TVB Released VCD/DVD Questions

[Trinie]

Well it was Nelson's first series so I gave him the benefit of the doubt... I think he did fine overall, but it could have been better.... Fiona was ok as Xiang Xiang Gong Zhu, but yea I didn't like that character at all. SHe is kind of annoying....I like her sister a lot more than her.

[bobbywu]

To BobbyWu,
I always thought Angie is one the most beautiful actresses ever, especially in ancient costume. I first saw reincarnated part 1 way back then when it showed on TV. I hardly remembered since I was way too young. I think Miu Ke Sau looked great too...
TO tell you the truth, I never liked modern series at all until recently. Therefore, I hardly saw any modern series back then so I can't answer your question. I only saw the classics like the Bund, Shell Game and some others. I still love ancient series the most and maybe some modern Taiwanese ones and that's it... Are you following YU On On's recent new series that she is in??

I will definitely watch this series:
http://www.spcnet.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=20979 when it comes out on DVD/VCD. It looks like a grand production. Its produced by Derek Yee, according to my internet research, Yu On-On's first love. From the trailers, Yu On-On still looks amazing, especially given how long ago Reincarnated was filmed. I hope her performance is well received and she does more series.

I never really liked or watched the modern series of the 80's and 90's neither. The 80's was all about the wuxia, kungfu, and series about dynasties for me . The 2000's I started to watch more modern series, probably because the quality and quantity of ancient series have gone down significantly. I still try to stay away from the 50+ episode "mega" series about corporate takeovers [i.e. Golden Faith, at the Threshold of an Era]. IMHO those series are too draggy and too repetitive.

[bobbywu]

It's called The Legend of Master Chan. Yu On On also did a short series with TVB. It's called "Crooks' Don't Win" (千外有千) with Kenneth Tsang and Deric Wan. It's 5eps long. She also filmed "Teenager" (少年十五二十時) before Book and Sword. It is actually a popular series back then, but it is very hard to find.

Thanks for the info WarGods, do you know if "Crooks Don't Win" is on VCD or DVD? I guess I can give up hope of finding "Teenager". Very curious about both series though.

[Trinie]

Hi Bobbywu,
TVB is going downhill when it comes to ancient series. I used to watch like 90% TVB, but now I only watch about 10%. I mainly watch Chinese, Taiwanese or Singaporean series that's it.... I do watch some TVB series but not much.... I don't just watch a series for the cast though since the plot and other things are really important too.

[almo89]

Hi Bobbywu,
TVB is going downhill when it comes to ancient series. I used to watch like 90% TVB, but now I only watch about 10%. I mainly watch Chinese, Taiwanese or Singaporean series that's it.... I do watch some TVB series but not much.... I don't just watch a series for the cast though since the plot and other things are really important too.

Yeah I know what you mean. I use to be all gung ho about TVB. Now, nothing excites me anymore. They can't even film a fight properly. What happened to these types of fights:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=aJFz-ggC-tQ

[wargods]

Thanks for the info WarGods, do you know if "Crooks Don't Win" is on VCD or DVD? I guess I can give up hope of finding "Teenager". Very curious about both series though.

Nope. To see what is out on VCD or DVD, you can check the list here:

http://us.yesasia.com/en/Specials/TVB/YearTable.aspx

[Trinie]

I totally agree with you Almo... I wonder what has happened to TVB lately?? My family thinks it is because all of the good stars from the 80s as well as the great staff has all left TVB.The Wu Xia directors who are in charge of choreographing the fight scenes have also left... Not to mention a lot of their costumes are not even that great looking.They also don't change that often and wear the same old clothes through the whole series. I mean they DO change, but not too often. There are still some good TVB series, but not that many.... Back then TVB didn't have much to compete with either. However, now they have China and many other companies competing with them...

[Ken Cheng]

Almo, a while back we were talking about sound quality on the TVB DVDs...how the dialogue tracks were muted on LOCH '82.

Well, I've gotten almost halfway through ROCH '83 and I have to say, it's not *only* LOCH '82. ROCH '83 has the same problem, and I'm guessing so will HSDS '86 when I get to it.

But it's not just a TVB problem. My ROBOTECH REMASTERED DVDs suffer the same problem as well. I think there's just something about the digital remastering process that does that to the dialogue track. I think these DVDs have been programmed for some high-end TV audio systems and if you don't have one of those, the resultant sound is going to be unbalanced and crappy.

[Maz999]

About this sound quality problem on LOCH83, I only found the problem to be in Parts 1 and Part 2. Part 3 sounds perfectly fine. Yeah, and the problems specificially are the spoken dialogues and not much the background music or sound effects. I have yet to thoroughly rewatch ROCH 84 but I did check through some disks and didnt find any problem. The DGSD 82 DVD didnt suffer from any of these sound problem and I have yet to check my HSDS86 set.

