The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[BigOnAnime]

Watching Hareluya II Boy on HIDIVE right now, and man this looks rough. This is being streamed in HD. Keep your expectations low for the Blu-ray release.






A reminder, this show never got a DVD release in Japan, and this is likely how it was streamed over there. The show never even had complete fansubs. This is being translated by Alethea Nibley and Athena Nibley.

Originally Posted by NJ_

Apparently this show never got on DVD and got recent attention thanks to a streaming deal for Japan last year.

https://twitter.com/kac_officialhp/s...12706775982080

If it's SD I'll be surprised but then who knows if it looks good given King Records' track record.

https://fandompost.vbulletin.net/for...boy#post804427

Originally Posted by LordGeo

And the whole streaming deal likely only happened because of Sentai bringing the production committee back together so that it could be licensed for English release. Considering that the streams started up close to two whole years ago, one can only hope that it means that some work was actually done on maybe remastering the show, even if only digitally. The first episode was part of a series of DVD in 2012 compiling first episodes of various Jump anime, and it looked just fine there, though nothing special & likely just sourced from the same masters that were used for the prior VHS & LD releases in Japan.

To be fair, while I absolutely love this show, it can look really chintzy at points (it was one of the earliest modern-day late-night anime, after all), so it's not like it'd really be all too flattering to be remastered into HD.

https://fandompost.vbulletin.net/for...boy#post804476

[NLScavenger]

Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway 4K UHD review with screenshots (in Korean) https://dvdprime.com/g2/bbs/board.ph...ew&wr_id=68829

[chronoclast]

Originally Posted by BigOnAnime

Watching Hareluya II Boy on HIDIVE right now, and man this looks rough. This is being streamed in HD. Keep your expectations low for the Blu-ray release.

That's a case where SD-BD would make sense. I know they gave up on them after the Votoms re-release though.

[BigOnAnime]

I got the ef: A Tale of Memories & Melodies SteelBook in from the Sentai Filmworks Shop, and as expected, it has brand new discs. I've been watching the show via the 2014 release (got 8 episodes left of A Tale of Melodies), and taking a quick look, the same ugly banding that release has in certain spots is still on the 2020 release. I'm beginning to suspect that the banding is a source-related issue, though I have no idea how things look on the Japanese release. A good spot to look is the church scene early in Episode 2 of A Tale of Memories which is where I remember some of the worst banding being. One of the EDs also is plagued with red banding. The 2014 release was authored by Joel McCray, the 2020 release is authored by him again, but this time he was joined by Ryan Anthony.

[Mangaranga]

Originally Posted by BigOnAnime

I'm beginning to suspect that the banding is a source-related issue, though I have no idea how things look on the Japanese release.

It's a Shaft production, so the banding being in the source is a given. On that note as well, another thing to consider with Sentai re-releases is that whilst they use new encodes, they're from the same source they originally received. They don't get newer, better materials. See K-On Season 2 as a prime example - the re-released discs still use the same HDCAM master with mono audio for one of the episodes.

[SpaceDandy]

LEONINE Anime release of Neon Genesis Evangelion appears to have issues on some bonus materials. VHS Episode 25' has jittery motion. Probably due to dropping half of the frames. This user also reports playback issue for episode 25 and facebook users reports scratches on discs.

[The Collector FX]

Originally Posted by SpaceDandy

LEONINE Anime release of Neon Genesis Evangelion appears to have issues on some bonus materials. VHS Episode 25' has jittery motion. Probably due to dropping half of the frames. This user also reports playback issue for episode 25 and facebook users reports scratches on discs.

Hasn't End of Evangelion gone through revisions since it's initial release on VHS?

[pielover74]

Originally Posted by Mangaranga

This isn't a new thing by any means. I've noted it with quite a few BD releases from different labels. (e.g. Megalobox and One Punch Man 2 from Viz, Madman's Promised Neverland). The conclusion I came to is that it's baked into the source, but eliminated on Japanese BDs due to their incredibly frequent use of post processing like debanding.


That's also not a one off thing. All of Sentai's BDs from when Joel McCray took over (2015/16ish) have this issue to some extent. It's most obvious around text, but in higher quality productions like KyoAni's Tsurune, it's also visible around lineart. It's down to whatever filtering they use.

By any chance do you have any updated list of which Anime Blu rays are actually worth purchasing the non uk version of? Thank you I just bought the mvm madman Bunny girl Senpai and was wondering if I should get the original instead

[Zhou]

Originally Posted by The Collector FX

Hasn't End of Evangelion gone through revisions since it's initial release on VHS?

As far as I know, the only differences between the theatrical and LD/VHS versions of EoE are the eyecatches (the home video ones say "Neon Genesis Evangelion" instead of "The End of Evangelion") and ending credits. Animation-wise, the only revisions I'm aware of are the ones that happened between the theatrical cut of Rebirth and EoE.

[mp3dom]

There's also the "No." line which is spoken by Asuka in EoE but written as a telop on 26'.

