The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[Norbie]

Originally Posted by Mangaranga

As much as people talk about the video problems with Gurren, I'm baffled that nobody else mentions the audio issues affecting the Japanese track on almost every episode. I'm assuming the Audio/SFX are in mono since downmixing the other audio tracks produces similar results.

Not a perfect solution, but I was able to fix the problem by playing with my receivers option. Normally I have it to automatically find whichever encode is on the disc and to fix the problem I had to manually select the correct encode. Give it a bash and see what happens.

[Sylontack]

Originally Posted by vincentric

Good to know, thanks. Am interested in checking out both shows but haven't even started a 'stream before I buy' session yet.

Am currently interested in picking up Gargantia. This thread has really been useful in stating how the Viz release is garbage and how the UK release is not bad at all. I have really enjoyed the show though and am thinking of importing the pricey JP sets (which seem English friendly enough to me with the inclusion of eng subs).

I wonder how the UK release compares to the JP one, video quality wise mostly?

Did anyone end up finding any UK comparisons? I'd like to pick up the show but I haven't actually seen it yet so I still don't know if I want to put down the money for the JPBDs yet so if the UK BD is a decent alternative I can just pick up the Australian packing of it on my way to work or something.

[Mangaranga]

Just to add to the above post, if someone would be kind enough to provide BDMV sizes, as well as some screenshots with timecodes from the first episode of the UK release it'd be much appreciated. I'd like to do a comparison to see if Manga's release is indeed better quality than Viz's. I'd also be interested to know whether Manga's release has English or Japanese credits. If they are English then I would have just assumed it's the same video files.

[MoonFly]

Does anyone have the HanaSaku Iroha movie BD from NISA and the JP BDs or screenshot comparisons of them? I'm noticing a decent amount of banding in scenes from NISA's BD. One where Yuina has a close up of her and the box she's holding, and particularly in the kitchen scene in around 15 mins, some banding in the sky scene at 20 mins in and seeing some small strands of banding throughout the movie. There's also quite a bit on the blankets at around 27 mins. And there seems to be quite a bit around 55 mins. Does anyone have screencaps to confirm if this is just source based or not?

[Naiera]

Total disc size is just under 45 gigs.



MediaInfo in the spoiler.

[Show spoiler]General
Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 2
File size : 4.66 GiB
Duration : 24mn 2s
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 27.7 Mbps
Movie name : Gargantia On The Verdurous Planet D1
Encoded date : UTC 2015-06-18 13:06:33
Writing application : MakeMKV v1.9.1 darwin(x86-release)
Writing library : libmakemkv v1.9.1 (1.3.0/1.4.1) darwin(x86-release)

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.1
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 3 frames
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 24mn 2s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Maximum bit rate : 35.0 Mbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Standard : NTSC
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Language : English
Default : No
Forced : No
Color range : Limited
Color primaries : BT.709
Transfer characteristics : BT.709
Matrix coefficients : BT.709

Audio #1
ID : 2
Format : PCM
Codec ID : A_PCM/INT/LIT
Duration : 24mn 2s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 24 bits
Title : Stereo
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No

Audio #2
ID : 3
Format : PCM
Codec ID : A_PCM/INT/LIT
Duration : 24mn 2s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 24 bits
Title : Stereo
Language : Japanese
Default : No
Forced : No

Text
ID : 4
Format : PGS
Codec ID : S_HDMV/PGS
Codec ID/Info : Picture based subtitle format used on BDs/HD-DVDs
Language : English
Default : No
Forced : No

Menu
00:00:00.000 : en:Chapter 00
00:00:21.312 : en:Chapter 01
00:04:30.019 : en:Chapter 02
00:12:05.766 : en:Chapter 03
00:17:01.270 : en:Chapter 04

[Naiera]

I guess we can just assume that it's the same as Viz. The episode split is the same, too.

[Naiera]

Does anyone know if the FUNi or Anime Ltd. Space Dandy release was the least bad?

It's way too expensive and bothersome buying even the Korean releases, like I did with the first season. The show isn't that good, so I need to know which western release is the "best".

[NLScavenger]

How good is the PQ on Italian and Spanish anime Blu-ray releases? There are a few Blu-ray releases I'm interested in such as the Spanish release of Mazinger Z The Impact and the Italian releases of the Gundam films and Lupin The Third , but I only want to buy them if there are no forced subs with Japanese audio. I speak a bit of Japanese, so the lack of English subs is not that much of an issue.

