The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[rayeknor]

Originally Posted by professorwho

It’s still the Italian Dynit Blu-ray, but it’s an older, dated master from an ancient scan with automated dirt removal impacting the line art at points. Sony really needs to do a UHD at this point. Would be a massive improvement.

Yeah, I'm hoping for a UHD release on this still. Done right I think this movie could look spectacular.

[peppapigstan]

Originally Posted by russ869 on The Fandom Post

https://fandompost.vbulletin.net/forum/anime-manga-discussions/jp-asian-blu-ray-dvd-and-streaming-industry-news/855831-spirit-of-wonder-bd-box-engsub-engdub-miss-china-s-sakazuki-engsub-engdub-not-included?p=864517#post864517

Spirit of Wonder (1st OVA) BD screencaps:





VLC screencaps, but should give a general idea of what the BD looks like, it's unfortunately an upscale (although it's not bad), Bandai too lazy to scan the film elements again for the cel-animated OVAs

[Glorian]

Is the Anime Limited release of the K franchise (K season 1, Missing Kings, and Return of Kings) significantly better video quality wise than the US Viz releases? I seem to recall a consensus that the Viz release was poor, so I was wondering if it would make sense to track down the UK version instead. I know Anime Limited has done better versions of Tower of God and In/Spectre, but I don't know if that's a given for them, or if they have sometimes reused Viz's discs (especially in the past). I tried searching for info myself, but the name makes an effective search difficult.

[Member-571539]

Originally Posted by Glorian

Is the Anime Limited release of the K franchise (K season 1, Missing Kings, and Return of Kings) significantly better video quality wise than the US Viz releases?.

Season 1 and Seven Stories uses Viz’s encode while Missing Kings and Return of Kings uses the Madman (AU) encodes.

[Mangaranga]

Originally Posted by gloomranger

Season 1 and Seven Stories uses Viz’s encode while Missing Kings and Return of Kings uses the Madman (AU) encodes.

Are you sure they're not all Viz encodes? Madman reused their encodes for stuff like Jojo and Megalobox whilst authoring their own discs.
Season 1 and Seven Stories had incorrect gamma and shitty compression, whereas Missing Kings and Return of Kings were in the wrong colour space and had a load of banding iirc.

[Member-571539]

Originally Posted by Mangaranga

Are you sure they're not all Viz encodes?

I don’t personally own the discs. I was going off what NormanicGrav said in their unboxing reviews.

1. https://normanicgrav.co.uk/2021/12/0...-ray-unboxing/
2. https://normanicgrav.co.uk/2020/03/1...-dvd-unboxing/
3. https://normanicgrav.co.uk/2020/03/1...-ray-unboxing/
4. https://normanicgrav.co.uk/2022/12/2...omment-page-1/

[PGW]

After reading the discouraging reviews of "Tweeny Witches" on blu-ray (pixellation on disc 2), I'm happy to report that my copy arrived today and doesn't seem to have any problem. So either Media Blasters has fixed it, or it was an isolated defect on the disc the OP had.

What I will say is that the absolute MORON who designed their menu should be (self-censored). I swear, trying to navigate to the second half of the disc to check out the problem was literally torture. Sometimes you hit "main menu" and it shows you the next screen of episodes (like putting them ALL on one screen is some kind of difficult thing!), sometimes it takes you to the main menu. Sometimes some episode just starts playing. What is this? A random menu? What absolute garbage.

[BigOnAnime]

Media Blasters hasn't been the same since Merideth Mulroney left.

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by HunterKIller

Does anyone know anything about the quality of UHD SAO? It came out yesterday or two days ago. I was going to buy it, but lately I have the feeling that these anime releases on UHD may be often the best in quality (when compared to others), but the differences are not so big that it is worth buying the same thing a second time. On the other hand, I have the film from the UK on Blu-ray, i.e. not from Aniplex, so maybe the difference will be more noticeable. I'm struggling with myself a bit.

