area A - latin America

[costamatrix]

hi guys ....

i bought a bluray player, and i bought because the area incoding for blurays are different of those for DVD players, i will be able to watch the most recent movies...

but now, i saw every week new releases in bluray, but without portuguese subtitles.... comeon guys... i live in brazil and here we speak portugues...

blu ray area A, was supposed to cover all amercias...right????

what is happening?
i can not trust on bluray format?

[Papi4baby]

Originally Posted by costamatrix

hi guys ....

i bought a bluray player, and i bought because the area incoding for blurays are different of those for DVD players, i will be able to watch the most recent movies...

but now, i saw every week new releases in bluray, but without portuguese subtitles.... comeon guys... i live in brazil and here we speak portugues...

blu ray area A, was supposed to cover all amercias...right????

what is happening?
i can not trust on bluray format?

The video and audio will work. But the subtitles are not a guarantee thing bud. Sorry to say it. You will just have to look up the specs or buy local.

The same thing happens with the anime blu ray from Japan, the audio and video works in the Americas blu ray players, but there's no subtitles so is really hard to justify the purchase unless you can understand Japanese.

[costamatrix]

Originally Posted by Papi4baby

The video and audio will work. But the subtitles are not a guarantee thing bud. Sorry to say it. You will just have to look up the specs or buy local.

The same thing happens with the anime blu ray from Japan, the audio and video works in the Americas blu ray players, but there's no subtitles so is really hard to justify the purchase unless you can understand Japanese.

yes, thanks... i know that the video and audio will work, but you are right, how to justify this buy???

Studios are just loosing money..... someone pay some attention to this,..

[MOONPHASE]

Region A covers North America, South America, parts of Asia, and some others I forget. If you make subtitles for every country Region A covers then most of the disc space would be used just for subtitles alone. Plus imagine movies that are Region Free does that mean we need subtitles from every country in the world all on the same disc? I think its just better if you buy the movie from your area.

[raskal66]

Originally Posted by MOONPHASE

Region A covers North America, South America, parts of Asia, and some others I forget. If you make subtitles for every country Region A covers then most of the disc space would be used just for subtitles alone. Plus imagine movies that are Region Free does that mean we need subtitles from every country in the world all on the same disc? I think its just better if you buy the movie from your area.

I don't think that's quite true. There are 4 official languages in all of Region A: English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese. Obviously indigienous languages don't make it on the list, but I'm not aware of any country in Region A that has an indigenous official language. I could see running out of disc space if one tried to incorporate every language and dialect in Asia onto one disc but not region A.

I think the subtitles not working are actually how studios keep buyers from one country from shopping in another. Much like the anime thing, the subtitles don't function because foreign license holders want to deliver the films to their country and get a piece of the action. In anime what encouragement would a consumer have to wait for the American company if the Japanese disc with subtitles works? I don't think it's a disc space issue since subtitle tracks / files aren't all that large in size.

[pro-bassoonist]

Originally Posted by costamatrix

blu ray area A, was supposed to cover all amercias...right????

Hello, and welcome to Blu-ray.com!

I would like to quickly point out to you that the fact that Brazil overlaps the United States (and the rest of the countries in Region-A) does not mean that all Blu-ray releases will be Pan-A (meaning that they will include subtitles for al languages spoken in Reigon-A countries). This is the case with the majority of Region-B Blu-ray releases as well - they do not offer subtitles for all of the languages spoken in Region-B.

You have to remember that region coding is something that is meant to localize not only the studios and their output (films), but the hardware manufacturers and their products (players, drives, etc). Which, of course, is one of the key reasons why Brazil is in Region-A; your country was in the NTSC camp (with the US) well before Blu-ray arrived.

Again, welcome to the site!

Pro-B

[Octavio]

Originally Posted by MOONPHASE

Region A covers North America, South America, parts of Asia, and some others I forget. If you make subtitles for every country Region A covers then most of the disc space would be used just for subtitles alone. Plus imagine movies that are Region Free does that mean we need subtitles from every country in the world all on the same disc? I think its just better if you buy the movie from your area.

