My Letter to Blu-ray Disc Assocation

[Caligula]

Blu-ray Disc Association,

I knew Blu-ray was superior from day one when I was first introduced to Blu-ray. My Blu movie experience was enhanced with High Definition and subtitles that I rely on. Yes, I am a Deaf Blu-ray adopter and require using English SDH subtitle to have my Beyond High Definition Experience. I cannot hear anything with DTS-HD Master, Dolby Digital, etc.

My first impression was that all Blu ray discs have subtitles as I was told. That was why I buy Blu-ray because of that features and superior picture quality. Now more studios are joining the Blu ray wagon and “the beyond high definition experience” slogan is tainted now. Lions gate does not provide subtitle for Deaf and hearing impaired (SDH).. Not only Lionsgate lacks doing so, now low budget studios are Blu, and there are no subtitles at all. Echo Bridge Entertainment comes to mind with their low budget movies. There are no subtitles accessible to people who need it, this is disappointing and unacceptable.

I often hear that BDA has to license studios before they are able to release movies on Blu-ray. I was wondering why BDA didn’t enforce all studios to provide English subtitles preferably SDH, to enhance their Blu experience. You should disqualify/revoke studios license if they did not met mandatory spec such as subtitles or any “Beyond High Defintion experience” that BDA loves to use that slogan. Low budget studios will ruin that experience by not providing English subtitles and it happened with DVD. DVD’s are tainted with bad accessibility for disabled people. I would hate to see them do the same with Blu-ray. Blu ray is about superiority and ultimate experience? No?



It is disappointing when Blu-ray has high Definition experience in audio such as

True HD
DTS-HD Master
DTS-HR (High Resolution)
Dolby Digital
Dolby Digital PLI
Dolby Digital PL II

Dolby Digital ES
Dolby Digital +
Uncompressed Linear PCM
Linear PCM

And Deaf and hearing impaired people only have few accessible options (a few certain studios do not provide fully)

Lionsgate: (thumbs down)

English and Spanish (NO SDH)

Fox:

English SDH, English, French, Spanish, Chinese and Korean


Disney: (thumbs up)

English SDH, French, Spanish

DreamWorks: (thumbs up)

English SDH, English, French, Spanish

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer: (thumbs up)

English SDH, English, French

New Line Cinema: (thumbs up)

English SDH, Spanish

Paramount: (thumbs up)

English SDH, French, Spanish

Sony: (thumbs up)

English SDH, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Thai

Universal: (thumbs up)

English, Portuguese, Japanese, Traditional Chinese, Korean, Thai, Indonesian, Malay

Warner Bros: (thumbs up)

English SDH, English, French, Spanish

Weinstein:

Unknown

Echo Bridge Entertainment: (thumbs down)

NONE (except for Beer League, English subtitle)

Blue Underground:

Unknown

Thank you for your time and please help your Blu fellows,

Jeffrey

MODS DO NOT CHANGE OR MERGE THIS THREAD!

[Marine Mike]

I assume you are posting this for critques?

I recommend you list the studios in a more compact format such as:

Studios that Support It:
Blah Blah

Sudios that Don't Support It:
Blah Blah

[blujacket]

Good luck, but you may want to edit your letter. It's Lionsgate not Lions gate.

[The Lion King]

How will you send this to them? I need to know, so I can send whoever plasters the BDs with logos some hate mail.

[Caligula]

Originally Posted by blujacket

Good luck, but you may want to edit your letter. It's Lionsgate not Lions gate.

Done

Originally Posted by The Lion King

How will you send this to them? I need to know, so I can send whoever plasters the BDs with logos some hate mail.

Good question, can anyone provide contact info?

[MyBlu-rayBrotherEd]

Good Luck man. I hope they listen. You might want to fire off a letter to each of the offending studios as well....squeeky wheel and all.

[Caligula]

does my letter get to the point? please share feedback

Originally Posted by ed4246

Good Luck man. I hope they listen. You might want to fire off a letter to each of the offending studios as well....squeeky wheel and all.

my goal and will write them too

[un4gvn94538]

i dont think the bda is going to force studios to put what you want on blus. i believe its up to the individual studios. like the audio, they will use what that want to use. you would have to write the individual studios. i think that would be more effective.
edit: as far as the high def exp being tainted, the experience is audio and video. subtitles are neither. so i dont see how its tainted.

