More Asiaview published ATV series.... coming soon... 'King Of Gambler' 千王之王重出江湖, starring Patrick Tse, Damian Lau and Michelle Yim
More Asiaview published ATV series.... coming soon... 'King Of Gambler' 千王之王重出江湖, starring Patrick Tse, Damian Lau and Michelle Yim
I would just like to know once and for all whether these ATV DVDs are indeed VCD transfers.
Can anyone who has ATV DVds just pop them into their computer and see how many gigs is the DVD? I figured that 2 episodes per standard ATV DVD = maximum of 2 standard VCDs. VCDs being about 750MB each, than a direct VCD transfer to DVD would mean the DVD should be less than 2 gigs. If the DVDs are about 4 gigs, there is no way that they are direct VCD transfers.
Actually, if the distributor got the source from VCD, it would be very possible for them to convert it into another video file and then burn it onto DVD, which may result in 2-3 gb. That's what I did with two VCDS and the DVD turned out to be nearly 3gb. Just a heads up. Looking at the image quality should be good enough to tell if it's from VCD unless you're dealing with bootleggers.
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So in my long grueling search to find my favorite childhood ATV series I've finally came across this. Unfortunately, this is dubbed in Vietnamese. According to the site, TrauDienDVD.com, they added this to their collection on June 21, 2007. I'm wondering if the Cantonese version came out not too long ago before that. If any of you has seen the Cantonese version on VCD/DVD format that'll be great. If you know where to buy it online that will be even better. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
By the way, I've already checked Yesasia.com and other similar sites that were recommended. It's not there.
Maz and other ATV DVD fans, did you notice that King of Gambler is going to have both Mandarin and Cantonese audio. Also, there will be Chinese subtitles. At least according to Yesasia.
I noticed that past ATV DVDs didn't even have the option of audios and none of them had subtitles. Could this be a sign that Asiaview is actually going to produce some quality DVDs from now on????
Has anyone here ever bought an ATV series manufactured by United Entertainment (based in Toronto). Malmusic in Vancouver carries their stuff. The united entertainment version is a lot chepaer than the East Media versions, mainly becuase they use half the amount of discs than East Media does (i.e. Taichi Master by East Media was 15 discs while the version from United Entertianment was only 10 Discs).
I'm a bit worried about the quality of the product when they jam 3-4 episodes per disc. Does anyone know if the transfer is good (for United Entertainment), and are there any issues with the audio? Thanks for your help.
"If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put it in a bottle it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow, or it can crash. Be water my friends.
Its probably not from the same company, as I think only EastMedia is allowed to manufacture any new ATV content, but I could be wrong. THe DVDs I am looking to purchase were produced by United Entertainment awhile back.
By the way, does anybody know what the EETV produced TV series cases look like? Are they actual cases that i.e. TVB uses to hold their DVDs, or are they in boxes and each DVD is in its own little cover sleeve i.e. the TVB VCDS format. Thanks for all your help.
Just got my DVD copy of DRAGON STRIKE. Been waiting for its release for a long long time, finally !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Will watch later tonite. My first impressions of DVDs itself are actually pretty good:
1) The DVD case actually looks pretty nice. The 30 disc come in 3 seperate cases,10 disc per case. The case contains about 10 spindles. One disc per spindle. I think this is how Taiseng packages their TVB DVDs). Still not the best in that to get the next disc you have to get the disc that is stuck on top of it. But it at least is not 10 discs all piled on top of each other on one spindle. I like this new case though.
2) Cover art does look kind of ghetto, looks very inkjet. However, the cover art is different then the VCD version, so they did do some extra work for this.
3) Yes, the DVDs are purple, not manufactured quality. However, each disc contains 3.66 gigs of content. There are only 2 episodes per disc. If you think about it, Taiseng jams about 4-5 episodes per 7.5 gig disc. So that comes out to 1.8 gigs per episode, similar to this Dragon Strike release.
I know, someone mentioned that it could still be a VCD transfer. But from first impression I think this could be a legit solid release.
Will watch it tonite, and post more comments later.
