The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[Mangaranga]

Originally Posted by BigOnAnime

I don't know how the SteelBook compares to the 2017 release, but the 2017 release should also have smaller subs. It was sometime around 2014 when Sentai finally stopped making their subs hilariously huge. Also, should be noted that the translation should have been tweaked a bit since the original Blu-rays, no idea if that happened as well on the 2017 release or not. If you're going to buy Clannad on Blu-ray, you're probably fine with either the 2017 release or SteelBook, just avoid the original Blu-rays as they were early Blu-ray releases for Sentai, and authored by David Williams, who authored most of Sentai's most problematic releases.

I got hold of episode 1 from the 2017(?) version last year and the main differences I noticed were correct gamma, much better compression (the original discs fall apart simply when the title card is on screen in the OP), newly rendered subtitles and typesetting changes. What I will note though is that like their other releases it’s encoded from the exact same masters as the original discs - which looks to be HDCAM (1440x1080) due to the grey bars on the sides of the screen.

[BigOnAnime]

Originally Posted by SpazeBlue

What extras did the series have? I know it had the 4 OVAs and the textless credits, but was there anything else? It would seem odd to move the OVAs, seeing how they were basically extra episodes at the end of each season.

To now answer this (didn't feel like pulling the discs out earlier), clean OP/ED, and trailers, the OVAs are where they should be. The reviewer should have noticed something was different when you compare the last screenshot in the Clannad review and the Clannad After Story review, the menus look different (just to note, the same person worked on both releases, all Clannad BD/DVD releases were designed by Larry Koteff). Heck, there is no longer serious compression issues in the menus (DLW authored discs often had noticeable compression in the menus). Then there's the copyright, trailers for shows and releases that weren't out when the original Clannad Blu-rays came out...
https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/scree...08&position=20
https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/scree...13&position=20
Here's pics of the menus on the first, fourth, and last disc, all signs point to new discs.

[SpazeBlue]

I found these.

2011:

[Show spoiler]

Clannad Season 1 Blu ray - YouTube

2017:

[Show spoiler]

Clannad: The Complete Collection Blu-ray Walkthrough - YouTube

[Show spoiler]

Opening & Walkthrough to Clannad 2017 Blu-ray - YouTube

2017 and 2020 seem to be identical, aside from the Disc Credits and swapped trailers.

[BigOnAnime]

The Sentai logo on the 2020 release is this horribly boring thing. Since June 2020 when they dropped "Filmworks" from their logo, it's the same thing, but just says "Sentai". Also, the 2020 release has "Collector's Edition" below the Clannad logo.

Sentai Filmworks (2019) - YouTube

The Disc Credits thing is of course not on the 2017 release. Sentai had a disc credits extra on all their releases up until very late 2014, and it wouldn't return until November 2018 when they also moved all the back cover credits to those, which I hate. It doesn't have to be an either-or, you can put stuff like packaging design, production manager, production coordinator, etc. on both the back cover and the discs themselves. Honestly, I wish the way Sentai's back covers would work is list the executive producers, ADR director(s), ADR script writer(s), the translators (ADV used to do this back in the VHS days), and the graphic designer (keep it as "Packaging & Menu Design", don't be like ADV who was horribly, horribly inconsistent on their graphic designer credit wording as they had like 10 different terms used).

[NLScavenger]

Cyborg 009: The Cyborg Soldier - Discotek Media US SDBD vs R2J NTSC DVD vs R4/R2 PAL DVD

This makes a very convincing case for MPEG-4 AVC SDBD when no high quality materials are available.

US SDBD - episode #01


R2J NTSC DVD - episode #01


R4/R2 PAL DVD - episode #01


As for second half with composite mastering problems: some steps were taken to address the dot crawl and smeary colors. For example: you can't tell from the screenshot, but this scene from episode 31 on the R2J DVD has very noticeable dot crawl artifacts on the upper half of the compass that are almost completely unnoticeable in motion on the SDBD.

BD left / R2J right


At the same time, the filtering can introduce "noise" artifacts around edges:


But I'd say the good outweigh the bad overall





US BD bitrate episode #1 - MPEG-4 AVC 480i 29.97fps

AVG: 4223 kbps / MAX: 34478 kbps

R2J NTSC DVD bitrate episode #1 - MPEG-2 480i 29.97fps

AVG: 8978 kbps / MAX: 9557 kbps

R4/R2 PAL DVD bitrate episode #1 - MPEG-2 576i 25fps

AVG: 4287 kbps / MAX: 8922 kbps

BDInfo

DISC INFO:

Disc Title:     Cyborg 009: The Cyborg Soldier
Disc Label:     CYBORG 009
Disc Size:      48,844,459,082 bytes
Protection:     AACS
BDInfo:         0.7.5.5

PLAYLIST REPORT:

Name:                   00000.MPLS
Length:                 20:32:38.918 (h:m:s.ms)
Size:                   48,318,468,864 bytes
Total Bitrate:          5.23 Mbps

VIDEO:

Codec                   Bitrate             Description     
-----                   -------             -----------     
MPEG-4 AVC Video        4000 kbps           480i / 29.970 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1

AUDIO:

Codec                           Language        Bitrate         Description     
-----                           --------        -------         -----------     
Dolby Digital Audio             English         448 kbps        5.1 / 48 kHz /   448 kbps / DN -31dB
Dolby Digital Audio             Japanese        448 kbps        5.1 / 48 kHz /   448 kbps / DN -27dB

SUBTITLES:

Codec                           Language        Bitrate         Description     
-----                           --------        -------         -----------     
Presentation Graphics           English         10.658 kbps                     
Presentation Graphics           English         1.310 kbps

[Marshall2000_uk]

Been quite interested to know about SD on BD so thanks for the info. Be interesting to see what other releases are like.

