The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by kk1

Are there no film buffs in Japan decrying this? Don't understand why anyone is still using Q-tec

Their Seven Samurai remaster was in 2009- 10 years ago. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re still used for live action work.

I’ve never heard anything bad about Q-Tec from places like Amazon reviews, but I’ve never found a forum like this in Japanese, so I can’t really say for sure.

[Dailyan]

Back with more Lupin caps this time for Nostradamus

http://imgbox.com/g/6K1EfJwBtH

One of the better transfers for the Lupin films (even with the occasional soft shots). Taking screenshots of those "Tiny Toon"-esque shots makes me want a "Tiny Toons" Blu more than ever.

[Logan Jones]

How does the Initial D Memorial Blu-ray Collection look? The three volumes were released in Japan in February.

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by Logan Jones

How does the Initial D Memorial Blu-ray Collection look? The three volumes were released in Japan in February.

Upscaled from the SD source.

[Logan Jones]

Originally Posted by professorwho

Upscaled from the SD source.

Well... shoot.

It's these kinds of releases that fascinate me the most. Hows it look?

[Zhou]

Originally Posted by Logan Jones

Well... shoot.

It's these kinds of releases that fascinate me the most. Hows it look?

Hi, I'm a Fandom Post veteran posting here for the first time.

I own all 3 Initial D BD-boxes, and the remastering quality of each series/movie/OVA varies.

First Stage is the one that looks the worst. Even though its non-racing scenes were done in traditional cel animation, the whole show was upscaled from composite video masters, and they turned up the DNR and sharpening filters so much that the video looks like a smeary mess.

Second Stage was done in SD digital animation, so upscaling was the only way to go, and it doesn't look that bad to my eyes. Honestly, I'm just glad to own a version of this season with unmolested ending credits on episode 13, which Tokyopop and Funimation found different ways to mangle. The Extra Stage and Battle Stage upscales have just about the same quality as this.

Third Stage was a pleasant surprise, because they actually did a new HD telecine from the original film. There's some chroma leakage and the picture looks softer than I'd like, but it's still the best the movie's ever looked by far.

Fourth Stage is a disappointment, because it turns out the show is natively letterboxed, which means it was actually rendered in 360p if you discount the black horizontal bars. The HD remaster is anamorphic, but it doesn't look any better than if you pop in the DVD and zoom in on the 16x9 frame. Never thought this show would look worse than Second Stage in HD, even though it had a higher budget and much better CG. The same goes for Battle Stage 2 and Extra Stage 2: Tabidachi no Green, which were made by the same staff.

And finally, Fifth Stage an Final Stage are the best-looking of the bunch, simply because they were natively rendered in high definition. The video is 1080i because the openings feature some CG effects done at a higher frame rate than 24 fps, but the encode is still great.

[Logan Jones]

Originally Posted by Zhou

Hi, I'm a Fandom Post veteran posting here for the first time.

I own all 3 Initial D BD-boxes, and the remastering quality of each series/movie/OVA varies.

First Stage is the one that looks the worst. Even though its non-racing scenes were done in traditional cel animation, the whole show was upscaled from composite video masters, and they turned up the DNR and sharpening filters so much that the video looks like a smeary mess.

Second Stage was done in SD digital animation, so upscaling was the only way to go, and it doesn't look that bad to my eyes. Honestly, I'm just glad to own a version of this season with unmolested ending credits on episode 13, which Tokyopop and Funimation found different ways to mangle. The Extra Stage and Battle Stage upscales have just about the same quality as this.

Third Stage was a pleasant surprise, because they actually did a new HD telecine from the original film. There's some chroma leakage and the picture looks softer than I'd like, but it's still the best the movie's ever looked by far.

Fourth Stage is a disappointment, because it turns out the show is natively letterboxed, which means it was actually rendered in 360p if you discount the black horizontal bars. The HD remaster is anamorphic, but it doesn't look any better that if you pop in the DVD and zoom in on the 16x9 frame. Never thought this show would look worse than Second Stage in HD, even though it had a higher budget and much better CG. The same goes for Battle Stage 2 and Extra Stage 2: Tabidachi no Green, which were made by the same staff.

