The translations are the most important for me. I know they generally are bad, but are there any that are decent? Eg. No Chinese names substituted. Video/audio quality is important, but I'm not expecting CC treatment. Any info would be appreciated.

My advice would be to go to www.asiandvdguide.com and search for each film - I looked up one - Madadayo and they said:

"I just watched the Mei Ah release of Madadayo and the subtitles are much better than the subtitles on their Hidden Fortress and Lower Depths DVDs. They use the original character names and most of the time they make perfect sense."

kuroshi

Sounds like it's a mixed bag to me. Looking at the covers, it looks like Mei Ah did a little bit of an Akira Kurosawa collectors series - they all seem to have the same logo at the top and whatnot. Still - you should probably consult that website since it's the bible of HK DVD quality. I'm sure a few people will attest to the quality of a few releases though. I would, but I haven't seen any.

Thanks! I thought that site went offline?

It's still around - sometimes the server is down though... He took it down cuz he was mad about people linking without giving credit or just copying stuff from his site. Then he got over it and put it back up. There's probably more to it than that, but the point is that we can all benefit from the database.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. I have copies of their Hidden Fortress, Ikiru, Stay Dog and The Bad Sleep Well, and, without exception, they ALL feature just about the worst subtitles imaginable.