The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[KaizerChef]

Texhnolyze - Nipponart [DE]

This is the only BD of this show in the world as far as I know, so I assume the upscale was done in-house by Nipponart. It looks about what you would expect a 2003 digitally animated show to look I guess. It is proper 1080i, combing artifacts and all. Some color banding is present as well. Japanese audio is LPCM.

Episode #1 screenshots:



Episode #1 media info:

General
Unique ID                      : 120077937801317261223598116000275916293 (0x5A562B6B6055F8236FB50148A1286605)
Format                         : Matroska
Format version                 : Version 4 / Version 2
File size                      : 3.74 GiB
Duration                       : 23 min 15 s
Overall bit rate mode          : Variable
Overall bit rate               : 23.0 Mb/s
Encoded date                   : UTC 2021-01-24 15:40:18
Writing application            : mkvmerge v52.0.0 ('Secret For The Mad') 64-bit
Writing library                : libebml v1.4.1 + libmatroska v1.6.2

Video
ID                             : 1
ID in the original source medi : 4113 (0x1011)
Format                         : AVC
Format/Info                    : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                 : High@L4.1
Format settings                : CABAC / 4 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC         : Yes
Format settings, Reference fra : 4 frames
Codec ID                       : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration                       : 23 min 15 s
Bit rate mode                  : Variable
Bit rate                       : 21.5 Mb/s
Maximum bit rate               : 32.0 Mb/s
Width                          : 1 920 pixels
Height                         : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio           : 16:9
Frame rate mode                : Variable
Frame rate                     : 59.940 (59940/1000) FPS
Original frame rate            : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS
Standard                       : NTSC
Color space                    : YUV
Chroma subsampling             : 4:2:0
Bit depth                      : 8 bits
Scan type                      : Interlaced
Scan type, store method        : Separated fields
Scan order                     : Top Field First
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)             : 0.173
Stream size                    : 3.49 GiB (93%)
Language                       : English
Default                        : No
Forced                         : No
Color range                    : Limited
Color primaries                : BT.709
Transfer characteristics       : BT.709
Matrix coefficients            : BT.709
Original source medium         : Blu-ray

Audio
ID                             : 2
ID in the original source medi : 4353 (0x1101)
Format                         : PCM
Format settings                : Little / Signed
Codec ID                       : A_PCM/INT/LIT
Duration                       : 23 min 15 s
Bit rate mode                  : Constant
Bit rate                       : 1 536 kb/s
Channel(s)                     : 2 channels
Sampling rate                  : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                     : 30.000 FPS (1600 SPF)
Bit depth                      : 16 bits
Stream size                    : 256 MiB (7%)
Title                          : Stereo
Language                       : Japanese
Default                        : Yes
Forced                         : No
Original source medium         : Blu-ray

Text
ID                             : 3
ID in the original source medi : 4608 (0x1200)
Format                         : PGS
Muxing mode                    : zlib
Codec ID                       : S_HDMV/PGS
Codec ID/Info                  : Picture based subtitle format used on BDs/HD-DVDs
Duration                       : 8 min 30 s
Bit rate                       : 7 249 b/s
Count of elements              : 34
Stream size                    : 451 KiB (0%)
Language                       : German
Default                        : No
Forced                         : No
Original source medium         : Blu-ray

Menu
00:00:00.000                   : en:Chapter 01
00:01:20.313                   : en:Chapter 02
00:10:59.025                   : en:Chapter 03
00:23:00.679                   : en:Chapter 04

Episode #1 bitrate:

[Logan Jones]

Only BD in the world, you say? It looks pretty good. Texhnolyze is a brutal but great anime. I'll keep this on my pickup list. Thanks for posting this.

[KaizerChef]

Originally Posted by SpaceDandy

Btw I should add that, I don't know how much Selecta listens to customers but sometimes it's good to send them an e-mail that explains well the problem. Some publishers in France did listen to customers' feedback when anime blu-ray was starting to get a thing there (2012-13?), as some blu-ray were catastrophic. We do know that it led to some being fired or blacklisted.
I don't think they are like Kazé France and there must be some room for improvement.

AFAIK Selecta uses sometimes AVM BCN, which is also the authoring house of some french distributors. You can ask them how come their release is of lower quality for the same title, authored by the same company in comparison to the neighbour country's release. It can only be their fault as they must have requested something along the line: "crispy colours, progressive picture, some filtering".
And while I talk about AVMedia, I had this sitting for weeks on my harddrive:

I'm not sure if they listen to customers at all, but their Twitter feed is full of praise for their releases, so sometimes I feel like I'm the only one in the whole country that cares about this (I'm exaggerating, I've seen people criticizing them in Spanish language forums, but still). Honestly, they don't have that many releases that I care about that are not avaliable from more competent UK/US distributors. I think I'll just get the MVM release of Paranoia Agent if it's uncensored as they say.