[InvitationToHades]

Originally Posted by mp3dom

As far as I know, IVTC problems are on the 1st OP only (for obvious reasons) with some jerky movements but both gamma and colorimetry should be right. Everything else *should* be right.

That's great to hear. Thank you.

[different]

Anyone checked out Funi's Haibane Renmei blu-ray yet?

[Zhou]

Originally Posted by different

Anyone checked out Funi's Haibane Renmei blu-ray yet?

My copy arrived today, and I can confirm it's the same smeary upscale as the Japanese BD release. I knew what I was getting into when I ordered this, so I won't complain. What's interesting is that Funimation did a 7-6 split between two BD50 discs instead of the usual 9-4 with a BD50 and a BD25.

[TThomas]

Originally Posted by Zhou

What's interesting is that Funimation did a 7-6 split between two BD50 discs instead of the usual 9-4 with a BD50 and a BD25.

It seems that more and more "new" anime release from Funimation since approx March 2020 use an equal 7-7 or 7-6 split per Cour.

(This excludes complete series, essentials and classic releases that still use the same discs as previous print runs - and of course half-length or short episodes)

[different]

Originally Posted by Zhou

My copy arrived today, and I can confirm it's the same smeary upscale as the Japanese BD release. I knew what I was getting into when I ordered this, so I won't complain. What's interesting is that Funimation did a 7-6 split between two BD50 discs instead of the usual 9-4 with a BD50 and a BD25.

Aww bummer. Thanks for taking one for the team. I'm just gonna keep my Geneon set.

[SpaceDandy]

I feel a bit bad for posting this, because it may not reflect the latest release from Kazé. These BD dates all the way back from 2012, when Kazé was a very prominent player in the "bad encode" domain and have since improved.

Also I took the worst disc of the set the way. As the episodes are oddly distributed across the three BDs: {1: [1, 2]; 2: [3, 4], 3: [5, 6, 7]}. I.e the last disc has three movies, for a total of four hours of content with 3 dubs.

The Garden of Sinners / Kara no Kyōkai - Movie 7 (Kazé - France, Netherlands, Germany*)
Authoring: Uncredited, probably Kazé France.
Movie gallery

MediaInfo:

[Show spoiler]

File size                                : 22.3 GiB
Duration                                 : 1 h 53 min
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 28.1 Mb/s
Movie name                               : THE GARDEN OF SINNERS Vol3

Video
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Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : High@L4.1
Format settings                          : CABAC / 3 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, Reference frames        : 3 frames
Format settings, GOP                     : M=3, N=12
Codec ID                                 : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration                                 : 1 h 53 min
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 17.0 Mb/s
Maximum bit rate                         : 22.0 Mb/s
Width                                    : 1 920 pixels
Height                                   : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Standard                                 : NTSC
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.342
Stream size                              : 13.5 GiB (60%)
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No
Color range                              : Limited
Color primaries                          : BT.709
Transfer characteristics                 : BT.709
Matrix coefficients                      : BT.709
Original source medium                   : Blu-ray

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Duration                                 : 1 h 53 min
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Channel(s)                               : 6 channels
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Stream size                              : 1.72 GiB (8%)
Title                                    : Surround 5.1
Language                                 : Japanese
Default                                  : Yes
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Audio #2
ID                                       : 3
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Format                                   : DTS
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Duration                                 : 1 h 53 min
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 1 509 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 6 channels
Channel layout                           : C L R Ls Rs LFE
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 93.750 FPS (512 SPF)
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 1.20 GiB (5%)
Title                                    : Surround 5.1
Language                                 : Japanese
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No
Original source medium                   : Blu-ray

Audio #3
ID                                       : 4
ID in the original source medium         : 4353 (0x1101)
Format                                   : DTS XLL
Format/Info                              : Digital Theater Systems
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Codec ID                                 : A_DTS
Duration                                 : 1 h 53 min
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 2 307 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 6 channels
Channel layout                           : C L R Ls Rs LFE
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 93.750 FPS (512 SPF)
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Compression mode                         : Lossless
Stream size                              : 1.84 GiB (8%)
Title                                    : Surround 5.1
Language                                 : French
Default                                  : No
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Original source medium                   : Blu-ray

Audio #4
ID                                       : 5
ID in the original source medium         : 4353 (0x1101)
Format                                   : DTS
Format/Info                              : Digital Theater Systems
Codec ID                                 : A_DTS
Duration                                 : 1 h 53 min
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 1 509 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 6 channels
Channel layout                           : C L R Ls Rs LFE
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 93.750 FPS (512 SPF)
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 1.20 GiB (5%)
Title                                    : Surround 5.1
Language                                 : French
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No
Original source medium                   : Blu-ray

Audio #5
ID                                       : 6
ID in the original source medium         : 4354 (0x1102)
Format                                   : DTS XLL
Format/Info                              : Digital Theater Systems
Commercial name                          : DTS-HD Master Audio
Codec ID                                 : A_DTS
Duration                                 : 1 h 53 min
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 2 016 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 6 channels
Channel layout                           : C L R Ls Rs LFE
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 93.750 FPS (512 SPF)
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Compression mode                         : Lossless
Stream size                              : 1.60 GiB (7%)
Title                                    : Surround 5.1
Language                                 : German
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No
Original source medium                   : Blu-ray

