Korgscrew
Group: Super Admins
Posts: 3511
Joined: Dec. 1999 |
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Posted: May 02 2004, 18:08 |
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Well, the printing is quite cheaply done (this all applies to The Wind Chimes as well), both the covers and the on-disc printing. They are however both properly printed (I assume offset in the case of the cover, screen printing on the disc), so it's not a home DIY job! The DVDs are pressed rather than burnt, so again, seemingly the product of a quite large operation.
The video on both is NTSC. I would hazard a guess at saying they've come from LaserDisc. The source for The Essential is certainly a Japanese edition, as it has Japanese subtitles on the interview sections! Video quality is OK - watchable, though lacking in contrast, and a little fuzzy, as anything from an analogue video source would be (having not seen the master tapes, I couldn't say how much these DVDs vary from it). Sound on The Essential is mildly distorted in a few places, but mostly ok, sound on The Wind Chimes is fine. The menus are quite low quality, especially on The Wind Chimes, which looks particularly tacky.
Neither has any licensing information (one might it expect to see "Produced under license from Virgin Video" or something like that) or any copyright notice at the beginning of the video, though The Essential has a notice saying '© Les film des vierges' at the end (vierges...virgins...a joke?).
Both have barcodes which appear genuine (as in, they appear to reflect the numbers printed below them, which refer partly to the catalogue number of the DVD). The company they appear to have come from, SilverVision, doesn't seem to have any meaningful presence (well, there's one company which produces wrestling videos and another which produces CD ROMs and similar interactive material, neither of which is the company which has issued these DVDs). It would have to be an organisation with reasonable resources to be able to get the DVDs listed by JPC of course - it's not always terribly easy to get a store of that size to accept products for sale (though being from Mike Oldfield would help somewhat).
It's not out of the question that a small company has been successful in licensing the material and just produced the things as cheaply as possible, as a quick moneyspinner...but really, however it's looked at, things don't quite add up. I've been meaning to contact JPC myself, though other fans' experiences don't sound too encouraging. It's all very strange...
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Well worth the searching, I should say... 
