The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[slerch666]

Originally Posted by slerch666

I still owe you this.

Been busy at work and too afraid to come back to see how much I've missed in the time I've avoided the site.

Will see about this tomorrow.

My monitor isn't 4K. Struggling to figure out a good way to capture a tone mapped cap at full res. Can only seem to grab 1080p.

[Yuripa]

Since Gkids will release Genius party/Beyond soon, why not posting the UK BD stats.
Encoding settings left on, Yellow subs, pretty good encoding overall, yeah no doubt it's a Media OCD justin Sevakis encode.

Bitrate graph (Genius Party) :

Screengrab (Genius Party) : https://imgur.com/a/T5om1I7
MediaInfo : https://pastebin.com/tgw5YYs4

I wonder if Gkids will re-use the UK discs or if they'll go the Shoutfactory way~

[professorwho]

The site's first SDBD anime review is up- Pet Shop of Horrors.




Yikes.

Even if the caps were taken wrong (which I doubt) it's clear the source is in terrible condition.

I'm more on board with SDBD than Neil, but I totally agree this should've just stayed on DVD with a source that bad (plus, it's just 4 episodes- I doubt Sentai encoded this at 15+ mbps to justify a SDBD release).

[Dailyan]

That's a mighty fine lookin' Laserdisc.

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by Dailyan

That's a mighty fine lookin' Laserdisc.

I've seen Laserdiscs look way better than that.

[GeoffOliver]

I don’t know why Neil was making such a big deal about this being SD-on-BD. It says so very prominently on the front packaging. It’s not like it was a secret or anything. I don’t think these discs should be reviewed the same on sites like this since video quality is clearly not a concern for them. The price is super cheap too and likely will get lower. The only reason Sentai released this on BD was because they are trying to stop their DVD production altogether. With that said, I do prefer SD content stay on DVD.

[Kyle15]

As long as it's true to source and not in terrible shape, SD content on Blu is more than welcome. No DVD compression is a nice boost and better than silly upscales.

[Mikezilla3k]

Originally Posted by professorwho

The site's first SDBD anime review is up- Pet Shop of Horrors.

[Show spoiler]

Yikes.

Even if the caps were taken wrong (which I doubt) it's clear the source is in terrible condition.

I'm more on board with SDBD than Neil, but I totally agree this should've just stayed on DVD with a source that bad (plus, it's just 4 episodes- I doubt Sentai encoded this at 15+ mbps to justify a SDBD release).

From the review, I'm guessing they decided to review this just so that they could say "Here's an example on why SDBD is awful!"

[slerch666]

Originally Posted by professorwho

I'm more on board with SDBD than Neil, but I totally agree this should've just stayed on DVD with a source that bad (plus, it's just 4 episodes- I doubt Sentai encoded this at 15+ mbps to justify a SDBD release).

Xabungle is much the same. As is everything else they have done.

The thing is that Sentai has stated they won't release DVDs anymore so it's either this or nothing I guess.

[slerch666]

Originally Posted by Nostalgic Twilight

Those Who Hunt Elves, eh? I haven’t seen that show in ages. I kind of want to pick up the SD-BD and watch it again now.

Those Who Hunt Elves is good. No interlaced frame issues so it seems they authored it correctly.

That being sad, it's from an LD source so don't expect Discotek quality. Or maybe assume this will look like DVD from LD source without any compression issues since that's basically what it is.

[Kyle15]

Sorry if this has been asked for the upteenth time, but how is Madoka Magica's UK release? No compression problems?

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by Kyle15

Sorry if this has been asked for the upteenth time, but how is Madoka Magica's UK release? No compression problems?

Madoka TV Series - wrong gamma, compression artefacts. Episode 7 uses broadcast version audio, so animation and audio don't match up.
Madoka Movie 1 & 2 - clone of Aniplex release
Madoka Rebellion - wrong gamma, lots of banding.

[TThomas]

Any known issues (banding? missing features?) with Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches from Funi?
sings-only subtitle-track included?

[Kyle15]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

Madoka TV Series - wrong gamma, compression artefacts. Episode 7 uses broadcast version audio, so animation and audio don't match up.
Madoka Movie 1 & 2 - clone of Aniplex release
Madoka Rebellion - wrong gamma, lots of banding.

Yucky! I assume it's Aniplex USA or bust on this one? Nothing comparable out there?

[Lambadelta]

Originally Posted by Kyle15

Yucky! I assume it's Aniplex USA or bust on this one? Nothing comparable out there?

The Italian BDs are apparently better than JPs iirc

[Naiera]

Yes, some say even quite a bit better. No English subtitles, of course.

[NLScavenger]

Madoka TV series Dynit BD is really nice because it was debanded.

The Dynit movies BDs are clones of the Aniplex release.

[jd213]

Originally Posted by Lambadelta

Slayers S1 JP BD

Oh boy this is a pretty lazy release, and I'm a tad gutted.

The release is a SD upscale of the footage from their previous DVD box release.

[Show spoiler]
JP BD

Spanish BD

I got a used copy of the LD box for the first season of Slayers a while ago for the measly sum of 900 yen, and captured the first volume on my Sony BD recorder (which records external analog video in h264 instead of MPEG2 like DVD recorders and most other BD recorders).

Not surprised to see that these LDs from the mid 90s used the same master as the BDs (but the BDs are slightly cropped). There's certainly a bit more analog noise and ringing compared to the BD, but it looks much more natural, and I didn't notice any ghosting (saw ObiKenobi on Fandompost mention something about this for the R2 DVDs). Although to be fair, I have an HLD-X9 LD player, which is the 2nd most high-end player ever released in Japan, so the LDs won't look this good on most other setups.

Here's a screenshot of the same shot as above, LMK if anyone wants shots from any other specific scenes (only have first 4 eps captured so far):

[Show spoiler]

[Lambadelta]

not surprised by the cropping. I was thinking it was a bit cropped when I was checking it out.

Ye I think Ghosting got introduced onto the DVD source somehow since its pretty much prevalent in every release since then.

I have S3 Spanish BD coming so will be checking that upscale vs DVDs soon.

I'm curious if JP S2 will be a better job, but with it being 4 discs again I think it'll be another lazy upscale job for like 18,000 yen

[Yuripa]

Since I recently got the Aniplex JP BD-box for Darker Than Black, might as well share the stats.
The whole serie (25 episodes) is encoded on 5 BD50, 6 ep per disc exept the last 2 discs where only 4 episodes are burned in.
All episodes are encoded in one big file per disc.

The encode is pretty much flawless, nothing to report here, even the dark scenes (this show is filled with thoses) show no banding.
The image have a soft rendering, it's not as sharp as news production, but that's because the production was not made in HD.

For the audio, I don't know why they put a AC-3 track when they already put the superior PCM track, there is no difference in the track, it's not a commentary track or something else.
Anyway the PCM track is perfect.

If AoA ever re-release that serie, this is what we'll be getting :

Bitrate viewer (6 episodes) :


Screengrabs : https://imgur.com/a/UHMmBvx
Mediainfo (6 episodes) : https://pastebin.com/CTBL1YMM

Complete unboxing : https://ilvvatar.wordpress.com/2019/...-box-unboxing/