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Originally Posted by Komari
Yeah, I'm still scratching my head as to why DVDs and Blu-Rays are extraordinarily overpriced in Japan. It seems that only the hardcore enthusiasts (otaku and the like) and rich people would ever buy a lot of shows on DVDs.
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They are priced based on expected sales. If they lower the price, they don't get any more money through the additional sales. If you can sell 1000 units at $100 each or 2000 units at $50 each, which makes you more money? The 1000 units because the overhead is lower and lets you make it more attractive for buyers. This is also supply and demand at work here in that demand for most DVDs is around 3000 units on average and they need to recoup most of the production costs through DVDs.
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Originally Posted by Kamui4356
No, it's simply price fixing on optical media. It happened in the US too, when CDs first came out. There was a lawsuit, and the price of CDs dropped overnight. In Japan, that never happened, so optical media prices remained artificially high.
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There is no price fixing in Japan for anime DVDs. In fact, the prices have some variability due to the extras. (There actually was a drop due to price fixing years ago.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe4evr
Another problem already present with the current options of Crunchyroll and Funimation's website/YouTube channel is that they're region locked because they don't care for anyone outside of the US. Even most anime that gets licensed in the US never make it to Europe.
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It's not always that they don't care. Frequently, the rights are too expensive, are unavailable for some reason for the regions they do want. FUNimation actually has some things available outside the US on youtube.
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Originally Posted by Autumn Demon
Legal anime streaming websites in Japan... do they cost money or are they ad-supported like Hulu?
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Both. Most are pay to watch though.
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Originally Posted by Kaijo
If the translators offered a lower priced DVD that didn't have dubs, and instead made the subs a higher quality, then I'd buy it. The official Nanoha subs had some pretty bad points, so much so that I prefer the fansubs.
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For most series, the official subs are either better or the same quality. There are a few random exceptions out there. I haven't see the Nanoha subs but I really doubt there is anything wrong with them given that most of the complaints were about the dub.
Also, if you hadn't noticed, sub only DVDs are almost exactly the same or only $10 MSRP or so cheaper. Suddenly making a show sub only does not make it that much cheaper to produce. The loss of the dub buyers barely offsets the cost of the dub. It is equally pointless to put out two sets of discs.