Why are imports sometimes not OAR?

[Sussudio]

Especially with the Alliance titles, I noticed that some imports aren't OAR. Was just curious if there was a specific reason(s) behind this. Why are they sometimes stretched out? Why not just do it OAR to begin with?

[SDon1969]

Hey, Suss, I'm no expert but when I asked the same question before (I was irritated when I found out I bought two cropped titles, Outlander & Blade) I was told something about Alliance taking cropped images from a HD TV broadcast.

[benricci]

Originally Posted by Sussudio

Especially with the Alliance titles, I noticed that some imports aren't OAR. Was just curious if there was a specific reason(s) behind this. Why are they sometimes stretched out? Why not just do it OAR to begin with?

Most likely they were provided broadcast TV masters from the studio they're licensing from.

[neo_reloaded]

Originally Posted by Sussudio

Especially with the Alliance titles, I noticed that some imports aren't OAR. Was just curious if there was a specific reason(s) behind this. Why are they sometimes stretched out? Why not just do it OAR to begin with?

Well in Alliance's case, they don't own any of these movies and presumably don't do any actual transfer work themselves. They get licenses to distribute certain movies, and usually get the resources straight from the company that actually owns the films. Most of Alliance's titles are direct ports of the US discs, just with their logo slapped on (Kill Bills, The Mist, CSI, etc.). For some titles, Alliance purchased the distribution rights, but then the American company that owns the film changed their own release plans - so suddenly there is no US disc to copy, and Alliance needs to find their own resources if they want to use the distribution deal they paid for. In those cases, it seems Alliance unfortunately isn't too picky as to what transfers they put out, some of them rumored to be HDTV broadcast encodes and the like. That is how some of the non-OAR titles get out there.

Besides Alliance, there aren't many non-OAR releasing companies. Momentum messed up Equilibrium in the UK, but their reason was similar to Alliance's - they said that was the best transfer they could get a hold of.

[UFAlien]

It kinda reminds me of the time Animeigo released a Samurai Assassin DVD sourced from an old Betamax tape.

[Sussudio]

thanks for the replies guys...the answers make sense

i was thinking some were picked up from the HD broadcasts.