Well Go USA confirmation

[shaolinkng7]

This debate is ridiculous.

Well Go is just a distributor, not the studio. Celestial is the studio in behalf of Shaw Brothers. The studio holds the master prints which include the original negatives and audio recordings. Well Go does not. Celestial is responsible for restoring the films, and then transferring them onto HD digital tape to further transfer the films into DVD and Blu-Ray code. They are most likely responsible for transcoding PAL into NTSC. All Well Go does is press the discs. They can only use what has been handed to them by Celestial. They do not have the ability to go into the Shaw Brothers vault, pull out the original negative of these movies, and remaster a perfect print.

This is not the same as Universal releasing something on DVD. The masters for Universal's films ( with exception to some of the early sound era and silent era ) are all protected in a vault. If they release something like "Back to the Future" and instead of remastering the original camera negatives, remaster the video master recorded for the early Laserdisc and VHS releases, then buyers would have a reason to complain. ( yep, they attempted to do that. Wound up recalling the entire box set after millions of complaints and releasing an original negative remaster. )

[spannick]

Well Go destroyed perfect prints by encoding them in the most amateurish ways possible. that's not Celestial's Fault. Having worked with a German Company who released Celestial Movies, i do know what is delivered. and you can order it as you need it. Well got just don't have a damn clue of Video Encoding and that's why their crap is botched.

Any competent Studio can easily convert 25fps to 23.976fps without interlacing - see Media Blasters for example, who quickly learned and cared after a bad start.

The Celestial Prints are NEVER interlaced for example. It's all amateurs who can't encode properly or just don't give a f*ck if a DVD / Bluray is encoded that way. (mostly both).

Nobody ever complained about a Celestial Remaster not looking perfect - they do. it's just the Folks who can't do proper DVDs who get the blame and that's rightfully so.

[chen lung]

This debate is ridiculous.

Well Go is just a distributor, not the studio. Celestial is the studio in behalf of Shaw Brothers. The studio holds the master prints which include the original negatives and audio recordings. Well Go does not. Celestial is responsible for restoring the films, and then transferring them onto HD digital tape to further transfer the films into DVD and Blu-Ray code. They are most likely responsible for transcoding PAL into NTSC. All Well Go does is press the discs. They can only use what has been handed to them by Celestial. They do not have the ability to go into the Shaw Brothers vault, pull out the original negative of these movies, and remaster a perfect print.

With some exceptions, Dragon Dynasty and Media Blasters managed to present the films correctly, so why couldn't Well Go USA?

We're not necessarily asking them to go into the vaults.

[John]

That is exactly the point even if they aren't optimal they are still good quality and it's not like John said where you can vote with your dollars. Where is the alternative to vote for?

Although there may be no better alternative (although there usually is, it just might not have English subtitles), choosing not to buy things that you find unsatisfactory and instead to buy things that do meet your expectations rewards quality releases and deprives poor ones. This is most basic way for you or I to influence the business; despite that you can't always count on licensors to do their homework and try to improve, it's still possible support those that do.

IVL disks are slowly going out of circulation, the UK Shaw Bros releases are virtually non-existent, Australia isn't much better. I think some people need to shelve their quality DVDs and pull out some of the classics that weren't properly remastered, poorly dubbed English, full-screen, VHS quality and remind themselves how things used to be! Then stick in a so-called "inferior product" into your DVD player.

We have really different values on this front. The first couple Jackie Chan films I bought on Grey market VHS quality DVDs were unacceptable to me, despite being so cheap. I've noticed that over time better versions become available, so instead of putting time and money into something I don't enjoy, I go outside or read a book. LOL just kidding, I watch other movies.

A handful of people with impossibly high standards dissuade a good proportion of the buying market and then you're left with nothing. Yet you know that only a handful of people actually complained to these companies. If people actually bought the movies en masse and complained en masse, something would get done.

How about some evidence to go with your passive aggression? I can testify to writing disparaging customer feedback to distributors; some, like FUNimation, seem to have worked through their issues, whereas others could or would not do so.