Audio #6
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Format                                   : DTS
Format/Info                              : Digital Theater Systems
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Duration                                 : 1 h 53 min
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 1 509 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 6 channels
Channel layout                           : C L R Ls Rs LFE
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 93.750 FPS (512 SPF)
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 1.20 GiB (5%)
Title                                    : Surround 5.1
Language                                 : German
Default                                  : No
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Original source medium                   : Blu-ray

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Language                                 : French
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Language                                 : French
Default                                  : No
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Text #3
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Format                                   : PGS
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Codec ID/Info                            : Picture based subtitle format used on BDs/HD-DVDs
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Text #4
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Codec ID/Info                            : Picture based subtitle format used on BDs/HD-DVDs
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Language                                 : German
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Text #5
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Format                                   : PGS
Codec ID                                 : S_HDMV/PGS
Codec ID/Info                            : Picture based subtitle format used on BDs/HD-DVDs
Duration                                 : 1 h 53 min
Bit rate                                 : 23.3 kb/s
Count of elements                        : 2816
Stream size                              : 18.9 MiB (0%)
Language                                 : Dutch
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No
Original source medium                   : Blu-ray

Menu
00:00:00.000                             : en:Chapter 01
00:03:40.637                             : en:Chapter 02
00:17:14.992                             : en:Chapter 03
00:26:54.779                             : en:Chapter 04
00:41:16.724                             : en:Chapter 05
00:52:33.316                             : en:Chapter 06
01:02:33.708                             : en:Chapter 07
01:13:10.302                             : en:Chapter 08
01:24:24.184                             : en:Chapter 09
01:35:42.069                             : en:Chapter 10
01:46:05.359                             : en:Chapter 11
01:51:06.868                             : en:Chapter 12
01:52:30.243                             : en:Chapter 13

Movie bitrate (Avg: 16.58, Max: 42.13 Mbps)

There's a lot of wrong here: constant video noise, colorbanding, blocking, texture flickering and probably some issues with the chroma, as there's some aliasing in selected scenes with a lot of red.

If you do frame-by-frame playback, you can notice a very slight frame pulsing. I-frames are mostly artifact-less, while P and B frames featuring most of the aforementionned defects. But between original video noise seen in i-frames & moving mess in the rest, it goes mostly unnoticed in most of the movie.

To illustrates some of these issues, I selected some consecutives (or neighbour) frames of two stills. On the first you can see the macroblocks moving around in the red background. The other one, with not-Shirō and Shiki lying on the bed, you can see one I-Frame as well as close by B or P one.

* The later release found in the the ~2016 reprint of the individual volumes appears to be a new, better encode.

EDIT for post below: Quite probably the first movies which were produced in SD or EDTV IIRC.

[NLScavenger]

iirc some of the films on the set had an average bitrate of less than 10 Mbps

[Rosenkreutz]

Anyone know if there's any difference between the trilogy collection and the individual releases for Mardock Scramble? I've never seen it before, but I've been curious about it for some time since it looks somewhat reminiscent of Ghost in the Shell. It seems pretty hard to come by these days so I mainly wanted to know in case it turned out that collecting the individual releases was cheaper than seeking out the trilogy collection. Also, does anyone know what the disc packaging for the trilogy collection looks like, do they each have their own spots or are they piled up on top of one another? If it's the latter then that's more than enough reason to seek out the individual releases instead.

[BigOnAnime]

Discs for the trilogy set most likely were brand new as Sentai rarely reuses discs and that release was from 2015, but I can't say for sure. One of the main things is improved video quality and smaller subs as the invidual releases were back from when Sentai's subs were way too big. As for how it was packaged, should just be a standard 3-disc VIVA Elite case, so no stacking. Sentai had stackpaks on Blu-ray only once or twice, and it was for stuff more than 3 discs. The trilogy set also comes with a slipcover which is very uncommon for single-case Sentai releases.

[Rosenkreutz]

Originally Posted by BigOnAnime

Discs for the trilogy set most likely were brand new as Sentai rarely reuses discs and that release was from 2015, but I can't say for sure. One of the main things is improved video quality and smaller subs as the invidual releases were back from when Sentai's subs were way too big. As for how it was packaged, should just be a standard 3-disc VIVA Elite case, so no stacking. Sentai had stackpaks on Blu-ray only once or twice, and it was for stuff more than 3 discs. The trilogy set also comes with a slipcover which is very uncommon for single-case Sentai releases.

Thanks a lot for the info, in that case I'll keep an eye out for trilogy set then. It be nice if Aniplex would actually re-release half of the stuff they own the licenses for, I know a lot of people like to complain about the prices of their releases, but they're still cheaper than what a lot of the old out of print sets can sometimes go for.