[EVA] Amateurism vs Professionalism in Anime Distribution

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

While I understand the list may have an aversion to discussing the topic 
of piracy, I feel that some recent experiences of mine might merit 
discussion. This concerns Evangelion, but also anime distribution in the 
west in general. Hopefully, this discussion will not be too offtopic.

Recently, a hard disc with someones "stash" of films and TV shows became 
available to me. Prowling around their collection I spotted a "rip" of 
"The End of Evangelion", and frankly I was shocked by the level of 
quality that I saw.

We are all aware of the extremely poor quality of the Manga release of 
End of Evangelion. The Renewal release, while superior, was released 
only in Japan and contains, to my knowladge, no English subtitles or 
dubbing. Apparently a group called Zhentarim some years ago decided to 
rectify this. This group has taken the Renewal footage and Japanese 
dialogue, and painstakingly re-edited the manga DVD English subtitles 
and dialogue so that it fits alongside the redone footage! The result is 
a release which in quality and scope is over and above any officially 
distributed English offering of the End of Evangelion that I'm aware of.

The list of changes is show in full here(There are no download links at 
the site, which appears to be defunct)
http://www.zhentarim.net/zx/shownfo.php?nfo=zx.end.of.evangelion.renewal.v3.nfo
This is just some guy from the internet..... Particularly pertinent are 
his comments on the Manga subtitle crew in his summary.

Apparently the same group has also gone through the same process of 
reediting Renewal footage for the entire series as well. Coming from the 
region 2 DVD release region, I have to say that the revelation that 
unpaid amateurs have released such high quality conversions of Renewal 
comes as a slap in the face. At some expense, I have purchased the 
official region 2 releases of the series, which turned out to have a 
less than stellar quality. Here's and old thread discussing my woes with 
the official release (with pictures)
http://forum.evageeks.org/viewtopic.php?t=795
The biggest problem was telecining which at some considerable effort I 
eventually managed to filter down to an acceptable level. I've also 
encountered this very same problem with other movie releases, such as 
the Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children DVD, which I can definitely 
confirm was of a lower quality than the rips I have seen of it.

I have to say that it is a black mark on the entire anime distribution 
industry in the west when unpaid amateurs working in their own time on 
the internet can, consistently, release higher quality conversions of 
Japanese animes for free. Is there anyone at the tiller of this 
industry? I've spent over 200 euros purchasing the whole series of 
Evangelion and I could have gotten a much better product, and saved 
myself considerable money, time and effort, simply by grabbing a torrent 
made by technically minded fans who have probably never seen the inside 
of studio!

I apologise if this rant breaches mailing list etiquette, but I'm 
genuinely interested in people's opinions on this. What are your 
opinions on the anime distribution industry in the west? Is it in need 
of a serious overhaul, or is it in danger of becoming obsolete 
altogether? How have things managed to get to this point? Is this a 
market failure, or some other systemic problem? Will there ever be hope 
for fast, high quality, official anime releases from Japan to the West?