Rasberry wrote:then again, chances are that mappy's tapes will still last longer than our DVDs
The Tapes of Pain are eternal.
Seriously, some of my earliest anime VHS tapes are still playing as well as they were when I first got them. The quality was shocking then, so it is pretty shocking now.
Some of the fansubbers, back then, *cough* Arctic Animation *cough* were peddling subs of such low picture (howzabout the picture dropping into static and going blank for several seconds, several times a minute), sound (what was that again? I couldn't hear for all the farking background HISS) and translation (ooh, two minutes of no dialogue.... lets use these moments to stick in any annoying subtitles that come into our heads, such as what we think of this show, how much time and effort we put in, or didn't put in as the case may be, translating and subbing this BADLY etc) quality that reporting them to the copyright holders should have been MANDATORY.
Trouble is, I'm forgetting that these were the only people, back in the late 80's and early 90's, who were actually bothering to fan-distribute titles that were not commercially available, not just in Australia, but the U.S. as well. The sheer volume of available titles, today, in formats that defecate all over that which existed circa 1991 (yes, even from quality fansubbers like AnimeJunkies and Your-Mom) would've made my 22 year old self weep.
And that's
before I get to the commercially available stuff. 1988-1996, a grim tale of expensive $50 for 30 minute NTSC VHS U.S. import woe.... Is it any wonder I leapt all over Japanese import Laserdiscs when they became available? Now I could get 120 minutes for my $50. As long as I was getting tv series. OAV series were still 30 minutes a disk....
Ah Laserdiscs.... digital compression so low you can see the pits in the surface of the disk....