Village Roadshow Rant

[LMFAObros]

I remember people were ranting about how our disc of Hacksaw Rige had inferior audio and lack of extras but roadshow are so much worse. They dropped digital copy/uv support. Considering theyve got the rights to Warner and Lionsgates catalogs plus their own they should have released more blurays here such as From dusk till dawn, Magnolia, Singin in the rai, eternal sunshine and etc. Im also pissed off that they downgrade audio tracks from 24bit 5.1, 7.1 and atmos to 16bit 5.1 such as Hitmans Bodyguard and Expendables 3. Also the use of 1080i and inferior transfers for some releases like Muriels Wedding, the next 3 days and cop land(bad transfer) and lack of extras on some titles like Defiance, Green room etc.

Overall roadshow should be trying harder if they want to stay alive in this tough market

[Alister_M]

A lot of the time I suspect it's Lionsgate that's forcing them to release inferior downgraded product. Note that pretty much all of their Warners releases are direct ports of the US disc.

[shireguy]

Originally Posted by LMFAObros

Overall roadshow should be trying harder if they want to stay alive in this tough market

why bother ??

they'll have no competition soon...

and with the GST being added to imports - AND NOW an extra $5 charge for the Border Farce to screen your Blu package..

.. there's no incentive for Roadshow or anyone else to provide 'quality'.

[donthitpause]

Originally Posted by LMFAObros

Overall roadshow should be trying harder if they want to stay alive in this tough market

Overall, consumers simply need to send a message by not buying their worthless inventory in the first place.

Man, it's got to be the best time ever to go region free and import quality (and often more affordable) product from those damned Yankees. Not to mention a much better selection of product.

[LMFAObros]

Originally Posted by donthitpause

Overall, consumers simply need to send a message by not buying their worthless inventory in the first place.

Man, it's got to be the best time ever to go region free and import quality (and often more affordable) product from those damned Yankees. Not to mention a much better selection of product.

I just loathe importing and if it was a perfect world i could just go down to the shops and buy a good release of a movie rather than just getting something sent from amazon with their ripoff shipping costs. id rather just go on a holiday and grab stuff from the states

[Alister_M]

Originally Posted by LMFAObros

I just loathe importing and if it was a perfect world i could just go down to the shops and buy a good release of a movie rather than just getting something sent from amazon with their ripoff shipping costs. id rather just go on a holiday and grab stuff from the states

Ebay is a bit better sometimes. Not always, but the shipping costs are generally not quite as absurd.

[fistymusic]

Originally Posted by donthitpause

Overall, consumers simply need to send a message by not buying their worthless inventory in the first place.

Man, it's got to be the best time ever to go region free and import quality (and often more affordable) product from those damned Yankees. Not to mention a much better selection of product.

I agree. I don't care about the 10% gst & $5.00 extra cost. In most cases it will still be cheaper to import from overseas. Just don't buy 1 or 2 at a time, the more together reduces the overrall shipping cost. The American releases are generally better than the crap that Roadshow, and Icon insult us with. If it's in Atmos or DTS X, then at least you get it. There are still titles not being released in UHD 4K here also. I normally NEVER buy anything from here. Let's show them with our wallets.

[paulisdead]

Originally Posted by donthitpause

Overall, consumers simply need to send a message by not buying their worthless inventory in the first place.

Man, it's got to be the best time ever to go region free and import quality (and often more affordable) product from those damned Yankees. Not to mention a much better selection of product.

I agree, but over 20 years into the digital disc game and they still haven't gotten the message. And when we go and buy the overseas product for little things like features or better transfers - rather than compete, they guilt us by ramming "Support Aussie Film" ads down our throats.

Well, I do support Aussie labels. Ones like Madman and Umbrella that continually release quality product. Roadshow will have to do better than jingoistic whining to get my money.

[adamclark83]

I haven't been buying anything released by Roadshow for quite some time now, after this so-called "THE leading distributor in Australia" completely treated my favourite show like crap. Now, I buy all my WB releases from either America or the UK.

Also, with what shireguy said, they don't like competition; the reason why WB merged with them. Well, if this country doesn't like competition, they might as well pull out of every single sporting event.

[paulisdead]

Roadshow are the WORST label in Australia. One of our biggest film companies and our laziest when it comes to DVD/BluRay releases. Always have been since the early days of DVD. And don't get me started on how badly they've handled the release of Mad Max.

[Alister_M]

Originally Posted by paulisdead

Roadshow are the WORST label in Australia. One of our biggest film companies and our laziest when it comes to DVD/BluRay releases. Always have been since the early days of DVD. And don't get me started on how badly they've handled the release of Mad Max.

Nah, Accent is by far the worst. I'm pretty sure literally every BD they've released is 1080i/50hz, and most with lossy audio and no extras.