[MyBlu-rayBrotherEd]

Good Letter. Just my advice, change "It's not fair that...." to something like "It seems descriminatory (sp?)". Might pack bit more of a punch.

[ThePhantomOak]

Your contact information

June 4, 2008



Mr. Victor Matsuda
Vice Chair of the Blu-ray Disc Association
C/O Blu-ray Disk Association
(Address)


Dear Mr. Victor Matsuda:

Subject: Blu-ray English subtitles for the Deaf Community.

I am a Deaf Blu-ray movie enthusiast. Because I am unable to hear the sound quality, subtitle quality is very important to me. The Blu-ray Disc Association must require all licensed studios to include English subtitles with new releases.

I am disappointed to find that not all Blu-ray movies enable or have English subtitles. This prevents me from enjoying Blu-ray and limits the movies I can buy. There are some studios that do not provide English subtitles on any title, including Lionsgate and Bridge Entertainment. This is unacceptable.

There are approximately 6.6 million Deaf Americans who can only enjoy a movie through the use of subtitles. The benefit to the Blu-ray Disc Association is that we normally wait for movies to be released for home use. Not providing this small feature will hinder the adoption use of Blu-ray.

Not having English subtitles is a very important feature for people like me. Attached is a list of non subtitle supported Blu-ray titles (or studios). I am in the market for a new Blu-ray player and therefore would like a response within 14 days of receipt of this letter by mail at (Address). (It is ok to tell a little fib to give them a time table to respond. If you leave this out, you may never get anything back)



Sincerely,



Jeffrey (Last Name also)

Attachment
*********Page break***********

(then put the list of non-subtitled movies on a second page titled "attachment")








Like I said before, NEVER use obvious flattery ANYWHERE in the letter. It will almost always get thrown away as a fan letter. That means no congratulations or anything. Also, do not EVER assume that anything they do is because they are trying to discriminate. this is your problem not theirs. Never put an attack like that in a letter. This is the format for Business letters from outside the business. It is formal, and FAR more likely to be read. Good luck.


Man, this is like 8 edits. Make sure you keep the letter in this exact format. Wording can change, but this is formal and gives them a time to respond, who to respond too and the attachment is key. DO NOT CHANGE the format. it looks strange if you are not used to it, but it is business format and is much less likely to be ignored.

This is a serious issue, so i want you to have the best information on formality possible. Again, Good luck.

[CptGreedle]

Try to make it look as professional as possible. Try to avoid calling studios "low budget" if they will be reading the letter as well.
I suggest you reformat it a little, the spacing seems off with the audio and studio lists.

Good luck with it. I know a number of people who could benefit from this and I hope adding a standard for the subtitles for the hearing impaired will help boost the format among he deaf community. The image looks amazing and it would be a shame if they only get half the movie.

[ThePhantomOak]

Whoa, sorry. The BoD is made up of seperate companies.

* Apple Inc.
* Dell Inc.
* Hewlett-Packard Company
* Hitachi, Ltd.
* LG Electronics
* Mitsubishi Electric
* Panasonic (Matsushita Electric)
* Pioneer Corporation
* Royal Philips Electronics
* Samsung Electronics
* Sharp Corporation
* Sony Corporation
* Sun Microsystems
* TDK Corporation
* Thomson SA
* Twentieth Century Fox
* Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group / Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment
* Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.

Above are the 18 members of the board of Directors.
You really should write a letter to the Entertainment president or president of each of those. They have the real power.

[cnowels]

Good for you man! As a hearing-impaired BD lover, I am 100% behind you! Let me know if you ever "hear" of a petition that gets started or something.

[mad_vl]

Keep it up. Send those letters to every company. I'm from Australia, If they did listen to you, they better put those SDH Subtitles to our region too.

There was so many DVD I wanted to buy like the Rambo trilogy and guess what!!! They did have subtitles but in danish!!! Not English, how stupid is this, Australia is english spoken country but yet put danish subtitles! I hope won't happen again on BLU-RAY.

It hard to understand, I've watched rambo on tv with subtitles (free to air channel), and none on DVD, why can't they borrow the text from tv subtitle centre, it isn't that hard to put in DVD and they don't rack up Disc size, they just take up like 0.1% of the size or less!!

