pittrek wrote:
I can't agree, the financial reason makes no sense to me. They start with a PAL source. They convert the PAL source to NTSC. Meaning that both PAL and NTSC versions do exist, They don't really have to do another NTSC->PAL conversion.
They are probably doing the post-production ("remastering") work on the NTSC conversion, and that's the problem. A problem which could be easily solved by changing the workflow (with exactly the same costs - unless they're working with some non-standard proprietary software which works only with NTSC). And of course the factories manufacturing the discs would of course want more money but that's a different thing...
Why spend the extra money to make a PAL version when they can just as easily watch the NTSC version too ? Well, because the NTSC version looks like shit (I am talking about the movement, especially on the Rainbow March footage and the Tokyo footage).
As far as I am aware, QPL do the work in PAL and supply Universal with that. They then do the NTSC conversion and author the disc.
One conversion, one disc author, one vision (as it were!).
Believe me, until I got my new TV a couple of years ago, I was the biggest opposer of Universal's NTSC transfers - the Wembley DVD looked bloody awful and I had a discussion with Brian about it whose ultimate answer was that he'd pass the info onto Kris.
I still am opposed to PAL being converted to NTSC, but these SD Blurays are causing me no problems at all. The DVDs are a different matter.