The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[professorwho]

They were fixed

[Bobo1313]

Originally Posted by Rosenkreutz

Hello, I'm new here, but recently I decided to finally start upgrading to Blu-ray. However, I noticed that there were a handful of older series that were only re-released in standard definition on Blu-ray, but I was curious if these releases were actually an upgrade from their previous DVD releases in terms of quality. I've read that SDBD releases can potentially be better, but that it depends on the particular title. The paticular SDBD releases I was curious to learn about are the below.

Eastern Star: "Fist of the North Star," "Blue Seed" & "Medabots"
Sentai Filmworks/Section23 Films: "Orphen" "Saiyuki" "Sakura Wars" "Pet Shop of Horrors" & "Kino's Journey."
Nozomi Entertainment: "A.D. Police to Protect and Serve"

Additionally, I've been perusing this thread a little bit and saw some posts talking about how some regular Blu-rays were actually a downgrade to their older DVD releases for one reason or another. Is there a compiled list of which anime fall into this category? The only examples I know of offhand are that some of the DBZ releases have washed out colors, The Big O no longer has it's iconic Flash Gordon-esque opening and apparently Ghost in the Shell SAC/2nd Gig are just total messes all around.

I can provide a list of all the DVDs that I was planning to upgrade to Blu-ray if that helps at all, though it's a bit lengthy...

"Afro Samurai," "Afro Samurai Resurrection," "Akira," "Baccano!" "Black Jack The Movie," "BLAME!," "Blue Submarine No. 6," "Boogiepop Phantom," "Captain Harlock Arcadia of My Youth," "Cowboy Bebop," "Cowboy Bebop - The Movie," "Space Adventure Cobra The Movie," "Cobra the Animation," "Crusher Joe The Movie," "Ergo Proxy," "Death Note," "Fatal Fury The Movie," "Fullmetal Alchemist," "Fullmetal Alchemist the Movie: Conqueror of Shamballa," "Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood," "The Garden of Sinners/Kara no Kyoukai," "Ghost in the Shell," "Ghost in the Shell 2 Innocence," "Golgo 13 The Professional," "GunGrave," "Gunsmith Cats," "Jin-Roh The Wolf Brigade," "Lupin the 3rd Bye Bye Lady Liberty/Dragon of Doom/Island of Assassins/Castle of Cagliostro/Legend of the Gold of Babylon/Pursuit of Harimao's Treasure/3rd Voyage to Danger," "Magic Knight Rayearth," "Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water," "New Cutey Honey," "NieA_7," "Night on the Galactic Railroad," "Ninja Scroll," "Outlaw Star," "Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt," "Paprika," "Patlabor," "Perfect Blue," "Pokemon Indigo League," "Pokemon Movies 1-3," "Princess Tutu," "Record Of The Lodoss War/Chronicles of a Heroic Knight," "Revolutionary Girl Utena," "Redline," "Riding Bean," "Robot Carnival," "Samurai Champloo," "Serial Experiments Lain," "Street Fighter II The Animated Movie," "Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust," "Wolf's Rain," "Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie," "Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions" & "Yu Yu Hakusho"

Any help would be much appreciated, in the meantime I'll keep browsing the earlier posts on the thread to see if any of my above questions were already addressed.

I'll pick out some

Robot Carnival - The complaint was the Bluray is widescreen as opposed to full screen, it's absolutely worth the upgrade.

Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust - I believe the complaint was it's darker, still a worthy of the upgrade.

Serial Experiments Lain - Bluray had banding and contrast boosting, still upgrade worthy.

Crusher Joe - Gorgeous on Bluray

Night on the Galactic Railroad - Not sure of the complaints, if any, but the Bluray is beautiful.

[Rosenkreutz]

Originally Posted by professorwho

Anything Discotek is good, so no need to worry on those ones. As for Sentai, avoid those SD-BDs. Not sure about Nozomi's one...

As for the rest... give me like, a day, and I can probably go title by title and say if they're worth the upgrade and which version to get on BD.

Thanks a lot, I really appreciate the assistance, the decision to switch over to Blu-ray has made me a little apprehensive since there's so many things I'd have to replace, it was only made worse when I found out that not all Blu-rays were actually better than their DVD counterparts.

It took a long while, but I just finished going through all of the older posts on this thread, though I did go at a somewhat brisk pace due to the sheer length so I may have missed some important info regarding a few titles. Based on what I could find it seems like these titles range from minor to major upgrades to their DVD counterparts: "Fullmetal Alchemist," (is Aniplex ever gonna reprint the 2003 version?) "Revolutionary Girl Utena," "Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust," "Wolf's Rain," "Gundam," "Ergo Proxy," "Patlabor," "Record of Lodoss War," "Perfect Blue," "Ninja Scroll," "Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie" "Outlaw Star," "Boogiepop Phantom" & "Galaxy Express."