So, I've seen caps from it and have feedback from a very technically inclined friend (like me) who has it, and unfortunately it's not that great.

Comparison here (note that I didn't make it, nor did he, so don't blame us for the title);

https://slow.pics/c/3L7TTBBf

On the positive side, the HDR grade is tastefully done, respecting the film's SDR origins and staying under 200 nits mostly. WCG is utilised and pushes well into P3 on occasion, but isn't a dramatic jump over BD, which is fine by me. Plus, because it's an upscale, due to being 2160p, you get effective full resolution chroma.

The colours and luminance levels in that comparison aren't correct due to incorrect tonemapping, so just judge the detail/image quality.

The real issue comes from the upscaling. There's a level of sharpening applied which brings to mind Weathering With You, although perhaps not as bad. Still, it's not pretty, and makes one question if the tradeoff in image quality is worth it for the HDR grade (which is thankfully much better than WWY's overblown grade). The new Atmos remix is also a bit lacking, according to a friend with a setup.

[jd213]

Originally Posted by BigOnAnime

Media Blasters hasn't been the same since Merideth Mulroney left.

I remember she said something to the effect of "only p*dos want uncut Kite" at a con. Then MB released uncut Kite a couple years later. I wonder if that had something to do with her leaving.

[Gowho]

Originally Posted by jd213

I remember she said something to the effect of "only p*dos want uncut Kite" at a con. Then MB released uncut Kite a couple years later. I wonder if that had something to do with her leaving.

Pretty sure that was a different woman since I recall hearing that person got fired not long after saying that and Merideth was there until the 2010s while the uncut DVD had been out since 2004.

[jd213]

Pretty sure it was the same person, she also went on a big rant against certain fans on AoD (where she posted under mdeth or something like that) in the 2000s and then John Sirabella had to step in.

[jsevakis]

Merideth is a good friend of mine. Extremely talented graphic artist and was responsible for most of the crazy and innovative packaging from bubble-era MB. She was laid off when MB laid everyone off during the DVD crash, so you're talking about someone who hasn't worked there or been "industry" in 16 years. (And yeah, she was... very unfiltered about her opinions about certain things and rubbed some people the wrong way. Probably should not have been in a public-facing position.)

Anyway, she's a private individual who has not been in the anime business in a very long time, so I would request that you treat her as such. Thanks.

[BigOnAnime]

Released on Blu-ray by Sentai Filmworks, The Dangers in My Heart: Season 1 is presented in 1080p MPEG-4 AVC encoded high- definition in the original television broadcast aspect ratio of 1.78:1 widescreen. The Dangers in My Heart looks incredible in high-definition. The colors "pop" with outstanding clarity and detail.

The series background animation shines especially bright on the presentation with the little intricacies of the art work being well displayed. The encode quality impresses, too. Sentai Filmworks continues to do a great job with providing a well-balanced presentation. The transfer is free from egregious banding and compression woes.

One of the great things about the physical format is that Blu-ray provides superior presentation quality when stacked up against streaming video platforms. The Blu-ray disc provides a superior experience – showcasing a transfer with better compression and higher bit-rates. Video enthusiasts who want the best, accept no substitutes, will find this a great benefit of the release.

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/The-D...353258/#Review

Uh...
https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/scree...258&position=2
https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/scree...258&position=7
https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/scree...58&position=12
https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/scree...58&position=14
https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/scree...58&position=18
https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/scree...58&position=19
https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/scree...58&position=20

Please tell me it's in the source. I've been really looking forward to this release and have been impatiently waiting for my copy to finally ship from the Sentai Filmworks Shop. I love this show.

Also, it indeed looks "soft". I've been wondering for a bit because the HIDIVE update early last month removed the resolution selector (how do you not have something YouTube had in 2005?), so "auto" is now the only setting, and this show keeps making me wonder if it autoselected to SD.

[Toad King]

The Dangers in My Heart has a very soft look in general and it isn't solely because of stream quality.

