The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[professorwho]

From the compressionist of the disc:

It’s not really restored, that much is true. I don’t think it really gets progressively worse tho, and none of his/her problems are actually encode related.

Source

[professorwho]

Answerman
What Is DNR/DVNR, And Why Do People Hate It?

Source

Interesting read. (Obviously it was aimed for those not in the know)

[Rozay]

If I wanted to get into the, for lack of a better term, ---gatari shows (starting with Bakemonogatari) are the UK blu-rays decent compared to Aniplex's?

Would like to watch Bakemonogatari and the two UK volumes will be a tad lighter on the wallet than the Aniplex release.

[Jeo]

Decent enough, especially for the price. They use Hanabee's masters from the Australian release.

I've only seen comparisons of Bakemonogatari, and there's slightly more banding on the UK/AU release, IIRC.

If you're not a massive videophile, and are okay with just paying a much cheaper price for barebones Amaray releases of the show, the UK ones will do you fine.

[Rozay]

Originally Posted by Jeo

Decent enough, especially for the price. They use Hanabee's masters from the Australian release.

I've only seen comparisons of Bakemonogatari, and there's slightly more banding on the UK/AU release, IIRC.

If you're not a massive videophile, and are okay with just paying a much cheaper price for barebones Amaray releases of the show, the UK ones will do you fine.

Interesting, thanks. May just do that.

Usually I'd go for the best release, but that Aniplex price tag is rough for a blind buy. And apparently the streaming version on Crunchryoll / Amazon prime is poorly translated compared to the BD's

[Ccharmanderk]

Originally Posted by professorwho

Answerman
What Is DNR/DVNR, And Why Do People Hate It?

Source

Interesting read. (Obviously it was aimed for those not in the know)

Reminds me of this one guy in another thread that kept swearing up and down that Shout Factory's remaster of The Transformers: The Movie employed DVNR (specifically in reference to the automated system typically associated with that term), when both the special features and the disc's producer made it clear that automated processes weren't used in the restoration effort. You can accuse the TFTM Blu-ray of plenty of issues (imperfect encoding and incorrect gamma levels, sure), but automated noise reduction is not among them.

[Naiera]

Originally Posted by Rozay

If I wanted to get into the, for lack of a better term, ---gatari shows (starting with Bakemonogatari) are the UK blu-rays decent compared to Aniplex's?

Monogatari series

Yes, the UK releases are decent, where the Aniplex of America releases are about as good as it gets on Blu-ray.

[professorwho]

I agree. The UK Monogatari releases are of quality. While not as good as the AoA/JP releases, I'd say it's worth getting the UK ones for the price alone. Saves quite a lot of money. If the AoA/JP ones are a 10/10, then the UK ones are an 8.

[Naiera]

7.

[professorwho]

Okay. But the point is, they're good. Much better than an average FUNi release.

[Rozay]

Thanks for the info. I’ll start with the UK releases.

[gwfb5]

I just got the Mongrel Media edition, AKA the Canadian release, of The Boy and The Beast in the mail today.

[Show spoiler]First off, there are zero extras. Though to be fair, the standard US BD only had a handful of trailers so no big loss.
For some reason, there's no scene selection. The menu just lets you either play the movie or switch between audio and subtitle options.

Audio:
Japanese: DTS-HD MA 5.1
English: DTS-HD MA 5.1
French: DTS-HD MA 5.1

Subtitles:
English and French subtitles. (no dubtitles or closed captioning)
EDIT: The Google Play copy it came with is in English and has closed captioned dubtitles.

Also, the aspect ratio is 1.85:1 instead of 1.78:1 like the Funimation Blu-ray.

If anyone else owns it, I'd be curious to know how it's PQ stacks up to the US Funimation release. (which I do not own)

[dannphou]

Just out of curiousity, is there like a list of mediainfos for like all Anime BluRays? Or would it be better to just name the ones I want and then someone will try to get that info?

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by dannphou

Just out of curiousity, is there like a list of mediainfos for like all Anime BluRays? Or would it be better to just name the ones I want and then someone will try to get that info?

Not that I know of. It's probably easier to name the titles.

[Yuripa]

A centralised post would be really usefull.
But the time required to make such a post with all the informations, not just ce Mediainfo, would be Insane

[professorwho]

I'm sure as you all know now, but Madman in Australia is releasing Re:Zero Part I in April, and on their forums, they said they were using a new master. I PM'd them on Twitter and they said the following:

We are using new masters that have improvements on the original US release.

So yes, it's a different encode. I'd take an average encode with some minor (emphasis on minor) banding over FUNi's garbage.

[Yuripa]

Originally Posted by professorwho

I'm sure as you all know now, but Madman in Australia is releasing Re:Zero Part I in April, and on their forums, they said they were using a new master. I PM'd them on Twitter and they said the following:



So yes, it's a different encode. I'd take an average encode with some minor (emphasis on minor) banding over FUNi's garbage.

I hope they are not lying like the french branch of @anime Ltd who also said back then that their master was not the same than the US one and was better.
The reality was...
It was worse than the Failmation release.

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by Yuripa

The reality was...
It was worse than the Failmation release.

I saw. Lower bitrate and the brightness/gamma was boosted. My eyes almost started to bleed from the true horror.

[Naiera]

Has anyone else seen Sentai's Angelic Layer? I don't remember seeing much, if any, talk about it.

I watched the first two episodes, and it seems to be a very good upscale. Soft, but "solid" looking. Great colours.

[Ccharmanderk]

Originally Posted by Naiera

Has anyone else seen Sentai's Angelic Layer? I don't remember seeing much, if any, talk about it.

I watched the first two episodes, and it seems to be a very good upscale. Soft, but "solid" looking. Great colours.

I bought the DVD version for almost nothing during Rightstuf's big DVD sale last year and tbh I regret having done that because everything I've seen from the Blu-ray upscale is an enormous improvement on the DVD. Comparing the DVD to the Blu-ray review screencaps on the site, the Blu-ray has far less severe banding than the DVD, and there are very prominent compression artifacts around red objects (yknow, like the outfit on Hikaru, the protagonist's Angel) that are absent on the Blu-ray. Even HIDIVE's stream, based on the Blu-ray, is noticeably better.

Side note, this year is the manga's 20th anniversary.