ayase said:
This is a consideration. I'm quite interested in DTB but given that there is a blu-ray boxed set scheduled for release in Japan soon, and that Manga seem to be the ones getting on with the transition to blu-ray the fastest I wonder if I might be throwing my money away buying the DVD's.
It's definitely one of the things I now very much take into consideration when purchasing DVDs, the likelihood of a Blu-Ray release. In this case, I seriously doubt a Blu-Ray release will happen in the next 12 months or so. Manga's Blu-Ray releases have been pretty much "ports" of FUNimation releases (happening a few months after the US releases), and FUNimation has yet to announce a Darker Than Black release (and they seem to have announced their Blu-Ray schedule until the end of the year), so it's safe to say it's not coming soon. And lets not forget while the Blu-Ray market is rising, it's still not big enough for us to get everything that's been released on BD in Japan, there's quite a few releases that still haven't made it to us.
I decided to pick up the DVDs anyway, to check the show in the meantime, since I enjoyed the first episode. If I enjoy the show enough to warrant another purchase, I'll pick up the Blu-Ray release (if it's to happen, because lets face it: if the DVD doesn't sell, I doubt they will bother with a BD release) and I'll give my DVDs to a friend, to give someone else the chance to check out the series.
Manga's current price-point, with double volumes/2 disc sets for a nice price (I used to pay more for a single R1 volume than what we are paying for these 2 disc sets) make it a bit more digestible.
unellmay said:
Depends how much you care about something to be slightly higher quality
I keep seeing comments like these, but I really have to wonder if everyone making these comments has seen Anime on BD. I admit I was one of the skeptical ones regarding the benefits of the format, and thought the difference between formats would be minor, but I can now say I was totally wrong. Unless it's a SD source badly unconverted, the Blu-Ray looks miles ahead of a DVD. Two of my first BD purchases were Paprika and Tekkonkinkreet, and they are miles ahead anything a DVD can handle.
It's true there's been a few shoddy releases, but make no mistake: the higher definition of the Blu-Ray format makes for some very impressive visual quality in Anime works, miles ahead of what a DVD can give us.