What really annoyed me with the sound problem in LOCH83 was that everytime the actors/actresses are speaking, the volume of their voices would suddenly go up or down. I still remember one time watching it, the voices were so quiet that I decided to turn up the volume to listen to the spoken conversation clearly and all of a sudden it was interrupted by the loud sound effect of weapon clash or was it furniture breaking scaring the daylights out of me.

While on the subject of TVB DVDs, it seems like they are also constantly releasing these variety shows like 'Be My Guest', 'On the Road' etc. Do people even buy these? I personally much rather they not waste time producing these and give us more good series on DVDs. The recent releases of series haven't exactly been impressive nor what I've ben waiting for.

[almo89]

I totally agree with you Almo... I wonder what has happened to TVB lately?? My family thinks it is because all of the good stars from the 80s as well as the great staff has all left TVB.The Wu Xia directors who are in charge of choreographing the fight scenes have also left... Not to mention a lot of their costumes are not even that great looking.They also don't change that often and wear the same old clothes through the whole series. I mean they DO change, but not too often. There are still some good TVB series, but not that many.... Back then TVB didn't have much to compete with either. However, now they have China and many other companies competing with them...

A lot of those ppl are like making movies now. Johnny To and Benny Chan are like big name directors now. When TVB had good choreo, Ching Siu Tung was doing em. Now he's like directing movies or choregraphing stuff for movies.

Almo, a while back we were talking about sound quality on the TVB DVDs...how the dialogue tracks were muted on LOCH '82.

Well, I've gotten almost halfway through ROCH '83 and I have to say, it's not *only* LOCH '82. ROCH '83 has the same problem, and I'm guessing so will HSDS '86 when I get to it.

ROCH and HSDS sounded fine to me. I didn't have the issues that LOCH had.

About this sound quality problem on LOCH83, I only found the problem to be in Parts 1 and Part 2. Part 3 sounds perfectly fine. Yeah, and the problems specificially are the spoken dialogues and not much the background music or sound effects. I have yet to thoroughly rewatch ROCH 84 but I did check through some disks and didnt find any problem. The DGSD 82 DVD didnt suffer from any of these sound problem and I have yet to check my HSDS86 set.

What really annoyed me with the sound problem in LOCH83 was that everytime the actors/actresses are speaking, the volume of their voices would suddenly go up or down. I still remember one time watching it, the voices were so quiet that I decided to turn up the volume to listen to the spoken conversation clearly and all of a sudden it was interrupted by the loud sound effect of weapon clash or was it furniture breaking scaring the daylights out of me.

While on the subject of TVB DVDs, it seems like they are also constantly releasing these variety shows like 'Be My Guest', 'On the Road' etc. Do people even buy these? I personally much rather they not waste time producing these and give us more good series on DVDs. The recent releases of series haven't exactly been impressive nor what I've ben waiting for.

Part 1 and 2 was really bad. Part 3 wasn't fine, but it was better. Still annoying. You can tell when you are watching the intro for Part 3 and the music just doesn't have the umph. I had the same problem when turning up the volume and the sounds would be so damn loud.

I never bought one single variety shows. I will only buy classic dramas.

[almo89]

Just finished watching Against the Blade of Honour. Overall pretty dull show. Louis Koo's character was very uninteresting. The show got kinda interesting when Wong Wai's character appeared but overall boring. Irene Wan was just brutal. She can't act at all. Every important character in this show had time to narrate which bugged the hell out of me. To me it's like a cheap@ss way to tell the audience what a member is thinking without doing much acting. A little bit was fine, but it was all over the show and it was annoying. They kept on using the same lines over and over again. What's with the ending? That was one of the worst cliff hanger endings ever.

Also the review page shows that it was 26 episodes. Was that an error cause my DVD set is 20 episodes.

[Will-]

Also the review page shows that it was 26 episodes. Was that an error cause my DVD set is 20 episodes.

Because the reviewer, Dagger Lee, is Vietnamese. Each episode of Against the Blade of Honour in Vietnamese runs for thirty minutes, not 45 minutes. Thus, it was 26 episodes (13 tapes) in Vietnamese unlike 20 episodes (10 DVDs) in Chinese.

[almo89]

Because the reviewer, Dagger Lee, is Vietnamese. Each episode of Against the Blade of Honour in Vietnamese runs for thirty minutes, not 45 minutes. Thus, it was 26 episodes (13 tapes) in Vietnamese unlike 20 episodes (10 DVDs) in Chinese.

Thanks for the confirmation!

[bobbywu]

On TVB DVDs, do these DVD's have special features besides trailers for other series? Any interviews, promotion events, or even at least production notes?

According to Yes Asia, the Book and Sword VCDs actually had an extra disc that talked about the life of 3 of the series' actresses. I wonder if Yu On-On was one of the actresses documented, hmmmm...........
In all seriousness, though I remember seeing some behind the scenes clips from LOCH on youtube. Was TVB decent enough to put that in as a special feature?