And yeah, they tend to tinker with the brightness for some reason. Their release of Serial Experiments Lain (authored by AVMedia BCN and actually better than the US edition to be fair) is darker than the JP release. Why they feel like they should alter the original materials I have no idea.

I only have one BD by Kazé France, the old edition of 5 cm per Second, and IIRC it was very bad, with a comically low bitrate. I think the whole thing was like 9 GB in total.

[Mangaranga]

Originally Posted by KaizerChef

I only have one BD by Kazé France, the old edition of 5 cm per Second, and IIRC it was very bad, with a comically low bitrate. I think the whole thing was like 9 GB in total.

Kaze France are utter shit. There was a period where they released stuff in the UK and they were always bad. Even their back covers had mistakes or were machine translated nonsense. Literally the only company I've ever personally blacklisted and refused to buy further releases from. I remember buying their Tiger & Bunny Part 1, and it was 7 episodes on a BD25 at just under 3gb each iirc.

[Marshall2000_uk]

Originally Posted by Mangaranga

Kaze France are utter shit. There was a period where they released stuff in the UK and they were always bad. Even their back covers had mistakes or were machine translated nonsense. Literally the only company I've ever personally blacklisted and refused to buy further releases from. I remember buying their Tiger & Bunny Part 1, and it was 7 episodes on a BD25 at just under 3gb each iirc.

Glad we saw the back of them, people have a go at Manga and Funimation (I know they are the same thing now ) but I’d take them over Kaze any day...still gutted we didn’t get a boxset for Tiger and Bunny.. such an underrated show.

[SpaceDandy]

Originally Posted by KaizerChef

I'm not sure if they listen to customers at all, but their Twitter feed is full of praise for their releases, so sometimes I feel like I'm the only one in the whole country that cares about this (I'm exaggerating, I've seen people criticizing them in Spanish language forums, but still). Honestly, they don't have that many releases that I care about that are not avaliable from more competent UK/US distributors. I think I'll just get the MVM release of Paranoia Agent if it's uncensored as they say.

And yeah, they tend to tinker with the brightness for some reason. Their release of Serial Experiments Lain (authored by AVMedia BCN and actually better than the US edition to be fair) is darker than the JP release. Why they feel like they should alter the original materials I have no idea.

Actually it's not known if the brightness of FR/ES (and probably DE?) release of Lain is correct or not. It does not appear to use the exact same master as the JP release but an intermediate file, with some different filtering. JP release feels a bit bright in very dark scene (i.e suicide scene).See post by NLScavenger on the FR release for more details. I would like to hear how is the DE (Nipponart) release, because it uses the same master file but authored by a different company. Because if the brightness matches the other releases, then possibly the JP release has the wrong brightness rather.

Originally Posted by KaizerChef

I only have one BD by Kazé France, the old edition of 5 cm per Second, and IIRC it was very bad, with a comically low bitrate. I think the whole thing was like 9 GB in total.

The master for this movie is not very good anyway. AL re-release has pretty much the same bitrate (and hence filesize) and it is only noticeably better at the "one more time, one more chance" end theme. It was discussed by Vick a bit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a_-Y-7-em0

Originally Posted by Mangaranga

Kaze France are utter shit. There was a period where they released stuff in the UK and they were always bad. Even their back covers had mistakes or were machine translated nonsense. Literally the only company I've ever personally blacklisted and refused to buy further releases from. I remember buying their Tiger & Bunny Part 1, and it was 7 episodes on a BD25 at just under 3gb each iirc.

You ignore what was Kazé France peak in "we don't give a f": they released Black Lagoon in Italy... with a dub made with french actors.
But it should be noted, they did do some fair releases such as Death Parade and JoJo Season 1 (I'll get to that one someday, Death Parade was covered by Yuripa previously).

