1. Why do R3 (or other regions for that matter, i.e. R2) releases always seem to suck more than R1 releases. Case in point, Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Lady & the Tramp, Toy Story 1/2 10th AE and BroBear was released as single disc editions only.
Granted that the 1.33:1 P&S in LatT was not included so that could have probably saved some space and shoved the features into a single disc. What about BatB?? AFAIK, it only has the Special Edition on the disc without the theatrical or the WIP version. However, it probably had the most number of soundtracks (which I think it had 5). I should have double dipped for BatB since the Chinese tracks featured none other than Jackie Chan for the Beast in both the spoken and singing tracks.
2. The Lion King got a double disc in R3 however it was poorly authored. Upon viewing the structure of the disc and extracting the individual MPEG segments, I found out that the "mini-documentary" for the Circle of Life done by the Circle of stars was actually ON the disc but not linked on the menus. Not that the feature was of any importance but it does show that the authoring process was done very sloppily without any quality checking.
There are other discs out there suffering the same fate....I'll leave that up to those with copies to find out.
3. Tarzan SE R3 got a 2-disc version in both releases unlike R1, however the audio remains the same as 5.0 DD (unlike the 5.1DD in R1). I'm not too sure if this is a cover misprint or not though, as I'm partial in confirming that there is a .1 channel.
The bad point is that the localised track in Malay (the one and only ever dubbed into this language) was never used although they are stored in the archives for future implementations. This has been confirmed by the distributor locally. According to them, the "market size" for the Malay dub was too small to warrant inclusion onto both releases. Thailand however always gets an audio track on the R3 releases (not that I'm dissing Thai or anything). So this means Disney/BV authors the R3 discs based on the largest market share....lucky Japan is not listed under this region
I further asked the local distributors about the possiblity of a revised version that includes this Malay audio track (with actual Malay (BM) subtitles alongside Indonesian ones) and they said that they couldn't since BV-US controls the production AND manufacturing of all R3 discs (surprise surprise!!) and the cost of authoring a single basic disc (i.e. menu, movie, mutliple audio, subs) runs around US$50,000. Multipled by 2 and increasing complexity, a release can run somewhere around US$100k++ and this does NOT include costs for restoration/remixing etc.
So in summary, R3 releases will only possibly contain the following languages : Original English, Thai, Mandarin, Cantonese and Korean. Even if other dubs exist they cannot justify inclusion onto a SE/PE/Standard release. Dissapointing huh?
4. Why bother releasing R3 if they are importing R1 versions anyway? Toy Story 1/2 10th AE was released locally as BOTH double disc R1 and single disc R3. If I wanted the additional features, I need to get the R1 version. If I wanted the other languages (Woody sounds great in Cantonese
) I need to get the R3....forced double-dipped?? Same goes for Lizzie-McGuire Movie, Herbie, Pirates of the Caribben, etc... Just release 1 version as what was done for Mary Poppins, Narnia and the Ghibli studio stuff (R1 releases only)(Note: Ghibli studio stuff is actually released by 2 different distributors locally. One contains the BV dub track from Disney and the other is usually the HongKong version with the Cantonese audio)
5. Next rant probablyy occured elsewhere on different occasions too....advertising as a double disc only to be released as a single disc version. R3 suffered that fate in Cinderella and The Little Mermaid.
6. They're probably going to force another double-dip on fans with the release of High School Musical. Only the R1 Encore Edition was out locally....however, there have been rumours that a different version might come out later (i.e. some what like the Remix Edition) that includes the localised/asian version of the title song done on Disney Channel.
7. Regions, regions and more regions. My Disney collection contains discs from R1, R2, R3, R4 and R6..... 'Nuff said. Why rant about this you may ask?? Well it all goes into the actual encoding. Since R2 and R4 are encoded as PAL, it suffers all the speed issues. Unfortunately, I'm probably one of those few that feel this difference especially in the audio department with the near-semitone shift up. But I still buy PAL discs anyway depending on the price, quality and features of the feature.
R3 probably has the most confusing standards EVER. Broadcast TV (both analogue and digital) is in PAL. DVDs are in NTSC. VCDs can be in either PAL or NTSC. Videocassettes are in PAL. Which is why ALL (and I mean all, everything) AV equipment is multi-system and multi-region capable. Even those coming from well known brands. JVC, Sony, Phillips and Samsung players are all sold region free and multi-system capable. Wierd huh??
Anyone wanting to know the quality of the encoding in a Disney feature for R3 can refer to the R1 versions. AFAIK, they use the same video transfer but differ only in audio tracks. (Which makes me wonder about the abysmal quality of Little Mermaid in most of the R1 reviews I've read). BTW, High School Musical is one show that does NOT play well in PAL. Everything sounds really bad.
OK, I've ranted enough.....glad to get that off my chest at last
PS: Those wanting to know about R3 (Malaysia/Brunei) releases for Disney titles can refer to http://www.bhvn.cc