IMO that's not true. Subtitles alone barely uses disc space in comparison with audio tracks, supplements and of course the picture itself.
Some Sony and Warner titles includes a myriad of subtitles besides audio tracks in plenty of different languages (at least one of them in PCM or Dolby TrueHD) plus lots of supplements in SD or even HD.

I dunno the exact size of subtitle files but I know they are much smaller than the size of audio files. So that's not a pretext to stop including subs.

[Octavio]

Originally Posted by pro-bassoonist

Hello, and welcome to Blu-ray.com!

I would like to quickly point out to you that the fact that Brazil overlaps the United States (and the rest of the countries in Region-A) does not mean that all Blu-ray releases will be Pan-A (meaning that they will include subtitles for al languages spoken in Reigon-A countries). This is the case with the majority of Region-B Blu-ray releases as well - they do not offer subtitles for all of the languages spoken in Region-B.

I have seen plenty of titles released on BD whose DVD versions (discs with much smaller capacity) does include more subtitle options than their BD counterparts.

I am not asking for EVERY language spoken in the so called "Region A" to be included on the BD's but the most "important" should be there:
Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, French and of course English HOH.

Several BD titles includes subtitles for all those languages (if not more), Heck even some DVD's does it!

IMO the reason why they aren't included is to reduce costs (although I don't think it's too expensive to add portuguese subs). Or perhaps because some legal stuff.

Some studios that always (almost always) includes portuguese subs are: Sony, Warner, Paramount, Dreamworks.
Disney and Universal use to release "latin versions" with a myriad of audio and subs options including portuguese. Other than that the discs are identical to those released in the states: same lossless audio track in english, same video bitrate, same supplements. Identical.

In the other hand Lionsgate, MGM, FOX usually doesn't include subs in portuguese albeit the last two quite often offers subs in Korean, Cantonese, Mandarin, Thai, Spanish, French.

Criterion can only include english subs for legal reasons, I think.

Brasil is no a small country, its population is close to 200 millions and is one of 10 biggest economies of the world. Why some studios have decided to ignore that huge market? That's something beyond my comprehension.

[pro-bassoonist]

Originally Posted by Octavio

Why some studios have decided to ignore that huge market? That's something beyond my comprehension.

Hello again,

Actually, the studios are not ignoring the market; due to territorial restrictions - in particular, because of sublicensees, who purchase local rights for films that are released in different countries part of the same region - often times, they cannot provide the subtitle options for the important languages you mention in your post. With other words, you may not comprehend why all of this is done, but it is for a (good) reason. And, as someone who has been part of the system you address, I can assure you that it benefits the content providers far more than you could imagine.

Pro-B

[OrlandoEastwood]

The Blu-Ray for Constantine has:

English, French, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese, and Swedish subtitles.

Now, Japanese is in bold because it is listed on the cover but there is no Japanese subtitles or audio on the film.

[Nielsb90]

Originally Posted by OrlandoEastwood

The Blu-Ray for Constantine has:

English, French, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese, and Swedish subtitles.

Now, Japanese is in bold because it is listed on the cover but there is no Japanese subtitles or audio on the film.

Im from Denmark and if I buy movies from UK around half of them have DK subs.. Around half of Sony's titles have 15-20 different subs, while the other half only has English HoH.. Weird Some us Warner titles have lots of subtitles! I don't see a pattern

[Deciazulado]

Originally Posted by OrlandoEastwood

The Blu-Ray for Constantine has:

English, French, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese, and Swedish subtitles.

Now, Japanese is in bold because it is listed on the cover but there is no Japanese subtitles or audio on the film.

Some discs only show certain subtitles if, on the Blu-ray player settings, you select the language as the primary language/menu lnguage. So they are hidden. (One example I have is Batman Gotham Knight).