Vendetta isn't much better either, at least their stuff is mostly 1080p though. But they've made some real shockers like the theatrical cut of The Girl Who Played With Fire (although Roadshow topped that with those awful releases of the extended cuts of all three Millennium flicks which were riddled with clusters of incredibly awful frame-dropping due to being converted from 1080i masters).

nb: Pinnacle is also pretty awful, and they have an incredibly irritating love for cropping 2.35:1 films to 1.78:1.

[paulisdead]

Originally Posted by Alister_M

Nah, Accent is by far the worst.

Accent, Payless Entertainment and even the old Force Video labels are/we’re garbage labels, but at least had the excuse of being bottom of the barrel labels. No budgets titles released with no budget.

Roadshow is the largest film company in the Southen Hemisphere and is a major player as a production company in Hollywood - they have no excuse for lacklustre releases.

[donthitpause]

Originally Posted by paulisdead

Roadshow are the WORST label in Australia.

You clearly have no Shock, Cinema Cult or Accent titles in your collection, brother.

Hell, I'll go on record publicly and state categorically that Accent are absolutely the worst distributors in the business, hands down.

I'd take Mill Creek DVDs over shitty upscaled Accent blu-rays any damn day of the week!

*spits*

[Anamnesis]

Originally Posted by donthitpause

You clearly have no Shock, Cinema Cult or Accent titles in your collection, brother.

Hell, I'll go on record publicly and state categorically that Accent are absolutely the worst distributors in the business, hands down.

I'd take Mill Creek DVDs over shitty upscaled Accent blu-rays any damn day of the week!

*spits*

Amen

[paulisdead]

Originally Posted by donthitpause

You clearly have no Shock, Cinema Cult or Accent titles in your collection, brother.

Hell, I'll go on record publicly and state categorically that Accent are absolutely the worst distributors in the business, hands down.

I'd take Mill Creek DVDs over shitty upscaled Accent blu-rays any damn day of the week!

*spits*

Fair point. Shock/Cinema Cult are getting better though (it's taken them long enough). And those Cinema Cult covers are pretty crappy.

[lateralspin]

One of the reasons that I have had to rebuy the same thing (import)

[Alister_M]

Yeah they're definitely the most inconsistent of the major ones. Especially with their neglect of so many essential catalog releases in favour of DTV garbage, as well as aforementioned technical flubs.

[Somerset]

I emailed Roadshow weeks before the release of Den of Thieves and asked if the local release would carry the Directors Cut, like the US version. They said they didn't know. I asked them a week before it came out, and they still didn't know??!! They have no idea of their own product or what is going to be on it. Hilarious.

[Anamnesis]

Originally Posted by Somerset

I emailed Roadshow weeks before the release of Den of Thieves and asked if the local release would carry the Directors Cut, like the US version. They said they didn't know. I asked them a week before it came out, and they still didn't know??!! They have no idea of their own product or what is going to be on it. Hilarious.

That is not surprising as the people you are e-mailing are probably just pr folks who have no say or access to the production of products. This is not a unique issue to Roadshow.

Madman can't even confirm the languages on Ronja the Robbers Daughter and that is on shelves!!!

[adamclark83]

I have had some rather unpleasant situations with Roadshow, especially in regards to them releasing Power Rangers and their poor to average quality work. For example:

ME: Why did you get the rights to Power Rangers rather than any other distributor?
ASST MAN: Why? Because we're THE leading distributor in the country.

ASST MAN: This show is our LEAST priority.

ME: You haven't finished releasing Mighty Morphin Season 2 yet.
ASST MAN: Yeah, so what?

Does anyone remember when they sent that "To Our Customers: If You're Not Happy, We're Not Happy" note to JB stores, pretending like they actually care about we think? Yet when I spoke to their assistant manager about the poor way they were treating my favourite show, she said:

"That's your opinion, but like it or not, WE'VE got the rights."

I wrote a very detailed complaint letter to the company's CEO Mr Kirby to try to let him know how his Home Entertainment division's conduct and he didn't even read it, instead they just forwarded it to the Entertainment division.

When I mentioned this to a staff member at my local MP's office, she said Roadshow's attitude was perfectly justified as to her, presentation means nothing and it's perfectly OK to treat a low-priority job like it's a little ant.

And also, it's perfectly alright to breach consumer law when dealing with DVD and Blu-rays. This relates to the DVD releases of DC shows released 2 years ago where the cover stated PAL but the discs were formatted in NTSC. Because to the MP, presentation means nothing to her.

All this is now why I no longer buy from Roadshow and I highly suggest people do the same. I now buy all of my Doctor Who, Red Dwarf and WB titles from overseas, particularly the UK.