The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[peppapigstan]

anyone get the sol bianca bd?

[Total Procall]

I have just got the Sherlock Hound bluray set from discotek and the openings of the japanese and english language versions have distinct differences in the video quality. With audio set to japanese the opening is clearly DNR'd, while the english language option appears to either have much less DNR or none at all.

I haven't gone deep into episodes yet to see if this holds up, but a curious observation regardless.

[CrashOveride95]

Originally Posted by Total Procall

I have just got the Sherlock Hound bluray set from discotek and the openings of the japanese and english language versions have distinct differences in the video quality. With audio set to japanese the opening is clearly DNR'd, while the english language option appears to either have much less DNR or none at all.

I haven't gone deep into episodes yet to see if this holds up, but a curious observation regardless.

English opening was probably based off of a creditless OP scan which may have been treated differently than the main Japanese footage

[dubudavid]

The footage within the actual episodes should be exactly the same as the Japanese version as it was recut using those masters, save for the extra footage that was upscaled for the English version, and as mentioned, the newly recomposited English OP/ED.

[Total Procall]

Originally Posted by dubudavid

The footage within the actual episodes should be exactly the same as the Japanese version as it was recut using those masters, save for the extra footage that was upscaled for the English version.

The english one is longer? I usually default straight to japanese on all my anime, but maybe if there are differences i will go english.

[CrashOveride95]

Originally Posted by Total Procall

The english one is longer? I usually default straight to japanese on all my anime, but maybe if there are differences i will go english.

TMS animated quite a bit of extra footage for the English version so it's longer definitely

[Tylerfan]

Robotech Complete Box Set review: https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Robot...293510/#Review

[Naiera]

Was that $8 4K GITS any good?

[Tylerfan]

New reviews:

Berserk (2016): https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Berse...305468/#Review
One Piece - Collection 30: https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/One-P...316938/#Review
Naruto - Set 8: https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Narut...321051/#Review
Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei: https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Sayon...300471/#Review

[Ferretferret]

Haven't found any reviews on the internet, so, I'll give a short one - Gundam Build Divers Re:Rise looks phenomenal on blu-ray. Even sky shots avoid almost any banding. Sunrise (via RightStuf) did a fantastic job.

[Mangaranga]

Repost from the Bleach thread.

Some comparisons of the newly released JP BD of Bleach vs the US BD

JP BD is 1080i30, whereas the US BD is 1080p24. Interestingly it looks like the Japanese BD may have potentially been upscaled from a broadcast master, as the opening for episode 1 at least, is unfinished. Regardless, it's a massive improvement over Viz's in house upscale which literally looks like they just upscaled their own DVDs, with DVD era compression artifacts, banding, egregious sharpening and weird horizontal lines. As usual they also encoded it in the wrong colour space, but even after converting it to BT.709 there's still some colour discrepancies. For some reason Viz left in the empty sponsor cards for their release, so a simple audio/subtitle mux between the two sources isn't possible.

[Mangaranga]

Originally Posted by Footlong Shoe

Bleach: Fade to Black - Viz 2011 Standalone vs. Viz 2022 4-Pack

Going back to this - I just skimmed through both releases of Hell Verse to compare the original encodes (yes, encodes) and the newly released encode in the 4 movie set, and sadly all three presentations of this movie suck for different reasons. The original release presents two versions of the film on disc - one having the original Japanese credits and one with an English credit roll.

Honestly, I'm a little confused as to what the state of the master Viz used to encode both releases from was in. I have a sneaky suspicious that some sort of f**ckery might have gone on with it. It's easier to start with the 2022 release in that regard as this release gives you one option - the version with the English credit roll. This release features better compression than the original release, and judging by the disc setup and 16bit DTS-HD audio tracks, looks to have been encoded by the more competent author that did the Jojo discs. Sounds good right? Well, no. This release seems to have been sourced from a 1080i master and features the same constant awful deinterlacing artifacts that Inuyasha suffers from - something which is evident straight off the bat from the Toho logo.