[Octavio]

Originally Posted by pro-bassoonist

Hello again,

Actually, the studios are not ignoring the market; due to territorial restrictions - in particular, because of sublicensees, who purchase local rights for films that are released in different countries part of the same region - often times, they cannot provide the subtitle options for the important languages you mention in your post. With other words, you may not comprehend why all of this is done, but it is for a (good) reason. And, as someone who has been part of the system you address, I can assure you that it benefits the content providers far more than you could imagine.

Pro-B

I think I got it but would you care to elaborate more on how that works?
You know, I am not as "slow" as you suggest. I have a master's degree in philosophy.
Believe me if I can understand Heidegger and Husserl, I think I can understand the "intrincate" reasons why some studios can include "certain" languages on their BD's while other studios cannot.
It can't be hardest than to understand Merleu-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception.

Thanx in advance.

[jw]

oh boy, O he didnt mean anything derogatory, just didnt wanna go into detail. Dont take it personally

[Deciazulado]

[pro-bassoonist]

Originally Posted by Octavio

I think I got it but would you care to elaborate more on how that works?

Hello again,

I was not suggesting that you are slow rather what I wanted to point out to you is that what you consider to be logical isn't something that actually is (you see the market from a consumer's point of view, the content-owners don't), given that the studios would generate far more by selling their products to restricted markets than by offering Pan-releases as you suggest (this would mean a release containing subtitles/dubs for all of the major languages spoken in a territory of interest).

Example: If Japanese distribs Toho were to include English subtitles on their upcoming Akira Kurosawa boxset (and Japan is a market that overlaps with the US as far as Blu-ray is concerned) they, Toho, would generate far less in revenue than if they sold the rights to whoever is willing to promote Kurosawa's works in the US (which incidentally would affect European English-friendly markets as well). The same goes for Gallic markets (Benelux, France, etc) and North Africa where French is spoken - it is far more logical to sell the rights for the box per market, than do it per region. In fact, this is a practice that works extremely well for Hollywood as many of the films that fail at the local box office typically recoup the loses they have incurred by generating income through sublicensing. Obviously, when you have an intermediary operating between the content-owners and the licensee willing to release a film then this entire process gets even more complicated (which, by the way, is precisely the reason why Criterion have postponed their release of RAN).

Hope this helps

Pro-B

[Octavio]

Thanx for the explanation. It was quite easy to understand. Albeit perharps a bit more complicate than understanding Sartre

[pro-bassoonist]

Originally Posted by Octavio

Thanx for the explanation. It was quite easy to understand.

Well, you are very welcome, sir!

Pro-B

[wallendo]

Originally Posted by Octavio

I think I got it but would you care to elaborate more on how that works?
You know, I am not as "slow" as you suggest. I have a master's degree in philosophy.
Believe me if I can understand Heidegger and Husserl, I think I can understand the "intrincate" reasons why some studios can include "certain" languages on their BD's while other studios cannot.
It can't be hardest than to understand Merleu-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception.

Thanx in advance.

Understanding philosophy and quantum physics is much easier than understanding the movie business.

[gilson.soares]

I understand the feeling of CostaMatrix.
I live in Brazil and English is my second language.

All reasons explained above are true, but .......

When I bought a BD I also want to be able to show my movies to other people/parents who cannot understand English audio/subtitles.

Only couple studios are releasing (few) titles here.
Today (2009-Apr-15) CinemaSquid has 4886 titles. 350 has subtitles in Portuguese. When you go to regular stores here that only sells "BD made in Brazil" you can only find few dozens titles.

So, if want to see NEWER titles with Portuguese subtitles, the only way is buy them outside Brazil.

Fortunately, american online stores delivers BD worldwide (Amazon, etc).

Unfortunately blu-ray.com doesn't offer a way to search for movies with audio and/or subtitles in Portuguese.

I suggest you go to http://www.cinemasquid.com/
Their search engine is powerful and you can search any title that has Portuguese audio and/or subtitles. They also have links to buy the BD from Amazon.

--
Gilson Soares