The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[kk1]

Originally Posted by v_i

I have the BD, and it looks fine to my eyes, but that doesn’t mean a whole lot. I did play it side by side with the dvd, and it didn’t look any worse, which has happened with a few Media Balsters BDs.

Ahh really? Which ones?

[sagadego]

Originally Posted by BigOnAnime

https://fandompost.vbulletin.net/for...ge2#post847768

oh c'mon :/

[BigOnAnime]

Doesn't help Media Blasters is only 3 people at this point according to a recent vlog. They are thinking about hiring more people.

[Member-571539]

Originally Posted by BigOnAnime

Doesn't help Media Blasters is only 3 people at this point according to a recent vlog. They are thinking about hiring more people.

They should probably just hire MediaOCD.

[nyaa]

I have quite a few MB blurays and haven't noticed any problems at all with any of them. The fact that they use mpeg2 for video doesn't seem to matter as they use pretty high bitrates. My Yamibo set is gorgeous.

[BigOnAnime]

Media Blasters doesn't use MPEG-2 anymore, they stopped doing that a while ago, everything is back to MPEG-4 AVC.

[SpaceDandy]

Originally Posted by BigOnAnime

Doesn't help Media Blasters is only 3 people at this point according to a recent vlog. They are thinking about hiring more people.

Quite a few anime distributors in Europe are run by just one or two employees. This is more anout competency and basic QC.
Lackluster QC is quite generalized and does not correlate to the size of the company at all. For example, All the Anime can be considered a quite big distributor nowadays. Yet, their (recent) french releases are just average if not bad. Pieced together audiovisual assets, bad subtitles (errors in the translation and no multi-objects, catastrophic for Gunbuster), gamma and color banding issues. They do not check anything, at all, it just goes straight to the factory. Frankly, they have no excuse, neither ViZ or any other.
By the way, Magical Doremi is handled by the french branch with english audio & subs, and has technical issues.

Anyone's curious should try to watch the recent Vicklaterreur reviews. Gunbuster will most certainly be a salty one.

[Member-571539]

Originally Posted by SpaceDandy

Gunbuster will most certainly be a salty one.

Our very own NormanicGrav confirms the UK discs were produced by MediaOCD.

https://normanicgrav.co.uk/2023/08/1...-ray-unboxing/

The collector’s edition release for Gunbuster contains all 6 episodes of the OVA series on a single Blu-ray disc, with the encode and authoring produced by MediaOCD for Discotek Media’s release.

[SpaceDandy]

Good for you, not the case for the french All The Anime disc, which are by another authoring studio.

[Member-571539]

Originally Posted by SpaceDandy

Good for you, not the case for the french All The Anime disc, which are by another authoring studio.

My apologies; after you referred to the UK release of Looking for Magical Doremi being authored by the French branch, I was under the impression that you were suggesting Gunbuster was as well, since it just came out.

[Mangaranga]

Originally Posted by gloomranger

They should probably just hire MediaOCD.

Not gonna lie, I'd much rather they left MediaOCD to work on the good shit rather than shit shit so to speak.

[samcastor]

I tried looking around, but could not see any prior discussion so I will post here.

I recently started watching Ya Boy kongming (US) from Sentai and this is the first serialized anime I have watched on disc. It seems someone here mentioed banding on the JP release of this and that exists here as well, with one scene at the beginning of EP8 (or 9) being the absolute worst example I was able to notice, and I do not have a keen eye for this at all. The general look of the anime seems a little fuzzy to me as well, but again I am not sure what I should be expecting as this is my first anime BD.

Anyone else have thoughts on the quality of this disc?

[Mangaranga]

Oh my god. They desperately need to update the AI that generates these reviews as Kongming is most definitely not a 4.5/5 for video quality.
The JP BD has a shit load of banding as well as being bitrate starved due to DMM padding the files to 3x the actual size. As for the Sentai BD, I've heard from a reliable source that it manages to be worse than the JP BD despite having a raw bitrate advantage (up to 1gb larger per episode).

[NLScavenger]

Eizouken BD comparison https://slow.pics/c/MLqMQ8fc

The source is soft, clean and with some grain, so the damage by Sentai's workflow seems to be quite small. Lowpass filter distorts the credits text and artwork in the end credits.

[Naiera]

No complaints from me. Very funny, off-beat show, too.

[BigOnAnime]

Originally Posted by Mangaranga

Oh my god. They desperately need to update the AI that generates these reviews as Kongming is most definitely not a 4.5/5 for video quality.
The JP BD has a shit load of banding as well as being bitrate starved due to DMM padding the files to 3x the actual size. As for the Sentai BD, I've heard from a reliable source that it manages to be worse than the JP BD despite having a raw bitrate advantage (up to 1gb larger per episode).

Giving a high score despite banding? Not remotely new sadly.
https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Ef-A-.../31983/#Review

I noticed plenty of banding on the 2020 SteelBook on my crappy 32inch Vizio despite sitting 10 feet away. If I can notice that on a setup like that, then they should have noticed it on their presumably way better setup and shouldn't have kept it a 5/5 because "LOOK AT THE PRETTY COLORS!".

I have to wonder what the video score on Kamisama Kiss S2 would be if it ever got reviewed. The banding is so bad, prevalent, and distracting, it can even be very visible in very bright scenes. Wish I knew what happened.

[v_i]

Originally Posted by sagadego

oh c'mon :/

Clearly I didn’t watch my BD long enough. Will do some side-by-side comparisons with the DVD for the affected episodes later today. May also reach out to MB if it’s really bad, but I highly doubt they they’re able/willing to do a replacement disc.

[CrashOveride95]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

Queen Millennia Vol. 1 - KSM Anime BD (Germany)]

Here's some comparisons between the previous master (taken from JPDVD) and the new scan from the KSM BD https://slow.pics/c/kW7vRgoZ


In some shots the DVD has a little bit better color (I'm not sure if the DVD used the OCN like the BD did) but the clarity upgrade is so great that I'll gladly take the slightly worse color timing over the old BD

If Discotek was to hypothetically get this show I think they would do wonders with this master

[Member-571539]

Originally Posted by BigOnAnime

https://fandompost.vbulletin.net/for...ge2#post847768

Maybe something’s up with OP’s disc?

https://fandompost.vbulletin.net/forum/post847940

Originally Posted by Rhys2753

Can you give me a specific time stamp to properly compare? I skimmed through mine and it seems fine

[BigOnAnime]

Something wrong with the encoded data
Reviewed in the United States on August 11, 2023
Verified Purchase

The encoding of the data for this anime series on the Blu Ray disk has major problems and appears to be corrupted. Part way through an episode you start to see large amounts of random pixels appearing on the screen, usually around those things that are moving on the screen, which distorts what you are seeing. I only see this problem with these Blu Ray disks and not any other movies or animes on my Sony BDP-S6700 Blu Ray Player. I ended up returning this for a refund which was a real shame as I was finding the anime very interesting at least those parts that weren't corrupted.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-r...12ZEU4SU5XBTX/