[cicada88]

Anyone want to weigh in on the SD on Blu Genocyber?

The review I read said it was pretty lackluster, but I was wondering how it stacks up against the best DVD available? I could be misremembering but I think this one never came out on DVD in Japan.

[SpazeBlue]

Got around to making this thread. Added the recently discussed Clannad and a few others I remembered seeing. Please feel free to comment any others so I can add it to the list.

[BigOnAnime]

You're going to have to deal with a lot for ADV and Sentai stuff because of how often they'd make new discs and the changes to the credits (ADV stuff wouldn't have the main credit rolls change except for anything that was released under the Essential Anime Collection, only the disc credits would be different). Like note how much is different across 3 different releases of UFO Ultramaiden Valkyrie (Singles, Thinpaks (I don't have the S1 one, still searching for one with the info sheet), Complete Set).
https://imgur.com/a/3mtLaLn

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

Cyborg 009: The Cyborg Soldier - Discotek Media US SDBD vs R2J NTSC DVD vs R4/R2 PAL DVD

When viewing on a PS3, set "BD / DVD - Cinema Conversion" to 'Video'. 'Automatic' mode has a bit of trouble with deinterlacing this disc.

[Gary B.]

Anybody watch the Discotek blu-ray of New Getter Robo yet? I never saw the DVDs and this is my first time watching the series, but I am only a minute into this and it is nearly unwatchable due to a "pan & scan" motion effect and some motion blurring (is this upscaled from a DVD master?). Maybe this was how it always looked? 13 episodes on one disc. I may have to sell this one...

[MrSniper1401]

Anyone get or planning to get the new complete collection for Attack on Titan season 3? Wanted to see if an error in episode 12 got fixed. In the original release for Part 1 there is a minor error where funimation forgot to take out the Kanji subtitles for one scene even when choosing the english audio. I put in a support ticket for it when it first came out and their response to me was basically that they were aware of the issue and that it might get fixed in a future release.

[Rosenkreutz]

Does anyone by chance know if the Australian BD release of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is region locked or not?

[professorwho]

I am 99.98% confident it is Region B locked.

[jsevakis]

Originally Posted by Gary B.

Anybody watch the Discotek blu-ray of New Getter Robo yet? I never saw the DVDs and this is my first time watching the series, but I am only a minute into this and it is nearly unwatchable due to a "pan & scan" motion effect and some motion blurring (is this upscaled from a DVD master?). Maybe this was how it always looked? 13 episodes on one disc. I may have to sell this one...

Not sure what you mean by “Pan & scan motion effect.” The show is animated at 30 FPS, including pans. It is an upscale, because it was an early digipaint show. Sorry it’s not to your liking, but that’s what the show is and always has been.

[Rosenkreutz]

I noticed something very bizarre the other night, has anyone ever noticed that some of the older box sets by Central Park Media are apparently region free? I noticed that my copy of Slayers Next had "ALL" listed as its region despite my copies of the first and third seasons being region "1."

My first thought was that my copy of Next must be a bootleg, but looking further into it I could find no evidence of a release of this particular set which didn't feature "ALL" on the back. I ended up having to ask a relative about it since I'm pretty sure that they got their copies through an official retailer decades ago and sure enough their copy of Next also said "ALL." I soon discovered that this wasn't even the only case of one of their products having "ALL" as their region listing. Other examples I found were "Record of Lodoss Wars," "Record of Lodoss Wars: Chronicles of the Heroic Knight," "Maze" (the Megaburst Space,) and the first release of Slayers season 1.

In regards to that last one, there were two Software Sculpture releases for the first season of Slayers, the artwork on the front was the same, but the boxes were different colors (the first one was tan, the second one was orange,) had different art on their spines (first one had Sylphiel, the second had Lina) and the second release had a blurb about there being "remastered audio" on the front.

Something else weird that I never really noticed before was that the reflective sides of the discs for all of their Slayers releases as well as Maze (there's likely others as well, but these were the only ones that I've confirmed so far) are a sort of golden brownish color instead of the silvery color that you see on any normal DVD. Now I'm curious about what kind of discs these series were put on, I'll have to take a look at the disc data at some point to see if they're on DVD-Rs or something since that's certainly not the color of your standard DVD.

[Naiera]

No one cares about DVD, though

And really, this isn’t a topic for this thread.

[BoscoTheMan82]

Golden brownish color on DVD is bronzing, a form of disc rot, those discs are dying

[Rosenkreutz]

Originally Posted by BoscoTheMan82

Golden brownish color on DVD is bronzing, a form of disc rot, those discs are dying

Yikes, I recently did read about that and I was worried that might be the case, I'll have to take a look at mine and make sure they aren't suffering the same fate as my aforementioned relative's copies, though they don't exactly take the best care of their stuff so hopefully its just a result of that and not the discs themselves being of poor quality. At least this explains why I didn't remember them looking like that before though. Regardless, worst case scenario I could just settle for the Funimation release, but their release of the first season is so much darker than it's supposed to be for some reason, it's really distracting, that and it has their typical cruddy disc packaging.

[Rosenkreutz]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

Cyborg 009: The Cyborg Soldier - Discotek Media US SDBD vs R2J NTSC DVD vs R4/R2 PAL DVD

It's good to hear that there may be some genuine pros to SDBD over DVDs outside of them just being more compact and less prone to scratches. This makes me feel a little bit more confident about the idea of switching out my DVD copy of A.D. Police: To Protect and Serve for the SDBD one. I remember a while back a Nozomi representative told me their version was better, but never gave any specifics. Granted, it's not like it's even really a favorite or mine or anything, but it's still tenuously related to Bubblegum Crisis.