Reincarnated (DVD) (Part 1) (To Be Continued) (ATV Drama) (Hong Kong Version)
http://global.yesasia.com/en/PrdDept...pid=1005127096
I almost cried when I popped the DVD into the DVD player, such a longgggg wait Went through 24 episodes thus far, first 20 episodes kind of boring - content really could of been jammed into 10-15 episodes. Tone, plot, and style for the most part seemed very un "Reincarnated," there were some pieces here and there that are classic "Reincarnated" though. But episodes 21-24 all closely follow the tone and style of "Reincarnated" - which means freaking amazing!!! Love how ATV used real kungfu actors (i.e. Norman Tsui, David Chiang, and in the case of "Dragon Strike" Jason Piao, Bruce Liang, and Koo Koon Chung) for the lead roles in martial arts series. Fights look really real.
Now for the DVD quality:
- Picture: Kind of odd. About 1/3 of the shots seem to be VCD transfers, 1/3 seem to be really high picture quality (no way you can tell that the series was shot in 1979), and another 1/3 part's quality seem to be somewhere in the middle. By VCD transfers I mean the shots look very yellowish bright, very unnatural. High picture quality I mean without that annoying brightness and the picture looks sharp, clean, and crisp - its absolutely beatiful ; the quality is noticeably not up to par to the quality of "War and Beauty" and "Sword Stained with Royal Blood" produced by Taiseng. The quality was comparable to "Cherished Moments" (1991), also produced by Taiseng. In my opinion, "Dragon Strike" was shot in 1979, so you can't really ask for much more than what East Media has done with what I deem the high quality sections. If you ask me, the medium and high quality sections are DEFINITELY NOT VCD transfers.
To SCFRXX: I heard ATV has undergone some management changes recently, new management might have taken note of everyone's complaints about picture quality and made the change. I plan to buy a few more of these new DVD releases by Eastmedia, I will let you know if the high and medium picture quality sections are in those releases. I know purple discs mean non-manufacture disc, however they apparently hold the exclusive license to DVD ATV's series. So they seem to be all we have, not the best but at least parts of the picture seem to be DVD quality.
One very annoying part of the picture quality though is how the quality of the picture sometimes alternates back and forth between high, low, and medium. For example, in certain scenes there would be one shot of an actor talking and the picture would be high quality - then camera cuts to another actor who responds what the first actor just said, and that shot would be in low quality. I guess that means they didn't remaster the series frame by frame like most companies do. Not sure if they were just trying to limit their budget and not redigitize the low quality sections; it was kind of annoying. Also, certain parts of disc show fuzzy lines (meaning there was some damaged to the master copy, and they were not able to completely clean it up.)
4/5 - especially considering how old the series is.
- Fast motions - The fast motions (fight scenes) are not blurry. They are very clear. 5/5
- Audio - No annoying alternations of volume. You can watch the whole series without adjusting the volume setting back and forth. Plus there are no annoying background noises ( I heard that Taiseng's release of "Legend of Condor Heroes" 1982 had this problem).
5/5
- DVD function and tracks - No trailers or subtitles or alternate audio (I don't really mind this much).
The menu functions really needs some beautying up. You click menu on your DVD remote control and all you get is a blank screen with one option : play disc 1 (2, 3 etc). There are no options that allow you to select between episode 1 and 2. There are 4 tracks on each disc. Each episode takes up one track, the other 2 tracks showoff the Eastmedia logo.
1/5
- Look of DVD case and DVD - Case looks nice and organized, each case has one spindle per disc, so no jamming 10 DVDs on top of each other. The sticker on each DVD looks to be high quality (its shiny). The DVD cover art was printed in inkjet or worse - not a good print.
4/5
I am for the most part happy with the quality of the DVD and the case. Love the fact that ATV is DVD-izing their old stuff, while somehow TVB annoyingly still allows classics like "the Bund" and "Book and Sword 1976" to be available only in VCD.
Last edited by bobbywu; 11-27-07 at 07:32 PM.
Does anybody have "Princess Cheung Ping" in DVD? Which manufacturer's DVD do you have? How was the picture and audio quality?
Hi Bobbywu,
but I was wondering, does the Dragon Strike DVDs have the smooth motions in the picture like tv-series usually has? VCD doesn't have that smoothness because of it's low resolution.