[NLScavenger]

Wicked City UK BDInfo

Playlist: 00000.MPLS

Size: 26,835,207,936 bytes

Length: 1:22:15.347

Total Bitrate: 43.50 Mbps

Video: MPEG-4 AVC Video / 34682 kbps / 1080p / 23.976 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1

Audio: English / LPCM Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz / 2304 kbps / 24-bit

Audio: English / DTS-HD Master Audio / 5.1 / 48 kHz / 2057 kbps / 24-bit (DTS Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz / 768 kbps / 24-bit)

Audio: Japanese / LPCM Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz / 2304 kbps / 24-bit

Subtitle: English / 23.868 kbps

Subtitle: English / 0.077 kbps

Demon City Shinjuku UK BDInfo

Playlist: 00000.MPLS

Size: 26,731,214,592 bytes

Length: 1:19:01.611

Total Bitrate: 45.10 Mbps

Video: MPEG-4 AVC Video / 34874 kbps / 1080p / 23.976 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1

Audio: English / LPCM Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz / 2304 kbps / 24-bit

Audio: English / DTS-HD Master Audio / 5.1 / 48 kHz / 3404 kbps / 24-bit (DTS Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz / 768 kbps / 24-bit)

Audio: Japanese / LPCM Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz / 2304 kbps / 24-bit

Subtitle: English / 20.220 kbps

Subtitle: English / 0.180 kbps

[professorwho]

Very solid technical specs (higher than JP and Discotek), so hopefully the encoding is on-par with them.

[Member-571539]

So you’re saying the UK versions are worth getting besides the nice box?

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by gloomranger

So you’re saying the UK versions are worth getting besides the nice box?

I never did. I was hoping that some more info (as in screencaps) for these to see if they're of good quality. Bitrate on its own means jack sh*t, as you can make a terrible encode with a ridiculously high bitrate, and a perfect one with a tiny one. Generally a higher one signifies a better encode, and this used to be the case on DVD, but now with the efficiency of H.264/AVC you don't need a stupidly high bitrate to look good (but it helps).

Plus the Discotek release is automatically better in the audio department, as it has the UK dub for Wicked City, while Manga Ent's own BD shockingly does not have they dub they themselves made!

[Member-571539]

Originally Posted by professorwho

I never did. [...]

Fair enough. I’m tempted to pull a gundamcero and purchase the UK set for the packaging materials, then pair them with Discotek’s releases.

[The Collector FX]

Originally Posted by gloomranger

Fair enough. I’m tempted to pull a gundamcero and purchase the UK set for the packaging materials, then pair them with Discotek’s releases.

I'd say in terms of packaging materials, the South Korean and JP collectors editions have the US & UK versions beat.

[Member-571539]

Originally Posted by The Collector FX

I'd say in terms of packaging materials, the South Korean and JP collectors editions have the US & UK versions beat.

I’ve heard the Japanese sets are pretty nice. However I wasn’t aware there was something from Korea for both Demon City Shinjuku and Wicked City.

[cooperb21]

What's difference in quality between Demon Slayer release from Funimation and Aniplex?

[kk1]

Originally Posted by cooperb21

What's difference in quality between Demon Slayer release from Funimation and Aniplex?

None.

[Mangaranga]

Originally Posted by cooperb21

What's difference in quality between Demon Slayer release from Funimation and Aniplex?

I feel like this question gets asked by someone different every week. To summarise:
- Both are authored by Aniplex and are 100% identical outside of the removal of the NCOP/EDs and Audio Commentaries, and addition of Funi logo.
- By removing the NCs they also removed the only way to view the OP/EDs with song lyrics.
- Both sets of discs are region free, however they are geolocked to US/CA/Mexico.

[The Collector FX]

Originally Posted by gloomranger

I’ve heard the Japanese sets are pretty nice. However I wasn’t aware there was something from Korea for both Demon City Shinjuku and Wicked City.

My bad, I thought you were talking about Weathering With You, I don't know why. I misplaced the subject that was being discussed.

[Mangaranga]

I'm not going to spend much time on this one as, quite frankly, I'm pretty annoyed that I've picked up another naff set of discs. The UK - and by extension assumedly US release of B The Beginning suffers from (as per Scavenger's description) I-Frame Pulsing. One example across three frames can be found below.

https://slow.pics/c/1sFx4tEy

The discs are also missing the NCOP, as well as three of the four variants of the NCED. Episodes are anything from 4.89gb > 7.17gb depending on the episode and disc which isn't inherently a problem, but the disc sizes are 33.5gb and 40.6gb respectively, thus not fully utilized.

[NLScavenger]

The US BD subtitles doesn't use the font we usually see on Shout Factory BDs, so it's probably the same.

[Member-571539]

Originally Posted by The Collector FX

My bad, I thought you were talking about Weathering With You, I don't know why. I misplaced the subject that was being discussed.

No worries. There will be so many similar conversations going on at the same time that’ll I’ll get things mixed up myself.