What happened to that independent distributor momentum?

[Brayden96]

What happened to that independent distributor momentum?

Just a year or two ago there was a lot of momentum for indi distributors in Australia.

Now, Umbrella still does stuff but Random Space Media has become a let down doing just a few new 3D releases from Universal Sony while Shock who inherited Beyond's legendary catalogue appears gone.

[13school]

Shock's momentum fizzled out years ago. I think losing the WWE titles to Madman really took the wind out of them

[adamclark83]

Shock's quality of work went out the window ages ago.

[LMFAObros]

Shock has been average since 2018.

[hypnotoad8128]

Shock has never been good. They just coasted along with average releases that featured no effort off the shelf transfers and still do.

Imprint are a couple of steps above, but apart from fancy packaging and some middling original extras they don't go over and above when it comes to transfers, just existing stuff they can get their hands on and charge a premium because they try to release titles that are world firsts, but they generally get superseded by better transfers from distributors that spend that extra money. Kino tend to trump Imprint every time.

Random space hasn't really done anything spectacular apart from the odd interesting releases because they saw a weird niche.

[adamclark83]

Originally Posted by hypnotoad8128

Shock has never been good. They just coasted along with average releases that featured no effort off the shelf transfers and still do.

Imprint are a couple of steps above, but apart from fancy packaging and some middling original extras they don't go over and above when it comes to transfers, just existing stuff they can get their hands on and charge a premium because they try to release titles that are world firsts, but they generally get superseded by better transfers from distributors that spend that extra money. Kino tend to trump Imprint every time.

Random space hasn't really done anything spectacular apart from the odd interesting releases because they saw a weird niche.

Yep. Shock's work on The Bill releases was abysmal. Even worse, when i spoke to them on the phone, they had a "Uh, who cares?" attitude.

I rang up to correct them on an issue and they said "Don't think we're going to believe you on something you read off Wikipedia."

The issue in question was they put a character on the cover of a series when they didn't show up until 2 years later. When I asked them why, they said "Because of their relevance to that series."

[Brayden96]

I never said Shock was good. I know a lot of their releases have been bad. Just saying they used to release stuff but now they don't. They acquired Beyond's catalogue and it sucks to see it go no where now.

Random Space Media did release some things like Golden Child on Blu-ray and some nice collections but now just 3D releases.

[adamclark83]

Makes you wonder why they bothered with taking on Beyond's titles.