What I wish to see on BLU-RAY besides SDH on every movie. Is I want to see all subtitle english or SDH on every extras! As I enjoy seeing how the movie was made etc. Less then 5% do have them but again most of them don't have english, but are in like french or else!


Hope your letters do hit them. Make it a rule, every movie must have subtitles, if not cope a fine.
Anto

[My_Two_Cents]

Did the poor guy get banned for this? I don't see anything in recent posts that would warrant a banning...

[Agent Bond]

If you were tell your thoughts to the Foundation For The Hearing Impaired of America (or whatever the name of that major organization is) about this problem, I'm sure they would be able to get the attention of the Blu-Ray Disc Association to getting this problem solved.

[1988jrb]

Originally Posted by Caligula

Blu-ray Disc Association,

I knew Blu-ray was superior from day one when I was first introduced to Blu-ray. My Blu movie experience was enhanced with High Definition and subtitles that I rely on. Yes, I am a Deaf Blu-ray adopter and require using English SDH subtitle to have my Beyond High Definition Experience. I cannot hear anything with DTS-HD Master, Dolby Digital, etc.

My first impression was that all Blu ray discs have subtitles as I was told. That was why I buy Blu-ray because of that features and superior picture quality. Now more studios are joining the Blu ray wagon and “the beyond high definition experience” slogan is tainted now. Lions gate does not provide subtitle for Deaf and hearing impaired (SDH).. Not only Lionsgate lacks doing so, now low budget studios are Blu, and there are no subtitles at all. Echo Bridge Entertainment comes to mind with their low budget movies. There are no subtitles accessible to people who need it, this is disappointing and unacceptable.

I often hear that BDA has to license studios before they are able to release movies on Blu-ray. I was wondering why BDA didn’t enforce all studios to provide English subtitles preferably SDH, to enhance their Blu experience. You should disqualify/revoke studios license if they did not met mandatory spec such as subtitles or any “Beyond High Defintion experience” that BDA loves to use that slogan. Low budget studios will ruin that experience by not providing English subtitles and it happened with DVD. DVD’s are tainted with bad accessibility for disabled people. I would hate to see them do the same with Blu-ray. Blu ray is about superiority and ultimate experience? No?



It is disappointing when Blu-ray has high Definition experience in audio such as

True HD
DTS-HD Master
DTS-HR (High Resolution)
Dolby Digital
Dolby Digital PLI
Dolby Digital PL II

Dolby Digital ES
Dolby Digital +
Uncompressed Linear PCM
Linear PCM

And Deaf and hearing impaired people only have few accessible options (a few certain studios do not provide fully)

Lionsgate: (thumbs down)

English and Spanish (NO SDH)

Fox:

English SDH, English, French, Spanish, Chinese and Korean


Disney: (thumbs up)

English SDH, French, Spanish

DreamWorks: (thumbs up)

English SDH, English, French, Spanish

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer: (thumbs up)

English SDH, English, French

New Line Cinema: (thumbs up)

English SDH, Spanish

Paramount: (thumbs up)

English SDH, French, Spanish

Sony: (thumbs up)

English SDH, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Thai

Universal: (thumbs up)

English, Portuguese, Japanese, Traditional Chinese, Korean, Thai, Indonesian, Malay

Warner Bros: (thumbs up)

English SDH, English, French, Spanish

Weinstein:

Unknown

Echo Bridge Entertainment: (thumbs down)

NONE (except for Beer League, English subtitle)

Blue Underground:

Unknown

Thank you for your time and please help your Blu fellows,

Jeffrey

MODS DO NOT CHANGE OR MERGE THIS THREAD!

Also Starz / Anchor Bay is thumbs down too

[Banjo]

Originally Posted by 1988jrb

Also Starz / Anchor Bay is thumbs down too

Now that you speak of Anchor Bay, I did e-mail them several times regarding several DVD and Blu-ray titles that had the SDH symbol on the packaging yet didn't exist anywhere on the discs. They only responded once and that was to ask what the UPC of a particular DVD title was.

I responded to that one and they never got back to me. They were obviously avoiding me. I better start bugging them again.

[toddly6666]

I assumed that reading lips is easier with 1080p video - so why need subs?

[CRMA]

Originally Posted by toddly6666

I assumed that reading lips is easier with 1080p video - so why need subs?

thats awesome