And finally, Fifth Stage an Final Stage are the best-looking of the bunch, simply because they were natively rendered in high definition. The video is 1080i because the openings feature some CG effects done at a higher frame rate than 24 fps, but the encode is still great.

Wow! Thank you so much for the info! I'm gonna be on here more often.

By the way, how do the new Tetsujin-28 2004 SD-BDs look? I've read that they're standard-def 480p, but since they're encoded with MPEG-4 I was wondering how much better they look over the DVDs. Does anyone have a screenshot comparison?

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by Logan Jones

By the way, how do the new Tetsujin-28 2004 SD-BDs look? I've read that they're standard-def 480p, but since they're encoded with MPEG-4 I was wondering how much better they look over the DVDs. Does anyone have a screenshot comparison?

Discotek was given the JP Upscale and it was really bad, so Justin (Sevakis- the compressionist for their Blu-rays) re-encoded the Geneon DVDs, or something like that. In this case, because the source was poor, I'd expect it to be similar if not identical. This is just the exception to the rule- pretty much every other SDBD is better than their DVD counterpart.

[Logan Jones]

Originally Posted by professorwho

Discotek was given the JP Upscale and it was really bad, so Justin (Sevakis- the compressionist for their Blu-rays) re-encoded the Geneon DVDs, or something like that. In this case, because the source was poor, I'd expect it to be similar if not identical. This is just the exception to the rule- pretty much every other SDBD is better than their DVD counterpart.

Wow, the upscale looked that bad, huh? I'm assuming it was a permanent upscale, as Discotek must have not received the original SD masters?

[slerch666]

Originally Posted by Naiera

It’s probably a bit more fair if you compare MSRP or at least the usual going rate instead of superduperamazeballs deals.

MSRP vs MSRP isn't fair but when you will never get the AoA release cheaper, not fair to always compare the MSRP either IMO.

So instead of 8x... it's more like 6x

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by Zhou

I own all 3 Initial D BD-boxes, and the remastering quality of each series/movie/OVA varies.

Take a guess who did the "remaster" of Initial D?

Q-Tec. Because of course they would.

[Gouki]

Originally Posted by professorwho

Hmm... maybe I should get a Plasma TV if I can find one at a good price (along with the PVM I'm dreaming about getting)...

It pains me to say (I love my old plasma) but the market is moving away from (in my opinion) the best type of televisions. Not due to quality, performance, longevity, etc. But because of cost. LCD, LED and OLED are way cheaper to manufactur, which in turn makes them cheaper for consumers. If you can find an old Pioneer Elite Kuro, that or a Panasonic VT30 or VT65, those would be your best bets. My friend in TV sales says Sony makes the best panels, which lead me to buy my Z9D. (There is now a Z9F with a better chip, but I paid 1/3 retail for my Z9D.)

[FeelsBDMan]

Don't OLEDs render a lot of plasma's advantages moot? Brightness and contrast were traditionally some advantages you could hold onto over LEDs even though they were bulkier and less energy efficient to my knowledge but OLED offers both.

The only disadvantage I can see of OLED at the present time is PWM dimming (not sure if it applies to TVs but definitely to monitors/phone screens) which can cause headaches and their still relatively high prices.

[Gouki]

The problem with OLEDs for me is that they can't handle motion very well. (Isn't that the whole point of, y'know, moving pictures?) My watermark for this is whatever nonsense the manufacturer has applied for "Motion". My Sony has "Motionflow" which thankfully you can minimize or just plain turn off. It has to do with the choppiness of moving images, and a lot of companies fix for this is smoothing it to the point where it looks like people's faces are melting and the whole picture is in focus. (Foreground and background both in focus, barf.) Another consideration for me is input lag, which a lot of TVs remedy this with a "Game" mode or similar.