Italy is also getting a Gurren Lagann Blu-ray set in September. Hopefully without all the flaws from the UK release and without forced subs with Japanese audio.

[Mangaranga]

Originally Posted by Naiera

Does anyone know if the FUNi or Anime Ltd. Space Dandy release was the least bad?

It's way too expensive and bothersome buying even the Korean releases, like I did with the first season. The show isn't that good, so I need to know which western release is the "best".

Sorry it's taken me a week to actually post here. I totally forgot to be honest.
Anime Limited's release has Stereo EN/JP/FR PCM audio tracks with EN/FR subs (no signs), whilst Funi's release has 5.1 EN and 2.0 JP/EN commentary tracks with two subtitle tracks as per the norm. (Full EN subs as well as a songs/signs track for the dub.) Funi's release also contains more in the way of extras. When it comes to the video, both releases look pretty similar at a glance, however if you want to be nitpicky I'd say Funi's release looks slightly better despite the filesizes being ~1gb smaller. A few comparison pics from episode 1 can be found here.

Which one you get comes down to how much you really want to spend to be honest. If you're only going to watch the show subbed and don't mind having less in the way of extras, the UK set can be had for as low as £16.99 on Zavvi.

[Naiera]

Thank you. It doesn't get me much closer to a decision though

Hmm. Anime Ltd. kept the OP untouched. I'll leave it up to a matter of convenience. Both do look rather good.

[Bubblegum2032]

hey for once, the Funi version is not the worst offender when it comes to banding.

Funimation


Anime Limited

[Naiera]

Wow. I had to look real hard to find any banding.

[mp3dom]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

How good is the PQ on Italian and Spanish anime Blu-ray releases?

It depends by the publisher/label.

Italy is also getting a Gurren Lagann Blu-ray set in September. Hopefully without all the flaws from the UK release and without forced subs with Japanese audio.

Yep.

[Naiera]

I've had a look at the UK and US releases of Toradora. I never re-watched it when I got the UK Blu-ray from MVM because I was so disappointed in the video quality. It's a really bad upscale.

My friend watched the US release the other day and could not understand what I was talking about, with the bad video. I asked him to MakeMKV an ep and send it to me, which he did. Episode 2 was the first one on his list, so that's what this comparison ended up being based on.

There's not much to it, though. I won't bother with screenshots. It looks exactly as bad, and the stats indicate a slightly lower bitrate on the US ep2 as well. The US sets are a BD50 and a 25 each and the UK set is three BD50s.

[BigOnAnime]

The Japanese release isn't that different from ours to be honest, so this is the best the show will look. It's not just a western release problem.
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/122916 (And the US release has the usual brightness/color issue that plagues everything not authored in Japan. Only Aniplex's BD's and Ponycan USA's subbed BD's are authored in Japan.)

Some more shots from the JPBD.

(Also hating how hissatsu's post from Mania is gone and now those comparison images with the DVD are gone.)

[kk1]

I was looking at the Toradora set but now you guys have me worried. Almost every review I could find says it looks so much better than the dvd, is it really that bad? This is no Sailor Moon is it?

[SeaFox]

Originally Posted by kk1

I was looking at the Toradora set but now you guys have me worried. Almost every review I could find says it looks so much better than the dvd, is it really that bad?

• It's better than the DVD release.
• It's worse than your standard blu-ray release.
• It's an upconvert. That's all there is to say.

Seems like part of the issue here is people are in denial that there is no HD version of Toradora and if anything comes on on blu-ray that's not the pristine high-definition video they want it's some atrocity against home theater.

Edit: Here.

[Naiera]

Toradora looks bad for an upscale. I've seen much better upscales, which is why I am so disappointed.

[Z-95]

Since I recently got the JP release of KnK Recalled Out Summer I compared it with the AoA release and found that the video and audio are THE SAME (the raw video data was within kilobytes when extracted from the m2ts streams for RoS and EC).

So the only differences are:

JP release: Much nicer packaging, additional stereo audio track, soundtrack, audio drama, larger booklet, G1 sized

AoA release: English subtitles, G2 sized

Also, the JP release may be going OOP as Amazon JP is not selling it anymore--I had to get mine through a marketplace seller.

[Naiera]

Yes, the video is supposed to be the same. That's the idea with paying for these Aniplex releases