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Urusei Yatsura DVD Replacement PR


[AE-NEWS] UY DVDs are shipping again! Yeah!

The UY DVDs are shipping again. Here's a copy of the letter that we included with them, to update people. We will start shipping replacement discs to those of you who got bad discs (and told us about them!) on Tuesday.

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Dear Valued (and Patient!) UY DVD Customer

Enclosed, please find our newly pressed Urusei Yatsura TV Box Set (Vols. 1 - 5), plus an extra copy of Disc 2, which comes from a separate pressing.

As you may have heard, we experienced some peculiar manufacturing problems which affected playability of the UY disks for some people.

It should be noted that hundreds of customers, and one seriously demanding individual, namely myself, are already enjoying their DVD set without one single glitch. However, because the Urusei Yatsura DVD Sets are limited edition items, we felt compelled to investigate and correct any potential problems and make sure that all the sets we shipped were as perfect as humanly possible.

During an intensive investigation into this matter, we discovered the following:

* a portion of the components used to make the disks were defective.
* the molding equipment occasionally malfunctioned during manufacturing.
* the quality control system was malfunctioning intermittently, causing defective disks to leave the pressing plant. Human errors also contributed to the problem.

In other words, what happened was a classic demonstration of Murphy's Law - "Whatever can go wrong, will." We then had the entire set remanufactured, eliminating almost all the manufacturing problems. But even after that, many of the disc 2's we received contained some slight substrate defects in many of the newly pressed disks, which required yet another pressing of those discs! That's why you are receiving a second disc 2. The one inside the box set should be discarded and replaced by the extra one that comes in the white cardboard sleeve. We've also included an extra packaging insert that replaces the one currently in the disc 3 case, to correct a spelling error that managed to get past our legion of proof-readers.

No AnimEigo DVD product gets released until we have extensively tested production samples on many DVD players. We revised our DVD masters a number of times before duplication to ensure compatibility with popular DVD players. While it is impossible for any DVD producer to guarantee full-compatibility with all DVD players (early generation machines in particular have some "quirks"), we are confident that our disks will play error-free on almost all players. If you have any problems with your DVD set, please contact us and we'll try to help you resolve them.

In closing, we are extremely thankful for your patience and support during this unexpected situation. We have learned many important lessons from this experience, and hope that future AnimEigo DVD releases will be less "exciting".

Sincerely Yours,

Shin Kurokawa
Producer, AnimEigo, Inc.
shin@animeigo.com

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Troubleshooting Tips

We expect that the vast majority of you will have no problems with your DVD set. But if you do have some problems, these tips may help solve the problem -- and if they don't, having done them will help us help you zero in on the problem and get things working.

Disks must be clean. Dust, fingerprints, dirt, scratches... all can be detrimental to not only the disk but also the player's pickup mechanism. Remember that the 'pits' on a DVD are much tinier than those on Compact Disks. There are many consumer products that are used to clean DVDs, but a few drops of water and a soft paper towel should also work well.

Try another player. There have been many, many players produced in the last few years whose firmware does not implement the DVD specs correctly, and DVDs that push the limit of the medium (as we do with our subtitles) can have problems running on them.

Computer DVD drives with software emulators are the worst offenders. We do not recommend using such players with our DVDs. We also do not recommend using the Apex, discontinued DIVX, and "chipped" players.

A number of player manufacturers have released firmware updates. Also, the pick-up mechanism of a DVD player is extremely sensitive, so the players should be maintained according to the manufacturer's recommendations.

Because there are so many variables, the most basic test you can do to determine if the problem is a player problem or a disc problem is to simply test the disc in a different brand of player. The easiest way to do this test is to visit your local electronics store and ask them to pop the disc in and test it on a decent DVD player (such as a Sony).

If the problem is repeatable on another player of a different brand, then it's almost certainly a random manufacturing defect in the disc itself. If it isn't repeatable, then it's almost certainly a player problem.

In either case, contact us at dvdsupport@animeigo.com and we'll try and help out, either by sending you a new disc, or trying to find a workaround for the problem.

--

Robert Woodhead, CEO, AnimEigo


The preceding was an excerpt from the AnimEigo News mailing list.

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