I've heard mixed things about the Cowboy Bebop Blu-ray across the internet, some people claim the Blu-ray is the best release while others stand by the original DVDs. Additionally, I read some people saying that the old Geneon DVDs were better than Funimation's Samurai Champloo Blu-ray, but I'm not sure if that was only in reference to their initial release or their "anime essentials" release as well. Unrelated, but I also learned that the Blu-ray for "Millennium Actress" has a new dub now for some reason which put me on the fence about getting that one now since I recall the old dub sounding just fine. Same with "Escaflone," while I prefer the new script I personally much prefer most of the older voices.

Also, I forgot that I was also curious to know how the Blu-rays for "Steam Boy" and "Blood: The Last Vampire" were as well. As for Blood: The Last Vampire, I didn't even know it had gotten a blu-ray release, I wasn't too pleased to see how expensive a new copy of it was considering it's only like an hour long. A new copy of GitS: Solid State Society is pretty pricey as well, but at least I know the Blu-ray is supposed to be good unlike most of the other US GitS Blu-ray releases. I wish I could still get my hands on those Korean Blu-Rays for GitS SAC/2nd Gig, but sadly they're out of print and when I emailed Kimchi DVD about it there response made it sound like there wasn't any plans to restock them. I suppose I could try Amazon or Ebay, but I had heard that there might be bootleg versions of them on 3rd party sites such as those and I certainly wouldn't want to make a big investment for illegitimate products.

I saw some post regarding the Sentai SDBD releases and it looks like you were right, they don't look very good at all judging by the screenshots I saw for Pet Shop of Horrors and Sakura Wars, it looks like I should just stick with my old DVDs over any of Sentai's subpar SDBD releases. Speaking of which, I read that there were some issues with there Armored Trooper VOTOMS release as well, I have yet to see this series myself, but it looked interesting, but upon learning of Sentai's shoddy SDBD work I'm on the fence about getting this release. Granted, for an older series such as this it may be the only good option currently.

Lastly, while it's reassuring to hear that the Discotek SDBDs are actually good, are they in any way better than the previous DVD releases? When it comes to series that are fairly hard to acquire now like the individual Medabots DVDs I'm cautious about selling those off until I know for sure that SDBD releases are superior in someway outside of shelf space.

Regardless, thanks again for your willingness to look into so many titles for me, judging from your several posts on this thread it would appear that your very knowledgeable on the subject.

[NLScavenger]

Riding Bean and Gunsmith Cats are fine. The AnimEigo crowdfunded Blu-rays are nice.

Perfect Blue: the 2015 UK BD is better than 2019 US and UK BDs in terms of picture quality, but the 2019 editions have better extras.

Cowboy Bebop TV: US BD is a disaster (noise reduction, fake film grain and poor encoding). UK BD is better, but not great either. The Italian Dynit and French/German Dybex releases are vastly superior, but don't have English sub/dub.

Cowboy Bebop movie: Italian Dynit BD is best release and it has English sub/dub.

Akira and Ghost in the Shell are getting US 4K UHD releases, so you might want to wait. They've been noise reduced, but colors look imo nicer. Ghost in the Shell is out very soon (September 8)

[Rosenkreutz]

Originally Posted by Bobo1313

I'll pick out some

Robot Carnival - The complaint was the Bluray is widescreen as opposed to full screen, it's absolutely worth the upgrade.

Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust - I believe the complaint was it's darker, still a worthy of the upgrade.

Serial Experiments Lain - Bluray had banding and contrast boosting, still upgrade worthy.

Crusher Joe - Gorgeous on Bluray

Night on the Galactic Railroad - Not sure of the complaints, if any, but the Bluray is beautiful.

Thanks a lot for your input, I'm not too familiar with Blu-ray releases yet since I only just recently committed to upgrading so any information I can get is much appreciated. I've been collecting DVDs for so long now that it was kind of a hard choice to make, especially since I had been under the false impression that Blu-rays were only nominally better. The two factors that finally motivated me to do so were 1. anime DVD releases appear to be getting slowly shifted out for Blu-ray which ironically makes the DVDs more expensive and hard to acquire and 2. Some series appear to have really benefited from the format, when I saw the Nozomi side by side comparison of G Gundam it became really hard to deny Blu-rays potential for improved visual quality.

Speaking of Night on the Galactic Railroad, I believe the old US DVD release was a VHS transfer so I imagine the Blu-ray could only be an improvement from there. I think I recall reading that the old Lain DVDs had a similar issue so even though the Blu-ray release sounds far from perfect it would seem to still be an upgrade nonetheless.

[Rosenkreutz]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

Riding Bean and Gunsmith Cats are fine. The AnimEigo crowdfunded Blu-rays are nice.

Perfect Blue: the 2015 UK BD is better than 2019 US and UK BDs in terms of picture quality, but the 2019 editions have better extras.

