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Another
important issue:
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| Availability of certain products | |
| Some products can be found only on YesAsia.com or CD Japan (though 'Overseas' versions of CDs and DVDs can only be ordered from YesAsia.com). For example, the product available only on these two sites is the album "Rainbow" in DVD-Audio format. | |
| A note on DVD-audio discs, if you have not heard one before | |
| The difference between normal audio CD
and a DVD-audio one is: Normally you have two speakers - left and right,
DVD system has five, plus a sub-woofer. Normal CD played in the DVD player
will of course sound better than, say, in a typical car audio system -
but the sound is still split only 'two ways' - left and right. DVD-audio
utilises all five speakers, so the sound is split 'five-ways' (plus the
sub-woofer, of course) and the results are: (a) Greatly improved sound quality, which is reflected in the price, and (b) Additional data security - it is quite hard to 'rip' the songs from a DVD disc and size of files is MUCH bigger, making illegal file swapping more difficult. |
| DVD-audio discs are not region coded and should play anywhere. I did not have any problems with 'RAINBOW', 'CAROLS' and 'MY STORY' DVD audio discs, and it was particularly nice to discover that one does not need an 'all region' DVD player to watch all the video clips from 'MY STORY' with 5.1 channel audio. |
| DVD-audio is a must for every music lover: if you haven't discovered the amazing difference in sound quality - a big surprise is waiting for you... |
| Important: Please note that the
only DVD audio disc that has ALL songs in 5.1 channel audio is 'MY STORY'.
Single 'CAROLS' and album 'RAINBOW' in DVD audio have only one (main)
song in 5.1, the remainder is in normal 2 channel audio. Also, there have
been some problems reported with discs that are not 'entirely' 5.1 channel
audio (like 'CAROLS' and 'RAINBOW'). Some DVD players get 'confused' and
simply do not see either the 5.1 channel part or the 2 channel part. More information is provided on the discography page describing DVD audio version of the album 'RAINBOW'. |
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Store
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Internet site screen
capture
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Price
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$33
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$34
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| Pre-order |
| YesAsia.com and CD Japan are also the only sites that allow you to pre-order upcoming releases - meaning that they will be shipped to you on the very same day they are released in music stores. A pre-order page is similar to the normal one - only instead of "add to cart" button there is usually a "pre-order" one. Below is the example of the pre-order pages for the single 'INSPIRE': |
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Online store
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Internet site screen
capture - July 2004
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Price
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$20
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$17
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