The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[pikagreg]

How are Shout Factory's releases? I know a bunch of people picked up the Transformers movie and Digimon though I don't know much about them or what to expect from them for the eventual In The Corner of This World release.

[NLScavenger]

They're generally considered to be pretty good, but a few years ago there were complaints about the encoding on mostly their Scream Factory releases. They seem to have improved a lot over the last two years. Haven't noticed anything wrong with their Army of Darkness and The Chinese Connection 4K restoration releases.

As for their 4K restoration of Transformers The Movie and Digimon Adventure Tri I heard the encoding was pretty good on those, but Transformers was encoded in RGB PC levels. It seems to have been a bug in their encoding setup that was fixed quickly, because the only other release with wrong RGB levels was Road House which was released the week before Transformers.

Transformers The Movie Screenshots: http://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?d1=8852&d2=8851&c=3570
Digimon Adventure Tri review and screenshots: https://withthewill.net/threads/1761...caps?styleid=5

[omarchafa]

If I want to get Nadia of the Secret of Blue Water, which release besides the very expensive JP release (that I would never buy) should I get? Is the Sentai version any good like no brightness issues, post processing crap, and etc?

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by omarchafa

If I want to get Nadia of the Secret of Blue Water, which release besides the very expensive JP release (that I would never buy) should I get? Is the Sentai version any good like no brightness issues, post processing crap, and etc?

I think there was a Korean Set with subs in English. It was limited, if I remember, so it could be hard to come by. The Sentai set looks good in screenshots, but I don't have it, so I can't really speak to its qualities.

[Nostalgic Twilight]

So, I just found out that Spain has the world's first release of the first three seasons of Slayers on BD with the first season already being out and the others to follow. Does anyone know if there are any in-depth reviews available in English?

Slayers Edición Blu-ray vs DVD - YouTube

[Lambadelta]

I don't know of any, but I've ordered the set. So I'm happy to write up one when I receive it.

[Nostalgic Twilight]

Yeah, I'd very much appreciate you posting your thoughts. I was very tempted to order a copy and check it out myself.

EDIT: Looking at the video on my PC instead of my phone, it almost appears that they managed to locate/create a new SD source and then upscaled the material. Granted, YouTube can sometimes be deceiving. Just for the heck of it, I created a few screencaps from the video:

[Show spoiler]

[zrdb]

Originally Posted by omarchafa

If I want to get Nadia of the Secret of Blue Water, which release besides the very expensive JP release (that I would never buy) should I get? Is the Sentai version any good like no brightness issues, post processing crap, and etc?

I'd just get the Sentai release-I have it and it looks very good + it's way cheaper than the japanese release.

[zrdb]

Originally Posted by Nostalgic Twilight

So, I just found out that Spain has the world's first release of the first three seasons of Slayers on BD with the first season already being out and the others to follow. Does anyone know if there are any in-depth reviews available in English?

Slayers Edición Blu-ray vs DVD - YouTube

Damn-no habla espanol but it looks light years better than any version released here-cpm or crapamation.

[omarchafa]

Originally Posted by zrdb

I'd just get the Sentai release-I have it and it looks very good + it's way cheaper than the japanese release.

Yeah, I'll get the Sentai release then.

[djfred93]

Originally Posted by Nostalgic Twilight

So, I just found out that Spain has the world's first release of the first three seasons of Slayers on BD with the first season already being out and the others to follow. Does anyone know if there are any in-depth reviews available in English?

Slayers Edición Blu-ray vs DVD - YouTube

It's an upscale and a bad one. Screenshot 1 and 2

[Nostalgic Twilight]

Thanks for that link. I had some concerns because the YouTube video seemed very inorganic and smeary after I watched it on my PC. Also, based on your second link, it seems they exaggerated the video issues in the YouTube video?

With any luck, I hope Japan will put out BD-Boxes with a proper HD telecine within the next few years.

[Lambadelta]

Originally Posted by Nostalgic Twilight

With any luck, I hope Japan will put out BD-Boxes with a proper HD telecine within the next few years.

I doubt it with how meh the sales for the film & ova box set, which was massively delayed, and other issues. I can't imagine them going through the costs to do the series.