So what about the original release? As said above, the original release presents both the original Japanese and English translated variants of the movie, neither of which suffer from the interlacing artifacts on the new 2022 release. Whilst I originally thought this would make it the clear winner, it does however suffer from worse encoding in comparison - even moreso if you watch the English credit roll version where said credit roll suffers from noticably worse encoding and interlaced credits that were obviously done with 30fps in mind. The Japanese credit roll is natively 24fps and does not suffer anywhere near as much from compression artifacts. From the Bitrate Viewer scans it appears that the encode is 99% identical with the exception of the end credits.

This does beg the question in my mind though as to what on earth happened here. Going back to my original allusions above, I can't help but wonder if the original Japanese credit master is 1080p24, whereas the English credit one they created is 1080i30 - either that or in deinterlacing the credits on the 2022 release they accidentally added interlacing artifacts to the entire movie. Ultimately neither release is ideal by any means, and you have to pick what to compromise on.

EDIT:

Credit Comparison

Comparison Shots

The other three movies - despite being older - do not seem to suffer from the same issues as this one.
The first film however is obviously an upscale from an SD source.

[Kyle15]

That Zetsubo-sensei review is hilarious. "The series protagonist is difficult to like as the character repeatedly attempts suicide." Wow, suicidal characters aren't likeable just like Shinji isn't likeable because he screams and doesn't want to get into the robot. Stunning pathos.

But anyway those caps look hideous. I don't recall the Japanese discs looking that way.

[NLScavenger]

Space Adventure Cobra TV series - Discotek Media BD vs Happinet BD

Comparison - expires on November 23 2024

Discotek Media BD


Happinet BD


I suspect that the Discotek Media BD is a re-encode of Happinet BD M2TS files for a number of reasons. If it's a re-encode, then it is a good one that with half the bitrate manages to pretty much look the same in motion.

Audio options are the same as on the Happinet BD:
• 5.1 - JP BD Dolby TrueHD / US BD DTS-HD MA
• Stereo - AC3 2.0 640 kbps
• Mono - AC3 2.0 640 kbps

The 5.1 and Stereo upmixes of the Mono track sound horrible. Stay away.

Haven't extensively compared the BD Mono to the Perfect Collection LD Mono, but they seem to sound similar. The major difference is that the OP and ED are in stereo on BD.

By the way, the Movie BD is a remux of the Happinet BD. You can find screenshots of the movie on caps-a-holic.

BDInfo Discotek Media - Disc 1

Disc Title: Space Adventure Cobra Disc 1
Disc Label: COBRA TV1
Disc Size: 48,118,415,699 bytes
Protection: AACS
Playlist: 00000.MPLS
Size: 47,793,571,968 bytes
Length: 4:56:21.763
Total Bitrate: 21.50 Mbps
Video: MPEG-4 AVC Video / 16952 kbps / 1080p / 23.976 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1
Audio: Japanese / DTS-HD Master Audio / 5.1 / 48 kHz /  1942 kbps / 16-bit (DTS Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz /  1509 kbps / 16-bit)
Audio: Japanese / Dolby Digital Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz /   640 kbps / DN -31dB
Audio: Japanese / Dolby Digital Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz /   640 kbps / DN -31dB
Subtitle: English / 30.370 kbps

Bitrate Discotek Media BD episode 01


Bitrate Happinet BD episode 01

[Mangaranga]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

I suspect that the Discotek Media BD is a re-encode of Happinet BD M2TS files for a number of reasons. If it's a re-encode, then it is a good one that with half the bitrate manages to pretty much look the same in motion.

For what it's worth, MediaOCD did the authoring for Persona 5 The Animation's UK release, which itself was a re-encode of the files on Aniplex's discs at less than half the bitrate yet looked identical. The NCOP/EDs on the Penguindrum BD are also re-encodes of those on the Sentai BD and look identically awful (I assume they never got given the master for those).

