The Thread About All Things Macross

[El_Fez]

So does anyone have the Robotech blu ray sets? I saw them on amazon for 25-ish bucks, and I wouldn't mind watching the series again.

The review here on the site is kind of light on details. Are they were worth the 75 bucks? Hows the A/V and that sort of thing.

[tuffy]

Originally Posted by El_Fez

So does anyone have the Robotech blu ray sets? I saw them on amazon for 25-ish bucks, and I wouldn't mind watching the series again.

The review here on the site is kind of light on details. Are they were worth the 75 bucks? Hows the A/V and that sort of thing.

It looks exactly like a lot of old anime on 16mm film presented in HD with no significant cleanup of any kind. That means a pretty aggressive amount of grain at all times and occasional blemishes. But at the same time, it's about as good as the show's ever going to look. ~33 hours of nostalgia for 75 bucks is a pretty good deal in terms of bucks-per-minute, at least.

[El_Fez]

Okay, sounds like if I keep my expectations in check I should be good. Kind of like the Doctor Who blu rays - they look amazing, but at the end of the day you're still watching something that was shot on video tape in 1974.

[LexInHD]

Originally Posted by El_Fez

So does anyone have the Robotech blu ray sets? I saw them on amazon for 25-ish bucks, and I wouldn't mind watching the series again.

The review here on the site is kind of light on details. Are they were worth the 75 bucks? Hows the A/V and that sort of thing.

You can fire up Funimation/Crunchyroll and see for yourself. HG did an HD telecine transfer of their vaulted 16mm dupes, with no clean-up or digital remastering done, conformed the video to the Robotech Remastered edits and synced it to the 5.1 audio from the Robotech Remastered DVDs, adding upscaled intro and outro to make complete episodes. It had to be done that way, because no HD remastering of Southern Cross exists and HG has no access to original Japanese materials beyond whatever they had been furnished as part of the original licensing agreement and have been furnished with any subsequent dealings with the content owners. The consensus is that there is no reason that anyone should be paying more than $20 per set for these releases, based on the quality of what's provided for the purchase price.

[CouncilSpectre]

Even though they're all supposedly friends now, if I were BW/SN I wouldn't give HG sh*t.

"Sure you can still block OG Macross, but we'll make sure that Robotech ALWAYS looks like ass. Your move HG...."

[Dave_Zero1]

Um...

https://store.crunchyroll.com/produc...893187713.html

Anyone got a betamax?

[nyaa]

No Betamax but a VHS deck. I remember that they made Betamax to VHS adaptors.
https://www.amazon.com/beta-vhs-adap...to+vhs+adapter

[Noir Black Schwarz]

Originally Posted by El_Fez

Okay, sounds like if I keep my expectations in check I should be good. Kind of like the Doctor Who blu rays - they look amazing, but at the end of the day you're still watching something that was shot on video tape in 1974.

Except Doctor Who is limited. Macross was animated on film and they could easily clean up the show better if they wanted to.

[kevers7290]

Originally Posted by nyaa

No Betamax but a VHS deck. I remember that they made Betamax to VHS adaptors.
https://www.amazon.com/beta-vhs-adap...to+vhs+adapter

Those are VHS-C adapters, they don't work with betamax tapes. Those are for the small camcorders that used VHS-C tapes. There are no betamax to VHS tape adapters AFAIK.

[Zen_Amako]

I tried to watch the Macross Flash Back 2012 Blu-ray that was included with my Macross: Do You Remember Love? 30th Anniversary box set today and the disc no longer works in any of my players. I had Shoji Kawamori sign the BD case at Otakon earlier this year but I hadn't spun the disc in a while. The disc itself looks fine but it won't play in my PS3, PS5, Sony Blu-ray player or Panasonic 4K UHD player. Bummer.

[jd213]

Hmm, that's concerning. Do you have a BD drive you can check it in? My copy is in storage, will have to check it sometime. Wouldn't be a huge loss for me since I also have the Laserdisc (and a high-bitrate capture of it) and the BD is just an upscale of the composite master IIRC, but I don't think I've ever had a JP BD go bad on me, so it would piss me off royally if it ever happens...

[nyaa]

Originally Posted by kevers7290

Those are VHS-C adapters, they don't work with betamax tapes. Those are for the small camcorders that used VHS-C tapes. There are no betamax to VHS tape adapters AFAIK.

Funny, I could have sworn they made full size betamax to vhs adaptors. Better to get an old working betamax deck I guess.

[Zen_Amako]

Originally Posted by jd213

Hmm, that's concerning. Do you have a BD drive you can check it in? My copy is in storage, will have to check it sometime. Wouldn't be a huge loss for me since I also have the Laserdisc (and a high-bitrate capture of it) and the BD is just an upscale of the composite master IIRC, but I don't think I've ever had a JP BD go bad on me, so it would piss me off royally if it ever happens...

My BD drive doesn’t work properly these days, so I didn’t try that. On my Sony Blu-ray player, it did play the copyright message (read by the voice actor for Misa), but that’s as far as it would go. I’ve never had a JP BD go bad on me, but I seem to recall that some people have had issues with playing this disc. I know it worked when I got it.

[kevers7290]

Originally Posted by nyaa

Funny, I could have sworn they made full size betamax to vhs adaptors. Better to get an old working betamax deck I guess.

Good luck finding a functioning Beta deck in 2023. Absolutely not worth it. Especially if only to view an antique copy of Macross which may or may not even work. The tape could be brittle and immediately break apart upon playback, or if it was exposed to anything magnetic in its long term storage it could simply have been erased.

[nyaa]

Oh, I know all about old tapes and old decks. I still have an old fully functional Philipps S-VHS deck that's been in storage for 10 years and about 40 assorted anime tapes. Anybody who pays $40 for a hoary old Macross tape is a fool.

[Lum]

Originally Posted by tuffy

It looks exactly like a lot of old anime on 16mm film presented in HD with no significant cleanup of any kind. That means a pretty aggressive amount of grain at all times and occasional blemishes. But at the same time, it's about as good as the show's ever going to look. ~33 hours of nostalgia for 75 bucks is a pretty good deal in terms of bucks-per-minute, at least.

Due to lack of information, I kept the DVDs for the first saga, while switching the second and third volumes to blu-ray. It sounded to me like the Macross portion of the upscale had the most issues.

[CouncilSpectre]

Originally Posted by Lum

Due to lack of information, I kept the DVDs for the first saga, while switching the second and third volumes to blu-ray. It sounded to me like the Macross portion of the upscale had the most issues.

From memory, there's no great/obvious option. The Robotech Remastered DVDs look better, and re-insert some previously exorcised scenes, but introduce the poor 5.1 audio track.

The original ADV DVDs retain the stereo track but don't look as good.

[milo bloom]

If you want to save money, I see the DVDs in the used places all the time, both the first release and the remastered.

[kk1]

Huh thought CR would have the Robotech CE $100 price for the whole length of their sale, looks like the price went back up already :/

[Member-571539]

Originally Posted by kk1

Huh thought CR would have the Robotech CE $100 price for the whole length of their sale, looks like the price went back up already :/

Their sales have been changing slightly week-by-week.