With Sentai Filmworks dropping DVD releases this year for the majority of their properties and other distributors looking to slice them away as they can as well, Discotek Media is looking to deal with the standard definition side in a way that definitely makes sense. It’s actually a touch complicated as it’s different for different releases, but for those series that are not in high definition, putting them on Blu-ray offers a lot of advantages in more space, less discs required (and less authoring checks), better subtitled quality, and better authoring tools as the DVD side has largely been stable/stagnant for many, many years. When you can put a 52-episode series on a single Blu-ray in standard definition and have it look better than it would on several DVD releases? It seems like a no-brainer – if labeled property.
They also throw just a touch of confusion into it by saying, “if the title has HD masters, then there might be a more expensive HD Blu Ray set, and a lower priced SDBD set. No DVD sets will be created.”
That said, we’re definitely hopeful that they do move in this direction but there will be some expected pushback from those that have not upgraded to Blu-ray even after ten years of being on the market – something we still saw at a similar stage of DVD to VHS until the VHS simply weren’t produced anymore.
