20% off entire Madman website (except preorders). Free shipping is offered for orders over $30.
Australian distributor of anime, manga, indie and foreign movies, etc.
Ends Monday.
20% off Madman Website (Free Ship for Orders over $30)
80
mudkipz on 23/01/2015 - 17:40 madman.com.au (420 clicks)
Last edited 23/01/2015 - 17:51 by 1 other user
Last edited 23/01/2015 - 17:51 by 1 other user
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Does this include the source-code?
They don't do apparel and accessories anymore do they?
I'll probably pick up a few manga as they end up cheaper compared to everywhere else.
I posted this earlier but I would avoid most of their anime DVDs and a few selected blurays as they have quality issues:
As for DVDs, the majority of their catalogue suffer from the same problem i.e. blended frames which creates choppy motion and ghosting when viewed on modern LCD TVs and computer monitors.
For example: http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/avtech31/images/spiri…
In addition, some of their release seem to be encoded from already encoded US DVD sources! This results in noticeable blocking and a softer image (e.g. Romeo x Juliet, Kurau).
Another problem is the improper use of inverse telecine (IVTC) on non-film portions of video. For example in regards to the Season 2 DVD version of Code Geass, the last few minutes of each episode is pure video (30fps) however they applied IVTC to it which lead to dropped frames, combing and choppy motion.
As for Blurays, most of them are just clones from US distributors which are generally very good. In regards to the ones authored by Madman (and some clones from the UK) they tend to be not so good.
For example, most of the classic studio ghibli films have been DNR filtered resulting in loss of film grain and high frequency detail. The US (Region Free) and JP version of these films do not suffer from this and has much better detail retention and thus are of better quality.
Another example of titles with problematic bluray authoring are: Freedom, Code Geass and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. In regards to the title Freedom, the audio for the Japanese track is out of sync for 2 episodes. As for titles Code Geass and The Girl Who Leapt Through time, they suffer from bit rate starvation which results in artifacting particularly in shadows and dark areas. This issue could of been prevented by simply upping the bit rate - but they probably didn't want to increase the disc count as it would add to the cost. If you look at the total disc size of the Code Geass bluray from Madman (~150GB) and Japan (~400GB) it gives you a clear idea on how much bit rate and quality was lost because of the reduction.
Sadly, Madman (and even Siren Visual for that matter) do not appear to do any quality control in regards to video and audio before releasing it to the public. :(
Now I agree Madman's old releases were mostly terrible. The issue with their DVD's being crappy NTSC-PAL conversions was only when the masters they received from Japan were NTSC. Now that most of the masters they receive are HD so they actually treat them properly, in that they simply do PAL speedup to progressive 25fps and pitch correct the audio. They're also apparently releasing a lot of their DVD's in NTSC now as well. I can't speak for all of their releases though, since I don't buy that much from them anymore.
As for companies like Siren I haven't had any issues with their DVDs. From them I have Dennou Coil, Higurashi: When They Cry and Vandread which are all progressive 25fps with pitch corrected audio. The other release I have of Siren is Monster which is simply a NTSC hard-telecined master like what was released in Japan.Edit: Also just as a side note the Code Geass BD's they sell are simply copies of the UK Manga discs. Which doesn't excuse anything I just thought I'd point that out. :)
'Most' of the masters back then and even today comes from the US distributors and not Japan themselves. They just pay the license fee to the copyright holder in Japan and use the supplied re-encoded source material from the US to do their transfers. If they use the original masters from Japan it would require hours of work to resync the subtitles, audio dub, embedded credits and to re-edit the video to attach the creditless intro and ending which in a financial sense I don't believe Madman would do.
In regards to these HD masters to DVD transfers, the majority of them are just encodes from the already existing encoded US bluray disc - which Madman does in house. I don't have a problem with this or the fact it gets sped up to 25fps with applied pitch correction as most of the time it's unnoticeable. The only problem I have is when they do it incorrectly, ruin the video motion and don't offer a fix e.g. Code Geass Season 2 DVD Collection and Ga-Rei-Zero.
As for Siren, the only issue I had with their releases are Welcome to the NHK and Monster. Here's a comment I made a few weeks ago:
There are a number of video glitches in some of their releases. I would avoid them until Siren Visual issues a fix.
The titles that are affected (to my knowledge) are Naoki Urasawa's Monster and Welcome to the NHK.
Welcome to the NHK (Combing artifacts/flickering from improper use of IVTC - Not a huge deal):
http://s11.postimg.org/q5kdznu6r/Welcome_to_the_NHK_Disc_1_S…Naoki Urasawa: Monster (frame glitches which occur on multiple discs, possibly due to a fault on the US master copy or during the encode). In addition to the glitch, the quality of the video looks horrendous when compared to the Japanese release. Almost half of the vertical lines in the video are missing and there is very noticeable blocking and banding from recompression particularly in dark scenes. The Japanese disc doesn't have any of these video issues.
http://s11.postimg.org/j3mgdgqkz/Monster_Disc_1_Siren.png
I notified them of this issue immediately via email after I received my pre-order copy of collection 1 however it seems it fell on deaf ears as it also affects the other collections in the series as well.
But none the less as least they acknowledged via email that they will offer replacements of the discs however only when there existing stock has sold out - whenever that maybe. :(
Yes, the Code Geass BDs and The Girl Who Leapt From Time from Madman are the exact replica's of the UK Manga/Kaze release.
One thing I would give Madman a thumbs up for is the design of their packaging and menu interface of their DVDs. Most of the time I find them much better to look at compared to the US/UK designs however this is very subjective.
As for Siren, their DVD menu designs are pretty bland but so long as they're functional I have no complaints. The print quality of their BD and DVD slicks however is of very poor quality. If I hadn't known better, I would of assumed it was a home made bootleg due to the jagged lines and overall poor quality of the print.
In regards to Hanabee, I have no problems with their releases except for an audio glitch in an episode which they reauthored, repressed and replaced immediately after being informed of the issue.
Hanabee is really good and hopefully forces Madman to step up their game (I can give Siren a pass as they are much smaller than Madman and Hanabee).
In the end though, I think we're heading towards digital services and Madman have done an amazing job with Animelab. Hanabee's streaming service is kind of sparse in comparison…
You seem to know a whole lot about this stuff… do you have any info on the Evangelion 1.11 and 2.22 releases they carry?
Specifically the BD's here:
http://www.madman.com.au/catalogue/view/19444/evangelion-1-1…
http://www.madman.com.au/catalogue/view/14652/evangelion-2-2…I'm curious whether I would be better off ordering them from the US (region free I know from blu-ray.com) regardless of price.
Both Madman (AU) and Manga (UK) used the Funimation transfer for this release which is almost identical to the Japanese BD. I'd go with whatever ends up cheaper.
As far as video problems go, all the Evangelion BD releases suffer from occasional banding in certain scenes.
Hey, thanks very much for the info. I'll probably end up ordering 1.11 from Madman as the slip fits SO MUCH better thematically with the 2.22 and 3.33 releases haha.
Still waiting for 3.33…
Cheaper at JB as they already have 5% off RRP and 20% off this weekend.