In my particular case, I wanted:

Best possible picture (lol)
3D (Stop laughing!)
Reasonable input lag (I love eating kicks to the face because it's not registering my block/parry, and having to buffer combos just to get them to work.)
Handling motion without heinous software tricks and gimmicks
Dolby Vision (After the Great Firmware Debacle)
Ability to turn off (most) of the bloatware/apps/games/etc. I want a TV to do one thing, display moving pictures. These things are basically computers now, and it took forever from turning on to being able to change inputs. (Like 2 minutes, no joke.)

I see most companies going the OLED route due to cost/energy/etc., but I'm very happy with one of the last 3D LCD/LED dinosaurs with very respectable picture quality, and being from 2016, just snuck in the Dolby Vision door. (Then again Dolby Vision is kinda weird to me, like everything is sort of dark compared to vanilla HDR10.)

I still want a Kuro, and I'm keeping my Sony KD-34XBR960, one of the last CRT for pixel perfect gaming. (Thing weighs 200lbs though.)

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by Gouki

I still want a Kuro, and I'm keeping my Sony KD-34XBR960, one of the last CRT for pixel perfect gaming. (Thing weighs 200lbs though.)

That Sony is nice, but it’s no PVM or BVM, that’s for sure.

[Gouki]

Oh, yeah totally forgot to mention image retention. On my Panasonic VT30, I could still see the status/radar/ammo UI from Destiny and Borderlands 2. Even with weekly image retention screen swipes for an hour and the pixel orbiter on full time, sadly, still an issue.

Thankfully my Sony has no image retention to speak of, and I have something like 120 hours of Division 2 on it.

[slerch666]

Originally Posted by Gouki

OLED stuff

I have the 2017 LG OLED. It's supposedly rated at 21 ms input lag.

I play modern console games through an AVR with both set to game mode. I play fighting games (DBFZ, Guilty Gear, BlazBlue, Killer Instinct (yes, stop lauging I do have an XB1 and a XB1 fight stick)). I have zero issues. There is no more lag than the previous upper low end / lower middle end LCD I had. I believe it was rated 18 or 20 ms input lag.

I also play retro consoles using an OSSC on this TV. I recognize no discernible input lag.

As far as motion, 4K UHD BDs look amazing on it. BD HD content looks amazing.

I have turned off all the BS motion blurring/sharpening/etc.

Given the price, OLED probably isn't in the cards for most people. But if a person can afford it, for me, I would say it is worth the extra expense given the deep, deep, blacks and amazing overall PQ.

But that's me.


Image retention is an issue. Bright whites leave a bit of an after image that clears up very, very quickly.

As for burn in, no modern OLED from LG or Sony will have that issue. You would have to leave an image up for, if I recall correctly, several weeks to cause a problem. No one does that for games or TV viewing.

[professorwho]

OSSC is dope, but a PVM... I mean, those scanlines... beautiful.

My PS4 is on my 1080p TV upstairs as a console to play games and watch BDs. My XB1S is downstairs on my 4K set (an LCD 55” Sharp I got on sale at Best Buy on Black Friday) mainly to stream and watch BDs (and play some games- mostly backwards compatible 360 games).

Not sure how the input lag is on my TV, but having tested with a few games, it’s not too bad.

The problem with my 4K TV is the settings. I cannot find a proper set to use for SDR. I’ve got fine HDR settings, but SDR is a mess. What works with colour looks terrible with a black and white film. The whole 4K Standard is a mess. A beautiful but confusing mess.

[slerch666]

Originally Posted by professorwho

OSSC is dope, but a PVM... I mean, those scanlines... beautiful.

I don't care much about scanlines personally. Tweaking the OSSC when I think I want them can make for some pretty dang good results. Usually I don't care though.

The only system I need them on, I have them on. I have a Big Red Neo Geo arcade cab in my basement.

[kevers7290]

I do most of my Blu-ray viewing/retro gaming on my plasma, which is a later model Samsung (right before they discontinued them). It's not high end, but I still prefer it to my 4K LED TV which I use only for UHD Blu-rays and 4K gaming. I don't have an OSSC, but retro games look great on it in 720p through my Framemeister with scanlines.

Gouki, I used to have an XBR960, but it bit the dust about two years ago. Many tears were shed that day--it was hands down the best display I have ever owned. Problem was finding someone to service it (good luck).