As for Hidive's quality, the bitrate selection is gone but from my initial look when it first was launched the max bitrates are much higher than before; up to three times higher judging on filesizes. (~300 MB for single episodes up to ~800MB)

The "bitrates" reported before were wildly incorrect and AFAIK they just reported the highest bitrate reached rather than the average bitrate. That's why, at least for The Dangers in My Heart, the second season reported much higher bitrates than season one because the OP in season 2 used much higher bitrates.

[PGW]

Another rote press release posing as a review from Neil Lumbard. Is there anyway to petition blu-ray.com to use a different reviewer for anime? One who doesn't regurgitate the same nonsense in every review, fill up the review by throwing in useless information, and raving about just about everything so the reviews end up being meaningless?

And, damn, "The Dangers In My Heart" looks blurry. What's with that? I regularly watch anime DVDs that look far better than the screen caps above. I mean, we're talking "Haibane Renmei" soft, here.

[keitaro]

Is it worth double dipping on Twelve Kingdoms Blu-ray? I don't doubt Discotek's video quality. I just can't find any screencap comparisons (MB / Discotek).

[jsevakis]

Originally Posted by keitaro

Is it worth double dipping on Twelve Kingdoms Blu-ray? I don't doubt Discotek's video quality. I just can't find any screencap comparisons (MB / Discotek).

Not really. We fixed up the subtitles a lot, but the MB discs reauthor the Japanese encodes (which is why it uses so many discs), so ours should look more or less identical visually.

[Mangaranga]

Originally Posted by PGW

And, damn, "The Dangers In My Heart" looks blurry. What's with that? I regularly watch anime DVDs that look far better than the screen caps above. I mean, we're talking "Haibane Renmei" soft, here.

It's largely an artistic decision, although it is also on the lower end as far as native resolutions of modern productions go.
I think the native res for that show was found to be around 762.5p, and most modern stuff seems to be in the 810-900p range.
It's definitely not DVD levels of blurry though by any means.

[BigOnAnime]

Originally Posted by Toad King

The Dangers in My Heart has a very soft look in general and it isn't solely because of stream quality.

As for Hidive's quality, the bitrate selection is gone but from my initial look when it first was launched the max bitrates are much higher than before; up to three times higher judging on filesizes. (~300 MB for single episodes up to ~800MB)

The "bitrates" reported before were wildly incorrect and AFAIK they just reported the highest bitrate reached rather than the average bitrate. That's why, at least for The Dangers in My Heart, the second season reported much higher bitrates than season one because the OP in season 2 used much higher bitrates.

So did they actually up the bitrate and video quality? HIDIVE always had the weakest video quality compared to modern Crunchyroll (CR used to be so awful) and FUNimation (though FUNimation sometimes somehow had dithering on 720P like so). Heck, anything Sentai put on CR even prior to HIDIVE existing would usually be plagued with so much banding (Ex: Danmachi S1 looked super bad).

I'd only been watching The Dangers in My Heart S1, Gushing Over Magical Girls, and Chained Soldier on HIDIVE lately. I am also watching Jellyfish Can't Swim in the Night and Whisper Me a Love Song on there too.

Originally Posted by PGW

Another rote press release posing as a review from Neil Lumbard. Is there anyway to petition blu-ray.com to use a different reviewer for anime? One who doesn't regurgitate the same nonsense in every review, fill up the review by throwing in useless information, and raving about just about everything so the reviews end up being meaningless?

There likely isn't. Jeffrey Kauffman seemingly completely lost interest completely giving up in 2020, they had other reviewers step in until Neil took over, and it's been him ever since.

Been getting more annoyed with how his reviews are reading. His much older ones read okay, like his DVDTalk reviews, but these newer ones, oof. I finally snapped recently.
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...1#post21896791
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...1#post21902871
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...6#post22056516
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...9#post22056779
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...5#post22056845

So many things I can list. Let's do a quick lightning round.

