They’re already watching Volume 4 over in Japan on standard DVDs, but North America is about to get the next episode of Freedom on September 25.
Just like the last one, Freedom Volume 2 is a short episode and includes some HD DVD internet extras. The Freedom series is famous for being advertisements for noodles, but they have been well received and even won CLIO awards. Freedom Volume 1 was the first anime disc released on HD DVD in North America, and there are more anime titles coming over in the months ahead.
Also due in September is the highly-acclaimed, Royal Space Force – The Wings of Honneamise. Unlike Freedom, Wings of Honneamise is a full two-hour movie, and probably a more satisfying movie experience for those who really aren’t into anime. Over three years in the making, Wings of Honneamise was the most expensive Japanese animated film production ever when it originally came out in 1987.
(click here if you don’t see the video above)
Both of these movies are available for pre-order at Amazon.com (you can find them quickly in our “Shop for Movies” link).
Patlabor should also be headed out to our shores by the end of the year, but there’s no pre-ordering available just yet. Like Freedom, there are two Patlabor HD DVDs in the works, and North American HD DVD fans will just have to be patient for more news about release dates.
August 18th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Hey,
Just wanted to say that this is a great blog. Perhaps you guys could put up a forum so all us HD DVD-heads have somewhere all to ourselves to discuss.
Keep up the good work.
By the way, wasn’t Freedom Vol. 1 also the first combo HD DVD disc that only used one side?
P.S. You guys need to optimize for Firefox, my firefox browser wouldn’t let me put in my name.
August 19th, 2007 at 8:06 am
Thanks for the compliments! A forum has been our wish-list from the start. It would be great to give everyone an opportunity to share their own thoughts and bring up their own topics, and ask questions. As soon as comments at this site number at least a few dozen per week, we’ll start getting more serious about starting that forum. Until then, there are already some good places that “HD DVD-heads” can hang out such as AVS Forum and High-Def Digest which set a pretty good benchmark for what we’d want to offer from a forum at HDDVD.com.
You are right about Freedom 1. It had two North American HD DVD firsts: first anime released in North America, and first triple-layer disc where all of the HD and standard DVD content are on one side.
Aargh! on those browser compatibility issues. I’ve never entered a comment via Firefox at the site, but I’m doing so with this one and I’ll have to see if the same problem comes up for me.