Edit -

Found some videos by Spanish vloggers, and apparently the Spanish BD is using video masters created by a blogger who a few years ago decided to filter, and try and make his version of Slayers look more HD. The only difference between his, and the BD is the BD has a bit more contrast. The ghosting artefacts, and other issues with his master, and the BD are frame to frame the same.

[professorwho]

I know the Italian BD of Death Note is better than Viz, as mp3dom has elaborated on, so I was curious as to how the Japanese BD is. While it has 7 discs, and probably has a higher bitrate, it's most likely worse.

First, it's 1080i. That isn't inherently bad, but there wasn't any frame rate different scenes (ala Cowboy Bebop and SAC), so that seems odd. But main reason is- Q-Tec did the upscale. キュー・テック or Q-Tec is listed as the group how did the remaster. On the Amazon JP page, they give an apology/warning about the upscale in that their upscale machine- Holy shit, they use a machine, and not by frame precision- would not work, so they had to do it frame by frame.

So, maybe that's why they are so garbage at their upscales. This sounds like it may be decent, but who knows at this point.

Their Wikipedia page (not most reliable, but who cares) kind of explains how they upscale and remaster series. Not only are they responsible for bad upscales, but also poor remasters, and ruining Code Geass' sound design in the 5.1 remix!

Here's the sources. This just blew my effin mind:

https://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%82%A2%E3%83%8B%E3%83%A1-%E3%83%87%E3%82%B9%E3%83%8E%E3%83%BC%E3%83%88-Blu-ray-BOX-7%E6%9E%9A%E7%B5%84-%E5%AE%AE%E9%87%8E%E7%9C%9F%E5%AE%88/dp/B01KL8UB0Y/ref=sr_1_23?ie=UTF8&qid=1498848324&sr=8-23&keywords=death+note

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82...83%83%E3%82%AF

[Sango]

On the quality note.

In general, are all the UK releases better than Funimation?

It gotten my curiosity since I saw the thread regarding Outlaw Star and gotten the UK release since it is a clone of a 1:1 JP release. If this is the case for that, are other UK releases also 1:1 of a JP release?

[Naiera]

A few are, but this is not a rule you can go by, in any way. Unfortunately, becuase that would have been awesome. Most UK releases are just clones of the US ones.

[Sango]

Thank, good to know. I recently purchased the Outlaw Star UK.

What about for FMA and FMA Brotherhood?

[Naiera]

Nope. But they should be much easier to get ahold of than the US releases...

[Naiera]

For the record, off the top of my head, these are the UK releases that are clones of the Japanese releases, or have comparable video quality:

Outlaw Star (clone)
Baccano (clone)
Durarara (clone) (not x2)
Blue Exorcist (clone or comparable)

Unfortunately, it's rather a short list.

[Sylontack]

For all none of you who were curious, I thought I'd take a couple of screenshots of the (Xebec 2005) Negima! BD Box, because I haven't really seen anything crop up online for it yet (be it screenshots or otherwise). I didn't grab DVD screens to compare because my DVDs are PAL which I figured wouldn't make for good comparison.
I only went off the first disc, and I did try to focus on distant shots, because they understandably look at lot worse than the closeups, which for the most part aren't that bad in my opinion.
It's not great but the DVDs were nothing special either (I think they were one of those FUNi alternate angle titles like FMA, they looked awful, I did look at a compressed SD source to compare and should note I actually saw more detail in the BDs), I was totally preparing myself for much worse, I don't see anything better coming along and it really doesn't look as bad in motion (really I was kinda surprised looking over the stills as opposed to while I was taking them).
The SHAFT series made up for a terrible adaptation by being visually interesting, so I hope that upscale isn't totally botched, stay tuned I guess.


Screen 01 Screen 02 Screen 03
Screen 04 Screen 05 Screen 06
Screen 07 Screen 08 Screen 09
Screen 10 Screen 11 Screen 12
Screen 13 Screen 14 Screen 15
Screen 16 Screen 17 Screen 18
Screen 19 Screen 20 Screen 21
Screen 22 Screen 23 Screen 24
- - - - - - -Screen 25- - - - - - -

imgur gallery because I guess some people prefer that? Totally out of order though.