You know what I bought a bunch of classic kung fu movies recently and I would kill for them to be as "shoddy" as some of the releases people are blustering about. People need to wake up before it's too late, if it's not already too late.

You've got this hardcore kung fu film infatuation, where nary a turd isn't gilded in Sterling silver and it must be acquired at all costs before its lost to the sands of time, which is all well and good (if not necessarily true), but at this time you're not actually discussing anything. You're prosthelytizing. We get it: you'd pay/do anything to get Ti Lung Smacks a Bitch 2: The Quickening. What you don't seem to grasp is that other people here are in fact heretics. We've got these highfalutin ideas called standards that aren't being met by Wellgo, and should probably be burnt at the stake or something. But if there's any hope whatsoever of saving our eternal chi spirits, you should probably engage in an exchange of information that would amount to communication rather than just playing an endurance game.

Oh, and can we leave the sky-is-falling doom and gloom to religious nutbars and their sad cults? Things have only gotten better for us as time has gone on, and all things (ahem, economy) considered, we're still doing great! I have Five Element Ninja on flipping BLU-RAY - thank you, 21st century.

[blue_skies]

Although there may be no better alternative (although there usually is, it just might not have English subtitles), choosing not to buy things that you find unsatisfactory and instead to buy things that do meet your expectations rewards quality releases and deprives poor ones. This is most basic way for you or I to influence the business; despite that you can't always count on licensors to do their homework and try to improve, it's still possible support those that do.

We have really different values on this front. The first couple Jackie Chan films I bought on Grey market VHS quality DVDs were unacceptable to me, despite being so cheap. I've noticed that over time better versions become available, so instead of putting time and money into something I don't enjoy, I go outside or read a book. LOL just kidding, I watch other movies.

How about some evidence to go with your passive aggression? I can testify to writing disparaging customer feedback to distributors; some, like FUNimation, seem to have worked through their issues, whereas others could or would not do so.

You've got this hardcore kung fu film infatuation, where nary a turd isn't gilded in Sterling silver and it must be acquired at all costs before its lost to the sands of time, which is all well and good (if not necessarily true), but at this time you're not actually discussing anything. You're prosthelytizing. We get it: you'd pay/do anything to get Ti Lung Smacks a Bitch 2: The Quickening. What you don't seem to grasp is that other people here are in fact heretics. We've got these highfalutin ideas called standards that aren't being met by Wellgo, and should probably be burnt at the stake or something. But if there's any hope whatsoever of saving our eternal chi spirits, you should probably engage in an exchange of information that would amount to communication rather than just playing an endurance game.

Oh, and can we leave the sky-is-falling doom and gloom to religious nutbars and their sad cults? Things have only gotten better for us as time has gone on, and all things (ahem, economy) considered, we're still doing great! I have Five Element Ninja on flipping BLU-RAY - thank you, 21st century.

If it doesn't have the English subtitles it is clearly not a better alternative, it's not even an alternative and just because there was alternatives, we are now turning a corner into a situation where these movies are becoming harder and harder to get. It's all well and good having your principles on rewarding quality releases and depriving poor ones. But we are not talking about a poor release. We're talking about a good quality anamorphic widescreen, original language and English subtitled movie. It might not be up to the high standards by some other celestial Shaw Brother movies, however we are not talking about an awful release. Given during better times for home video sales many companies have gone under trying to supply this market with Shaw Bros/ classic kung fu/modern martial arts films, people need to decide how picky they want to be.

Again we are not talking about substandard bootleg quality. However the availability of better versions came about because people bought the releases. Some more popular titles are far more likely to get released in better quality like Blu-ray but other lesser-known films with lesser-known films stars will be lucky to be released at all. If you want to boycott a particular release that's up to you, when companies decide it's not worth their while because the fan base isn't big enough. Then when you can not find a particular movie and there is little being released beyond some mainstream Jackie Chan/Bruce Lee/jet Li titles that you already own, what will you do?

