Re: Information needed urgently...

sundae (sundae@cheerful.com)
Mon, 29 Jun 1998 12:39:37 -0400 

These are probably priate VCD's.  They (along with many other anime and
Japanese soap operas) are available everywhere in Hong Kong at about
HK$10/disc, which comes to about HK$100-150 per box.  If you really don't
mind being caught buying priate VCD's, I'd suggest you *NOT* to buy at SASA
but ask someone to buy for you in HK if you have such contact.

>> I have recently purchased 2 VCD boxsets of Legend of the Galactic
>> Heroes.
>> They are the first and third boxsets. This means that I am missing the
2nd
>> & 4th boxset.
>>
>> I would like to know if anyone on this mailing list knows of any place
>> on
>> or off the web that has these 2 items for sale. I live in Canada, more
>> precisely Montreal, but any place in the world is fine: Hong Kong, U.S.,
>> Japan...
>
>Try SASA VCD:
>
> http://sasavcd.com/
>
>They have all 4 LoGH VCD box sets for about $99 each (discount available
>if you order more than one box set I think).
>
>
>> They are both very nice. The 1st box contains 13 VCDs and the first 26
>> episodes. The 3rd box contains 16 VCDs and has the 3rd season in it. They
>> are both made by X'Time Video CD 2.0. I think it is a company from
Taiwan.
>> The box is white and the disks are all in a plastic case. They do not
>> individual cases. They are in Japanese with chinese subtitles. I would
like
>> to get the other 2 boxsets and not the single Disk types. This is mostly
>> for practicality and aesthetics.
>
>I got vol.2 of the LoGH VCD box set recently, but I wasn't too satisfied
>with the quality: It turned out that half of the VCDs (the even-numbered
>volumes) in my box set are encoded in PAL video format (320x288 resolution
>with black strips on top and bottom of picture, 25 frames per second) AND
>they used "joint stereo" for the audio MPEG stream (which is noticeably
>worse that "stereo" and frequent breaks can be heard in the sound).
>If you have a dedicated desktop VCD player, it probably isn't much of
>a problem, but I'm using my PC-DVD Encore player, which can't properly
>play PAL-encoded VCD's, even with software hacks.  The other half of the
>VCDs (the odd-numbered volumes) are of much better quality because they're
>encoded in NTSC video format (320x240 resolution with no black strips,
>30 frames per second) and the audio stream is encoded in true stereo.
>I asked SASA VCD about this odd mixture of PAL and NTSC VCDs in my box
>set, but they didn't seem to know about it (but they did offer to refund
>my money if I decided to send to back, which I didn't).
>
>I donno if the same problem exists for the other LoGH VCD box sets
(anyone?),
>but since it seems this is the only source of subtitled (in Chinese i.e.)
>LoGH - all 110 episodes - that I can get in the forseeable future, I
decided
>to order vols. 3 and 4 of the VCD box sets ^_^  Should be getting them next
>week.
>
>Oh and BTW, I donno if these LoGH VCDs are legit or pirated copies. There's
>no mention of the Japanese copyright holders on the box but they are listed
>on the printed side of the VCDs.  Weird isn't it? ^_^
>
>
>Ming.
>
>
>P.S. I don't seem to remember seeing any discussions about the LoGH games
> for the Saturn (which is also coming to the PSX I think).  Has anyone
> played them?  I bought the first Saturn LoGH game last year, but at
> that time I had a hard time figuring out the game engine, because both
> my Japanese and my knowledge about LoGH were rather inadequate then.
> But the other day I played it again, and was finally able to
> understand the game manual and the game engine, and I think it
> is a very well-designed strategy game which is truthful to
> the LoGH story.  Of course the story changes according to the
> player's actions, but the overall storyline follows that of the
> anime quite closely.   There's also a "Plus" version of this
> game, with added voices (36 seiyuu in all!) and enhanced CG.
> If you know Japanese, I highly recommend getting this game.