It does have a smooth motion, if by smooth motion you mean watching the fights will not give you a headache
Another thing, as I got further into the series I noticed more and more lower quality frames (possibly VCD transfers). ALso, more and more frames contain shaky lines (like when you watch a bad VHS tape). But I still think that though this is not a great or even good pictured release, its still decent (better than VCD quality).
Last edited by bobbywu; 11-27-07 at 07:39 PM.
I'm not sure if we mean the same smooth motion It does not just occur in fight scenes but also in all movement scenes. I don't quite know how to describe it.. But when you watch movies in theatres, the motion in the pictures look a little different. In tv-shows, also news on CNN for example, you get more natural smooth motion. This kind of smooth motion is also present in TVB/ATV series, with the exception of outdoor scenes in very old TVB/ATV series from the 70s. This is the kind of smooth motion that VCD cannot handle too good. So if you transfer a news section of CNN to vcd for example, then the smooth motion would likely disappear, and you get the kind of motion that theatre movies has. It's quite easy to spot. If you watch the vcd sets released by TVB, you will understand what I mean. They don't have this kind of super smooth motion, and therefore they look like theatre movies. But when you compare it to the TVB dvds, you see the big difference in the smooth motion. I don't know if this explained it hehe. But if that kind of smooth motion is present on the Dragon Strike dvds, that is on the indoor scenes, then the dvds are probably not taken from vcd source.
If my large text above makes any sense hehe, then the question is still, does the Dragon Strike dvd have this smooth motion?
I was thinking of buying the Drunken Fist series on dvd, part 1 and 2, with Moon Lee. And I kind of want this smoothness to be present, or else I could just buy the vcds.
Net Dragon, I just checked an TVB VCD. IMO and my sister's opinion the DVD has noticeably more pixels or better resolution than the VCDs. So I will hold my opinion that these are not VCD transfers (the high quality and medium quality sections).
I am not sure when Drunken Fist was released, but I know it was before July of this year. Dragon Strike is a newer release by Eastmedia. Since so many people on this forum seem to say that their DVDs are VCD transfers, there is a possibility that the older DVD releases are VCD transfers. All I can confirm is that Dragon Strike, and most likely DVDs released around the same time or after Dragon Strike (i.e. CHen Zhen aka the Fist and Spirit of the Sword) are not VCD transfers.
Best thing to do is to call up Eastmedia and ask them straight up. The guy who handles their Chinese language orders seem to be a pretty nice guy, he might tell you the truth.
Another reason to go for the DVDs instead of the VCDs, if I am not mistaken the DVDs by Eastmedia are the same price as their VCDs. So there really wouldn't be anything to gain by purchasing the VCDs instead of the DVDs.
By the way, I finished Dragon Strike. It was a bit disappointing - but I guess my expectations were really high considering "Reincarnated" is my favorite series of all time.
Episode 1-2 was great, as it closely followed "Reincarnated"'s focus on martial arts.
Episodes 20-35 is on par, and arguably better than "Reincarnated" was. The mystrey and intrigue built up by those episodes should have impressed even Chor Yuen and Gu Long.
The rest of the episodes seem like fillers, or at least was way too draggy. The shooting seemed rush (I believe that was pretty common back in the day), but at the same time it seemed like they were trying to fill a 60 episode quota (hence the fillers). Way too much talking, and the villians were just not very charismatic, well with the exception of an "old" lady.
Nonetheless I was very glad to have finally seen the sequel to "Reincarnated" and see some beloved characters from "Reincarnated" in action again. I do mildly recommend this series.
Does anyone know if the Taiwanese sequel to "Reincarnated" - the 1980s or 1970s is out on DVD. Curious to see how that played out.
hey bobbywu, are you going to buy the new release of "Reincarnated"?
I am curious to know if this release is in higher quality.
I certainly hope the new management people would make a difference to the new dvd releases.
I would like to know as well. From what I found out though, the new Reincarnated DVD is distributed by HK based company called Garry's Trading which has published a number of HK movies and music DVDs. I haven't seen any series published by them but nothing seems to indicate that this new release of Reincarnated will be bad in quality.
Bobbywu: where did you get this Dragon Strike DVD?