Bocchi the Rock: Zero mention of the lack of an English dub for one of the most popular anime of 2022, instead opting to yet again talk about how streaming audio compares to Blu-ray audio.

Code Geass: Collector's Edition: 5/5 for Special Features and Extras despite it missing content from the Bandai Entertainment DVDs (zero mention of them), and nothing going in-depth into the actual animation production (those extras didn't exist on the Japanese releases either as those kinds of video extras are quite uncommon).

Kaiji: All screenshots from only the first arc of season 1, most likely never watched the whole show prior to reviewing. Zero mention of how season 2 from 2011, the HD season looks.

Immoral Guild: Do you even know anything about Japanese Blu-rays and how TV broadcast censorship works? They included the uncensored version because that's the only Blu-ray version. It's extremely rare to have both versions included. One of the only examples I can think of is Ayakashi Triangle where they included the Shirogane censors as an option on the Japanese Blu-ray release. No idea if Crunchyroll will also do that if they release that show here.

Locke the Superman: Zero mention of there being an English dub, found on the Discotek DVD release but not the Sentai release.

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha: Detonation: Somehow the 4th movie is the 2nd one, simply because Discotek Media didn't release the other movies. The prior movie even originally had "3rd" in the title before it was dropped.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magica...(series)#Anime
https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/new...-has-new-story

My Dress-Up Darling: I love the artbook too, but did you need to ramble on this much about it? Artbooks sold separately aren't that common, and the one in this release is literally the same booklets from the Japanese release, translated into English and compiled into one. Really now wishing the disclaimer Sentai Filmworks put at the end of the booklet in the Flip Flappers Limited Edition was standard so more people know where the content in booklets tend to come from. How good a release can turn out is often heavily dependent on how the Japanese release turned out, as well as how much artwork there is available that's allowed to be used (certain artwork isn't allowed to be used for certain things).

Naruto Shippuden: Set 2: Claims entire set is widescreen, when only the last 2 episodes are. All the screenshots are from the non-widescreen episodes.

One Piece: Collection 26: For some reason, added in parenthesis a major error. One Piece had been airing in HD in Japan since 2004. If they didn't include that, the review would have been accurate, simply stating we only now were getting the series on Blu-ray, rather than the first episodes to air in HD somehow in 2014.

Tears to Tiara: One of his better reviews, but doesn't consider the smaller subtitles and likely updated translation. This release should be better than the original release in more than just the video quality.

The Familiar of Zero: Zero mention of seasons 2-4 lacking an English dub. Rejected my submission to blank the audio field and have it fill from the bundle ID field (what it is doing now after a mod corrected it) to better show that. I accidentally forgot to blank it out when first submitting the release, and they ignored my PM when I explained what I was doing.

Tsurune: The Linking Shot: Zero mention of the lack of an English dub from season 1.

Urusei Yatsura (1981): See the link.

Venus Wars: Zero mention of how the English dub is different from the Discotek Media release.

World Trigger: Somehow a show can air first on Disney+ in Japan, years before Disney+ was ever announced. Are you aware anime is often shown on multiple TV channels and streaming services at the same time as it airs, where exclusive rights are uncommon?
https://cal.syoboi.jp/tid/3540/time
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83...80%81%E5%B1%80

Also now that it's been announced Target is scaling back its physical media selection after Best Buy finally completely stopped selling it save for video games, and Neil gets more upset, he's going to probably more frequently talk about Blu-ray vs. streaming to aggressively convert people who stream, when they don't even know this site exists and most likely never will. It's basically only physical media enthusiasts who visit this site.

Originally Posted by Mangaranga

It's largely an artistic decision, although it is also on the lower end as far as native resolutions of modern productions go.
I think the native res for that show was found to be around 762.5p, and most modern stuff seems to be in the 810-900p range.
It's definitely not DVD levels of blurry though by any means.

That's my thinking. I wonder how season 2 compares. Also, were the JP Blu-rays from Avex also filled with banding?