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by Kyle15

But anyway those caps look hideous. I don't recall the Japanese discs looking that way.

I was planning to review it, but never did (still might). In my comparison to the JP DVDs and BD, they all look virtually the same. The BD is superior due to the nature of it being upscaled and having effective full chroma resolution (the DVDs have a sea of blocking in red areas the BDs do not). The Nozomi discs have a tiny bit more of artifacting than the JP BD, but the compression is still solid, so I can’t complain. It’s just a faithful representation of how the series looks, warts and all.

[CrashOveride95]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

The 5.1 and Stereo upmixes of the Mono track sound horrible. Stay away.

Haven't extensively compared the BD Mono to the Perfect Collection LD Mono, but they seem to sound similar. The major difference is that the OP and ED are in stereo on BD.

This is a minor tidbit, but the Perfect Collection LDs use the wrong take for the OP/ED. At the time of those LDs creation for some reason the proper TV Size version was somehow not available, so a new TV size was created from the longer versions intended for the LP. The issue here is that each version uses a different take of the instrumental and the vocal, so they sound noticably different. AFAIK, this was fixed for every release afterwards.
As for audio quality, they sound nearly identical. Still unfortunately 16mm optical, which I guess indicates that the original cinetape is lost (M&E on the LD sounds much better than the main track)

[Footlong Shoe]

Originally Posted by Mangaranga

The first film however is obviously an upscale from an SD source.

For real? That was the one I checked and I thought it looked too good to be an upscale, I clearly need to give it a closer look. I only remember the Viz logo at the beginning looking bad. Guess I should've compared it with the DVD.

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

Space Adventure Cobra TV series - Discotek Media BD vs Happinet BD

[Show spoiler]Comparison - expires on November 23 2024

Discotek Media BD


Happinet BD


I suspect that the Discotek Media BD is a re-encode of Happinet BD M2TS files for a number of reasons. If it's a re-encode, then it is a good one that with half the bitrate manages to pretty much look the same in motion.

Audio options are the same as on the Happinet BD:
• 5.1 - JP BD Dolby TrueHD / US BD DTS-HD MA
• Stereo - AC3 2.0 640 kbps
• Mono - AC3 2.0 640 kbps

The 5.1 and Stereo upmixes of the Mono track sound horrible. Stay away.

Haven't extensively compared the BD Mono to the Perfect Collection LD Mono, but they seem to sound similar. The major difference is that the OP and ED are in stereo on BD.

By the way, the Movie BD is a remux of the Happinet BD. You can find screenshots of the movie on caps-a-holic.

BDInfo Discotek Media - Disc 1

Disc Title: Space Adventure Cobra Disc 1
Disc Label: COBRA TV1
Disc Size: 48,118,415,699 bytes
Protection: AACS
Playlist: 00000.MPLS
Size: 47,793,571,968 bytes
Length: 4:56:21.763
Total Bitrate: 21.50 Mbps
Video: MPEG-4 AVC Video / 16952 kbps / 1080p / 23.976 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1
Audio: Japanese / DTS-HD Master Audio / 5.1 / 48 kHz /  1942 kbps / 16-bit (DTS Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz /  1509 kbps / 16-bit)
Audio: Japanese / Dolby Digital Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz /   640 kbps / DN -31dB
Audio: Japanese / Dolby Digital Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz /   640 kbps / DN -31dB
Subtitle: English / 30.370 kbps

Bitrate Discotek Media BD episode 01


Bitrate Happinet BD episode 01

Comparison with Nozomi DVD: https://slow.pics/c/vpcvU3wg

Discotek Media BD


Nozomi Entertainment DVD (spline36 resize)

[DatLOLBoi]

Man, I forgot just how mediocre the Nozomi DVDs looked for Cobra. Kinda crazy that people will say it's better because of the brighter pinker colors when the Blu-ray colors are a huge improvement compared to the DVD.