[bobbywu]

I totally agree with you Almo... I wonder what has happened to TVB lately?? My family thinks it is because all of the good stars from the 80s as well as the great staff has all left TVB.The Wu Xia directors who are in charge of choreographing the fight scenes have also left... Not to mention a lot of their costumes are not even that great looking.They also don't change that often and wear the same old clothes through the whole series. I mean they DO change, but not too often. There are still some good TVB series, but not that many.... Back then TVB didn't have much to compete with either. However, now they have China and many other companies competing with them...

Yep, Almo and Trinie you guys hit the point right on, TVB doesn't seem like they care these days. And the actors, they just don't seem as professional these days. Just look at the ancient series these days, all the actors either have punk haircuts (i.e. Devils Disciples) or fabio dos (i.e. Lethal Weapons of Love and Passion). What happened to the days where the actors actually were patient enough to sit in the make up chair and put the wig on, and even in Qing series shave their heads? People who were born in the 90's probably think the punk haircuts in ancient series are normal, but I think they look kind of goofy, hard to buy into their characters.

[Maz999]

On TVB DVDs, do these DVD's have special features besides trailers for other series? Any interviews, promotion events, or even at least production notes?

According to Yes Asia, the Book and Sword VCDs actually had an extra disc that talked about the life of 3 of the series' actresses. I wonder if Yu On-On was one of the actresses documented, hmmmm...........
In all seriousness, though I remember seeing some behind the scenes clips from LOCH on youtube. Was TVB decent enough to put that in as a special feature?

Both LOCH3 and ROCH84 includes the making of the series. the ones you saw on youtube should be that. One of the Modern Audio versions of LOCH also includes a DVD menu of all the songs from the series.

Yeah, some of their VCDs do come with an extra bonus disk. I've had TVB VCDs with an extra 'behind-the-scenes' disk and another with an interview/talkshow episode taken from an old TVB show

[Dagger Lee]

Because the reviewer, Dagger Lee, is Vietnamese. Each episode of Against the Blade of Honour in Vietnamese runs for thirty minutes, not 45 minutes. Thus, it was 26 episodes (13 tapes) in Vietnamese unlike 20 episodes (10 DVDs) in Chinese.

Umm, actually, I'm not Vietnamese and the version I saw was dubbed in Thai. Like the Vietnamese versions on VHS, the Thai versions on VHS are split into episodes of around 30 minutes. However, it's different for the VCDs.

[Will-]

Umm, actually, I'm not Vietnamese and the version I saw was dubbed in Thai. Like the Vietnamese versions on VHS, the Thai versions on VHS are split into episodes of around 30 minutes. However, it's different for the VCDs.

Interesting! Didn't know, in terms of episodes, Thai series were also released this way. I believe the reason Tai Seng and other distribution companies abridged from the original source the minutes per episode to fabricate more episodes per series, so they could generate more money per tape, per episode.

At least Tai Seng got it right with their distribution of retail DVDs in both Vietnamese and Thai: each episode runs approximately 45 minutes.

[Dagger Lee]

Interesting! Didn't know, in terms of episodes, Thai series were also released this way. I believe the reason Tai Seng and other distribution companies abridged from the original source the minutes per episode to fabricate more episodes per series, so they could generate more money per tape, per episode.

At least Tai Seng got it right with their distribution of retail DVDs in both Vietnamese and Thai: each episode runs approximately 45 minutes.

Yep. However, Taiseng only releases TVB series on VCD for Thai viewers sadly. Not to mention that the quality is worse than the ones imported from Thailand, which could be bought online and at some stores for a cheaper price but each disc consists of 65-70 minutes of footage from the series, to use up less discs.

[Trinie]

Yea, I agree with you guys! I think just like the actors(for example, Tony and Andy who are now big stars making movies), the directors and all have moved on to making movies and better things.... sigh.. I miss the good old days... Sadly, now all that is left are memories from the old TV series. I think TVB is just lagging due to all of this competition that they have from Mainland CHina, Taiwan and other companies... Plus, it also doesn't help that they promote the same old people with no talent and those talentless Ms. HKs, while China,on the other hand, has acting universities which train their actors/actresses how to act. Therefore, with TVB's methods, how will they be as successful as before?? They used to have the acting academy which the stars had to graduate from.. But now, they don't seem to have anything...

About the number of episodes, the old TVB series dubbed in Viet were also about 45 minutes long each. However, now they are about 30 minutes each. They are just divided differently that's all. I guess that is ok as long none of the parts are cut out just like they are on the Chinese VCDs. Gosh, I hated that... The good thing is the DVDs in Viet are pretty good quality overall and are uncut. However, some of the series don't have that great quality and it is not as good as the Chinese DVDs. I even noticed that the VHS tapes for the Chinese version had really good quality compared to the Viet dubbed VHS.. WOW, a big difference....