Shaw Brothers Celestial Film Library

[LifelongLearner]

Anyone know what the status is on the Shaw Bros. Celestial Film library being made available for DVD Region 1? I've tried researching it, and I keep finding old info dating back to '02 making it sound like these movies would be released very soon. Here we are, well into '05 and still no DVD Region 1 Shaw Bros. flicks. The most recent news I've heard is that Miramax was going to release these movies at some point. Anyone out there know more?

For those of you who might not know what I'm talking about, a while back Celestial, an overseas film distributor bought up most if not all of the Shaw Bros. film library. They remastered all of them and re-released them. The quality is greatly improved over VHS and bootlegs. Most of those DVD's from Crash Cinema or the myriad of others that bought the rights to a lot of the old classic kung fu flix (and a lot of really terrible ones, too) that go for cheap at your local video place are of VHS or worse quality. Waste of money, avoid them like the plague.

Anyway, I'm asking because I've almost broken down and bought a region free DVD player, just so I can get all those great old flicks in region 3. However, if Miramax or someone else out there is really going to release them in region 1 anytime reasonably soon, then I can wait. Unless of course, they butcher them like they did with Hero......

[MasterKiller]

I've been waiting for the same thing.

I usually just burn the Region 3 discs and crack the software region code so I can watch them. Region Free players tend to have poor picture quality unless you buy an expensive one.

[Shaolinlueb]

not philips dvp642. you can make it region free very easily. and it plays divx and all these other avi files. :D and its like 70 dollars at amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000204SWE/102-2940007-4525739?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance

[MasterKiller]

Wal-Mart sells that model for like $50. I looked at it, but it looks cheaply made and the remote was pretty crappy.

I love Sony electronics. My TV, Stereo, Satellite Receiver, VCR and DVD player all function with one remote. You can make a Sony DVD player region free by using one of those pre-programmed remotes, but it's kind of a hassel. It's much easier for me just to burn them on a new DVD and break the encryption.

[Shaolinlueb]

Wal-Mart sells that model for like $50. I looked at it, but it looks cheaply made and the remote was pretty crappy.

I love Sony electronics. My TV, Stereo, Satellite Receiver, VCR and DVD player all function with one remote. You can make a Sony DVD player region free by using one of those pre-programmed remotes, but it's kind of a hassel. It's much easier for me just to burn them on a new DVD and break the encryption.



nah the player is pretty nice. i have had it for a year or so. i ugraded the firmware and now it plays even more stuff. :D. you have to enter a code once on the remote to get it to be region free, but its hot man. i would get it.

[CLFNole]

If you go to yesasia.com you can get a good multi-region player for not to much money. I have been getting the Region 3 DVDs for a few years now and have my collection up to about 50 movies. There are a lot of movies that I have never seen before that were not part of the black belt theater stuff I grew up with.

We have a karaoke dvd player so my wife could get stuff from Hong Kong. The picture quality is very good and I only have it hook up with S-video. It would be even better with component but I use that for my regular dvd and my HDTV set top box.

Make the investment because I have heard recently that Celestials sales have not been as good as they would have liked. With that in mind I don't see them putting on a full court press for Region 1.

Also I have been able to hack all of my DVD players in my home with the exception of my Sony Dream System so that is another option.

[TangLangCh'uan]

sorry to break it to you, but there's no plans as far as i've heard for those to be released in region 1. my advice....cave in and buy a region free player. get one from hkflix.com....they'll ship it to you in about 2 days, and you won't regret it....my JVC player is absolutely wonderful, and i have no compaints about it at all. the celestial releases of the shaw brothers films are worth buying a region free player alone, nevermind the numerous other movies that are only available in foreign countries, or the movies that you can get before anyone in the states just because they have already been in and out of the theatres someplace else.
almost half of my rather large collection are DVD's that are not region 1.

-christopher

BTW.....buy a player that is not only region free, but one that also does correct NTSC to PAL / PAL to NTSC conversion. that comes in handy when watching european releases of films.

[GeneChing]

I wonder how you translate Dirty Ho into Hebrew...

2007-10-08
Celestial Scores Slovenian, Israeli Deals on Martial-Arts Films (http://www.imartial.com/index.aspx)

HONG KONG, October 8: Celestial Pictures has expanded the reach of its Shaw Brothers martial-arts films into Slovenia and Israel, scoring deals with Viasat Broadcasting and SAT-Interactive.

The Viasat deal marks the first time Celestial’s Shaw Brothers martial arts films will be available on TV3 Slovenia. Under the agreement, Viasat has taken a package of kung-fu classics, among them The Five Deadly Venoms, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin and One-Armed Swordsman.

The SAT deal brings Shaw Brothers features to the Hot Cable Channel and VOD platforms in Israeli.

The Shaw Brothers library consists of 760 films produced from the 1950s to the 1990s. Since 2002, Celestial Pictures has been making these remastered versions available to audiences around the world.

Those titles, in HD, will be available at MIPCOM this week, alongside The King Boxer mobisodes, which were nominated for this market’s MIPCOM 2007 Mobile & Internet TV Awards.

Mobisodes, video messaging, video clips, ring tones, wallpaper and games will be a focus at MIPCOM. As will be the mobile TV channel Kung Fu TV, which features short-form segments of kung-fu film clips from the Shaw Brothers slate.

[jethro]

I heard Media Blasters will be releasing 20 movies, so there will be more R1 Shaws. I heard about it a while ago and they all sound good. Chinese Super Ninjas is on the list. A lot of times Media Blasters doesn't follow through with their plans so I have my fingers crossed.