I could care less about Blu-ray, especially where anime is concerned. Animation looks better in standard definition than anything else that's put in DVD. That may have to do with the fact that it's mostly digital these days.

Standard DVD is good enough for me. No inflated Blu-ray prices or sucking up to Sony.

The Kalafina concert was quite good on Saturday. I think I actually drove by the group Sunday in Boston, too.

I do care about Blu-Ray, but not because of the ZOMG SUPER QUALITY, but the ZOMG ENTIRE SEASON ON ONE DISK kind of thinking.

If I could watch, say, Baccano with just one disk and take up less space on my shelf - cool. Now about Nadia of Blue Water on 2-3 disks without losing the DVD quality?

Now, there are some anime (Evangelion) that likely would look great in HD. But mostly? I'm hoping for 1 or 2 disks.

I hate to say it, but Blu-Ray is about the only way I'd buy anime on disc. In general if you can offer me a real enhancement of a series over what is already available (retelecining a formerly SD series in HD) I will buy it. Plus there is no way in hell I'd ever buy a new series in SD when its broadcast and available online in HD. No way no how.

Well, the problem with blu-ray is market penetration of the players, and high costs to author the actual discs. And one of the Funimation people whose name I forget mentioned that some Japanese studios aren't keen on blu-ray because the US and Japan are in the same region and the problem of reverse importation.

I agree with the prospect of them releasing the entire thing on one disc being the major selling point for me. I think they did something similar for every episode of Firefly this year.

I, sadly, rarely buy anime, but if I did, I would want it on Blu-ray. Sadly, this isn't a reality right now outside of some Dragonball Z movies and a few oddballs, but if there were some big titles in HD, like Gurren Lagann? I'd buy it in a second. It annoys me when I see something with beautiful animation like that and I can still see some artifacting here and there.

Streamed in HD would be the most preferable.

I have a PS3 and sure, bluray looks pretty darn nice, but from the prospect of how much it costs on the production side and how much it costs us to buy them it's just not worth it. (So far they tend to be $35 a disc average in the case of anime instead of $20-25m and I don't expect that to change judging by production prices)

Plus this is anime we're talking about...it's not like characters have dimples on their face 1 pixel big that we could see better and go "WOW!!" at the difference from. Tack that on top of the clearly obvious market shift for anime towards DLC (downloadable content), and there really isn't much need to do bluray.

I see why they're not from the business standpoint as well. Bad economy, and ADV has been sucking wind for a while. I'm still disappointed. grew up with crappy eyes, and EVERYTHING looks better on Blu-ray, as far as I am personally concerned.

So, I'm just not buying some ADV stuff for a while. I'll have to find a list to see what I'm actually missing out on. *shrug*

I wasn't at Anime Boston on Saturday, but instead at Animazement, so I didn't see Kalafina. I got too see Uchuu Sentai NOIZ in concert though.

As for Blu-Ray with anime, I like it, but a decent upscaler is just as good for most things released on Blu-Ray so far. I just use my PS3 and it upscales to 720p just fine for all my anime. I will buy the Blu-Ray option if there is one though.

[quote]I could care less about Blu-ray, especially where anime is concerned. Animation looks better in standard definition than anything else that's put in DVD. That may have to do with the fact that it's mostly digital these days.

Standard DVD is good enough for me. No inflated Blu-ray prices or sucking up to Sony.[/quote]

You sound like you don't know what you're talking about at all, because animation in Blu-ray is a vast improvement over DVD. Typical fanboyism, I guess.

Blu Ray format's high cost is more than just the media and production hardware which is super expensive but other things like the AACS - Advanced Access Content System copy protection (which has been hacked BTW) which is required on commercial releases.

AACS costs a one-time cost of $3,000, $1,585 per project, and $.04-.06 per disk produced with it depending if you are doing the production yourself or a 3rd party's facilities.

Then to use the Blu Ray Logos you got to pay the Blu-ray Disc Association their dues which run another $2,500-3,000 per year depending on membership status. Then to use the Region Locking thats another $500 per year.

Finally after all that is said and done you will probably need to pay for the licensing of whatever codec you want to use and couldn't find any reliable info on that so your guess is as good as mine. No one had any real hard numbers.

These are all the up-front costs beyond that you need the media itself which runs $1-1.50 per disk in bulk plus the hardware. Likely you outsource the manufacturing part so they will likely be administrative fees on top of that per-disk.

So yea... all this so they can charge you $25-50 per disk that we already proved is a unacceptable price point here in the US.

Coincidentally I've spent quite some time going over blu-ray and DVD to screen for an animeconvention that happened here recently (nothing mayor enough for you US guys tough) and the blu-ray quality increase definitly is there over standard DVD's if your projecting on anything that is capable of displaying in a HD resolution or bigger (cinema)

So for me ? I'd love to buy anime on Blu-ray.
But the increased cost is only justified if they do things like smacking at least half a season on 1 disc (i'm fine with 2 volumes for 1 season if it's a new series )

In Japan, blu-ray anime are quite stingy.
I've seen the Blu-rays for Macross Frontier containing only 3 episodes each !
Not to mention that anime is more expensive in Japan than it is in the states (45$ for a blu-ray)

Whilst those guys may be fine buying at those prices per episodes Western people, myself included are not.
But that's something the anime industry understands by now, it's just time to act more upon it.
Where are the days when Outlaw star came with a whopping 9 episodes per volume on two discs to have a complete series in 3 volumes ?

Price is not an issue on Blu-ray anymore. People dont spend MSRP on discs most of the time. One just needs to not 'need' to have everything on release day, and be patient shopping around for deals. The deals are absolutely out there.

My first year collecting Blu-ray, I didnt spend over 20 bucks, and that was in a time when everyone was complaining they wouldnt spend 35-40. Now things are even cheaper. Eventually, I broke my 20 dollar limit, not because I couldnt find the deals, because the extra cost no longer mattered to me once I saw the improvement in quality.

Upscaling IS really nice. Especially on a PS3, who's developers built the upscaling technology around animation. But just as good as full hi def? I just dont see it.

Kalafina is awesome. Aniplex is awesome. Kara no Kyoukai on HD is awesome. Blu-Ray (with the right content on it) is awesome.

ADV isn't outright rejecting Blu-Ray, but when I talk to reps about blu-ray, I get the feeling that most people ask them about [insert generic fan fav title] on Blu-Ray, and not stuff that's made with high-def in mind. Which is not to be confused with stuff that's made digitally at 1k or 2k or 4k already so source quality is not a problem--but shows that genuinely deserves that calibur on video. Most of the time it's movies (Rakkyo, or The Sky Crawlers for example)...and yeah, I think you are kidding yourself if you really think a DVD of Advent Children is going to look as good as the Blu-Ray version. But such is the caveat--only a few shows really deserves the full high-def treatment, and that excludes a lot of older fan faves that gets asked (and would sell well).

People, you are never going to get your entire season sold on one Blu-ray disc. Don't even think it. There's this little thing called greed that will get in the way. They will milk the hell out of you somehow. I wouldn't be surprised in the least for a 26 episode anime to be on at least 2 Blu-ray discs and go for $50+

@synaptic flow: You got to remember that $50+ is about how it is now for some box sets. Someplaces are stilling selling the older Evangelion set for $80, and thats on DVD.