I never said people don't send customer feedback, I'm saying not that many do. More people are happy to read a review from someone else and not bother to even make a purchase, or in most cases people buy the DVD and are not bothered by the petty flaws. I bet only a fraction of people who moan and groan on forums like this actually bother to send feedback.

I wouldn't say I have a hard-core kung fu film infatuation. I only want to see/own the best of the best and ideally I want to see them in the best possible way. Previously I had ignored many titles because of poor releases and I mean genuinely poor releases, not the bull shit you're talking about on this thread. Many films I'll probably never see because they are out of print and there isn't the money to be made from kung fu cinema outside of the recognised names, so are unlikely to reappear. While I won't pay over the odds for any movie, let alone a shoddy release, I'm certainly not going to be a movie snob and something is definitely better than nothing. Of course I want high-quality original subtitle releases with original aspect ratio anamorphic widescreen etc etc but I don't want to deprive myself of some cracking movies that I would otherwise never see. Anyway the point is academic, what is available is available and if you're like me coming to the Shaw Bros catalogue late, well you're shit out of luck. Get what you can, while you can as evidenced by Cine Asia not releasing many classic titles from Hong Kong Legends back catalogue. The good times for kung fu/martial arts cinema are over, say doom and gloom all you like You only need to see what's due for release or rerelease, that the future isn't bright.

[John]

Maybe something like a Wild Side disc is not a better alternative for you, but it's an alternative nonetheless. Some of us don't need the subs, others know how to plonk them on, but if that's not for you fair enough; you had just mentioned there was no alternative and that's not always absolutely the case.

Anyone might pale at the thought of obscure Shaw titles never seeing the light of day again. I'm optimistic; I'm pretty sure at least the really good stuff will come around again, but hey some titles have always fallen between the cracks, so if something unusual becomes available that IS a good thing and you should consider grabbing it if you've got to have the physical media. I don't want to diminish that. I just don't want it soured by carelessness either; I think we're both agreed on that much, and if Well Go had released something I hadn't already seen elsewhere I would be curious too.

Do you know how to take screencaps? There's a way to do it such that the image is lossless, I just can't remember off the top of my head. Anyway, the proof is in the pudding, so if you've got a copy handy I'm sure everyone could appreciate being able to look at something instead of speculate. Same goes for Chen Lung et al, what say you bring the pain?

[masterofoneinchpunch]

A couple of notes not mentioned in this thread (hopefully I didn't miss anything):

There are two original trailers on there Death Duel and The Trail of the Broken Blade, so I'm thinking these are going to be released next from Well Go.

On a CRT TV these two releases look decent and better than several of the Image releases and easily better than the first two Funimation releases, though worse than the later Funimation releases. I noticed these were remastered early in the Celestial days (2003 I think). Just something I noticed. Mono sound, no English dub.

The original trailer (always enjoy seeing the original Shaw trailer) for Swordsman and Enchantress has nudity in the female discovering scene of Candy Wen Xue-Er (though using a double), though the film does not have this.

[Killer Meteor]

A couple of notes not mentioned in this thread (hopefully I didn't miss anything):

There are two original trailers on there Death Duel and The Trail of the Broken Blade, so I'm thinking these are going to be released next from Well Go.

On a CRT TV these two releases look decent and better than several of the Image releases and easily better than the first two Funimation releases, though worse than the later Funimation releases. I noticed these were remastered early in the Celestial days (2003 I think). Just something I noticed. Mono sound, no English dub.

The original trailer (always enjoy seeing the original Shaw trailer) for Swordsman and Enchantress has nudity in the female discovering scene of Candy Wen Xue-Er (though using a double), though the film does not have this.

The Well Gos are standard PAL-NTSC like the IVLs. There's some stupid time correction problem on the Images and early Funimations.

I have the Siren dvd of Trail of Broken Blade. It's non anamorphic, but genuine PAL, and has Mandarin audio and the original English dub - not to mention the worst subtitle ever!

Death Duel - Siren and Momentum both released it non-anamorphic. German DVD is anamorphic but does not have English subs.