse importation. Here's hoping Bandai Visual fall foul of the harsh realities of the US marketplace, where Japanese prices are really not at all acceptable.

WOH HDDVD Review: http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/wingsofhonneamise.html

BD http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/wingsofhonneamise.html

that effin' sucks about the video quality.

well that's annoying, Amazon sent me an email stating that my order wont arrive to me til the 25th or 26th.... wtf?

I was surprised to see that Fry's had a ton of copies of Honneamise on both Blu-ray and HD-DVD for $59.99. It appeared to be a simple box containing two individual copies of the movie each in their own DVD case. I imagine those only wanted the HD-DVD can sell the DVD for close to half of the box set price.

Just an aside here; both those reviews list the stats for the Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track as "16-Bit/48kHz/4.6 Mbps." My question is: is the bitrate of the track even relevant? I mean, the bit-depth and the sampling frequency are going to be the stats that determine the sound quality, the bitrate is just whatever the TrueHD encode was able to reduce it to without loss.

Is this just force of habit that's causing the bitrate to be listed on lossless tracks?