I figured someone on here has ordered some imports. I have seen pics online of foreign HD DVDs like The Elephant Man, Mulholland Drive, and The Fog. In these pics the title of the movie on the spine is written from the bottom up, instead of from the top to bottom like all movies we have here are. Is it really like the pics? I really wanted to get The Elephant Man and Mulholland Drive sometime. and was curious.

That is correct. You know them Europeans, always want to be different.

Just a note, Mulholland Dr and The Elephant Man suffer from pitch problems.

I've only seen that on German and some French releases.

I actually turn my art upside on my imports to the spines read the same way as my domestic discs.

Pitch problems? What exactly do you mean? Could you explain?

Assuming you are referring to the spine thing and not the pitch problem, my Spanish import of Underworld Evolution also has the backwards spine.

Some European releases like the above mentioned titles have a higher audio pitch than they should for some odd reason (similar to PAL speedup) that makes everyone's voices sound a bit higher than normal. Some people may not notice, but I'm quite sensitive to it so I avoid titles like these.

The soundtracks sound like they are pitched up about 4-6% For the musically inclined, it would be about a semitone.

The net result is actors' voices sound like they've taken a small hit of helium, and music is of course pitched up as well.

Some people aren't as sensitive to pitch and may not notice this. Others (like me), it would drive up a wall.

What's weird is, film-sourced PAL DVD's have a reason to be pitched up - they are playing at 25 frames per second instead of 24, so the runtime will be shorter and things are running faster. (Someone please correct me if I am wrong).

With HD DVD, PAL is a non-issue - there is no NTSC or PAL. Further, the runtimes of these films are correct and not sped up. So for this pitch issue to happen, it's almost as if someone took the pitched up soundtrack, and then stretched it time-wise to fit the normal runtime.

There was an AVS thread that had audio clips comparing Total Recall and Basic Instinct. I would think most people would hear the difference listening to them back to back.

The issue seems to have been isolated to a number of Studio Canal titles in France, which in turn were used for re-issues in the UK.

I never considered importing DVD's before but this format war will likely result in me importing a few BD's before it's over. Almost Famous is one of my favorite movies, but I am not going to cave in on that one yet.

If Warner somehow manages to wind up with the documentaries that are on the US HD-DVD release of Zodiac: Director's Cut, that will more than likely be the point of no return for me. So I guess we'll find out in April, huh?

I have a number of Pathe French discs (SDVD) and they usually put their titles the opposite way -- Warner-France, Pathe, Wilde Side, Gaumont, etc.

Spanish SDVDs are the same as the French: Warner--Spain, Filmax, SONY, etc -- all reversed.

Italian discs are mixed -- Ripley Home Video, O1 Distribution, Mikado go the same way as US discs. Minerva on the other hand go with the French.

Greek discs are the same way as US discs (New Star).

Scandinavian discs -- Sandrew, Scanbox, etc...they all go with the US design.

German discs are also mixed -- Galileo Multimedia and EuroVideo go from the bottom up while Epix-Video and most of the other big players go the US way.

The Brits as expected copy the US model.

And so forth....

Pro-B

My one HD DVD import (The Graduate) plays and sounds great. No pitch that I can tell.

bunkaroo gave a great explanation of the problem. I owned Elephant Man and Mulholland Dr and definitely noticed the problem right away. The only other French import I own is The Graduate, and as Gizmo said, it's perfect. I also have the German release of Tideland and it's fine as well.

Good information on the pitch problems. Be sure to read the relevant threads on which specific titles suffer from this problem.

I know that MD is one of them. FWIW, I own Reservoir Dogs and Brotherhood of the Wolf which do not.

That's interesting about The Graduate, because I had heard it did have the problem. I don't like the film enough to buy an import of it, so I haven't heard it personally.

could this be a case-by-case experience? I dont have this problem with my Elephant Man HD.

Only some HD DVDs from Studio Canal suffer from pitch problems.

So, don't expect all imports to have this problem. German, Spanish, UK, etc. releases don't suffer from pitch problems. And also not all French titles.
Some people don't even hear the problem, because it's really a slight problem.

It's not a "slight" problem to those who have pitch sensitive hearing.

Pitch on The Elephant Man is definitely high. Listen to Anthony Hopkins' voice.