[Ninja Dodo]

Being an animation enthusiast I have a few Disney DVDs and it always frustrates me that the choice of audio tracks on these things is often very limited (and random) if you buy from say the UK. I have a Lion King DVD with English and Hebrew for example, but what I'd really like is to watch it with the Dutch voices I originally heard in the cinema.

I'm generally against dubbing, but I make an exception for animation, particularly Disney, since it tends to actually be competently done. The dubbed version often is the one I remember watching as a kid and so watching the original English is sometimes oddly jarring, especially the songs.

Similarly I saw Aladdin in Sweden first and Beauty and the Beast is another one I wish I had in Dutch. I hate Disney for never ever keeping their movies on release... they only ever come out for like a year and then disappear for another twenty, so if you miss the window you can only get them on ebay for often ridiculous prices.

I guess where this rant is going is does anyone else think it's odd that DVDs often have such a limited selection of audio? Since they have the tracks already for so many territories, how much trouble is it to just bring out one version with all the languages?

If it is a storage problem, which seems likely, is this something that's going to change with Blu-ray and HD-DVD etc?

[tabacco]

You'd be surprised how much space audio takes up when you've got surround mixes and everything. Once you've got a DVD9 disc and have added in two hours of video at a decent bitrate, a couple of audio tracks, and a special feature or two, you don't really have a lot of space left.

[SSH]

If I buy a DVD in Spain it has Spanish and English (which are the two languages my kids speak). If I buy it in UK it has English and sometimes some wierd language that no-one in the UK nearly speaks. Grrrr! Spanish DVDs are much more expensive.

[Ninja Dodo]

In Holland you often get DVDs with Dutch and French (plus the original English). I guess they sell those across Holland, Belgium and France.

[Panthera]

I'm also an animation enthusiast, but I irritate over not being able to get the original voices and subtitles. I collect pixar movies and Miyazaki movies, and also try to buy most of the Disney and Dreamworks animations. But since I'm collecting I want the most extra material, and to get that, I usually have to import from england, thus not getting the norwegian dub. I never watch the dub, but I want to have the dvd's also to show my siblings, and my future children, so often I have to buy two of each dvd. This I've had to do with every Miyazaki movie. I want the japanese speech with english subtitles, but the norwegian dvd's only have norwegian (and Swedish, Danish and Finnish) speech, or japanese with norwegian subtitles, which means they've been double translated (for some reason we don't seem to have japanese translators here.. o.O). And the english dvd's don't have the norwegian dub, meaning that my younger siblings wont understand it. *sigh*

[Ninja Dodo]

Yeah, the limited choice just seems odd. Okay the full range is not feasible perhaps but more than two languages is clearly possible.

Personally I actually like watching Miyazaki in English. The Japanese voices generally seem a bit over the top in my opinion (at least from what I could tell from behind the scenes featurettes)... and apparently the man himself has actually been quoted as saying he preferred the English version of Howl's Moving Castle.

In animation I don't care so much which is the original dub, only which is the more entertaining one. You can forgive broken lip-sync pretty easily.

Not so with live-action.

[Erwin_Br]

Originally Posted by Ninja Dodo

In Holland you often get DVDs with Dutch and French (plus the original English). I guess they sell those across Holland, Belgium and France.

Yeah. What annoys me is that my Star Wars DVD's have French menu's and I can't seem to change it to English (or Dutch).

--Erwin