Cowboy Bebop TV: US BD is a disaster (noise reduction, fake film grain and poor encoding). UK BD is better, but not great either. The Italian Dynit and French/German Dybex releases are vastly superior, but don't have English sub/dub.

Cowboy Bebop movie: Italian Dynit BD is best release and it has English sub/dub.

Akira and Ghost in the Shell are getting US 4K UHD releases, so you might want to wait. They've been noise reduced, but colors look imo nicer. Ghost in the Shell is out very soon (September 8)

Thanks a lot for this information, I suspected that the Riding Bean and Gunsmith Cats Blu-rays would be improvements since I read that they were crowdfunded, I imagine this likely applies to Bubblegum Crisis as well, correct?

Would you say that I'm better off sticking with my trusty OG Cowboy Bebop DVDs? Admittedly, I was planning on keeping them either way since I know the Blu-ray uses the Remix version of the show which made some minor edits, but if the Blu-ray is truly such a disastor perhaps it's not worth getting at all. Is the original CB movie better on DVD than Blu-ray as far as the US releases go?

As for things like Cobra, Akira, Perfect Blue and GitS, can 4K UHD play on regular BD and DVD/BD Players or would I need an entirely different player for those? The only thing that makes me hesitant about getting the 4k releases over the regular BD ones is the potential hassle of needing to have 2 to 3 different types of disk players.

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by Rosenkreutz

Thanks a lot for this information, I suspected that the Riding Bean and Gunsmith Cats Blu-rays would be improvements since I read that they were crowdfunded, I imagine this likely applies to Bubblegum Crisis as well, correct?

Would you say that I'm better off sticking with my trusty OG Cowboy Bebop DVDs? Admittedly, I was planning on keeping them either way since I know the Blu-ray uses the Remix version of the show which made some minor edits, but if the Blu-ray is truly such a disastor perhaps it's not worth getting at all. Is the original CB movie better on DVD than Blu-ray as far as the US releases go?

As for things like Cobra, Akira, Perfect Blue and GitS, can 4K UHD play on regular BD and DVD/BD Players or would I need an entirely different player for those? The only thing that makes me hesitant about getting the 4k releases over the regular BD ones is the potential hassle of needing to have 2 to 3 different types of disk players.

Bubblegum Crisis is pretty good too. The original crowdfunded release is slightly better than the 2018 re-release because of higher video bitrate and lossless audio, but the 2018 re-release is fine too.

The Cowboy Bebop series picture quality on the US Blu-ray is an improvement over the OG DVD, so I think it's still worth picking up if you cannot import any of the superior alternatives.

The 2018 Funimation steelbook release of the movie is better than the DVD. The 2011 Image Blu-ray of the movie also has better picture quality than DVD, but JP/ENG audio is 2.0 instead of 5.1 and no extras.

The 4K UHD discs won't play on your regular BD player.

[Rosenkreutz]

I see good to know, perhaps I'll get the blu-rays for Cowboy Bebop and the Big O while still keeping their original releases since both have pros and cons. I was thinking about getting the steelbook for the film so it's good to hear that it's an improvement, I saw that the series was getting a steelbook as well, but I don't know, something about the artwork on that one looks weird to me. Granted, I think it's supposed to be the same as the standard release anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter.

It's too bad that the 4K UHD ones require a separate player are the players for them backward compatible at least? I'd understand if maybe they didn't do regular DVDs, but it be kind of weird if they couldn't at least play regular Blu-rays on top of 4k ones.

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by Rosenkreutz

I see good to know, perhaps I'll get the blu-rays for Cowboy Bebop and the Big O while still keeping their original releases since both have pros and cons. I was thinking about getting the steelbook for the film so it's good to hear that it's an improvement, I saw that the series was getting a steelbook as well, but I don't know, something about the artwork on that one looks weird to me. Granted, I think it's supposed to be the same as the standard release anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter.

It's too bad that the 4K UHD ones require a separate player are the players for them backward compatible at least? I'd understand if maybe they didn't do regular DVDs, but it be kind of weird if they couldn't at least play regular Blu-rays on top of 4k ones.

Yes, they're backwards compatible.

[Rosenkreutz]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

Yes, they're backwards compatible.

Seeing as 4K Blu-ray players can apparently play regular DVDs as well, maybe it would be worth getting one. Though in reality, it only be good for a select few anime since I personally think live action films look horrendous in 4k. I have no desire to see the pores of all the actor's skin and it just makes everything look like a weird home video, imo.

I must say though, that artwork for the 4k release of GitS is really stylish. Right now I think the only 4k anime which is currently already out that I'd be interested in is Space Adventure Cobra, but how would you rate that release over the regular Blu-ray release? I saw some talk of it earlier when I was going through the whole thread and saw some mixed opinions and it sort of looked like the colors were a bit washed out, for example Cobra's outfit in the screenshot I saw looked like a far brighter shade of red than it should be.

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by Rosenkreutz

Seeing as 4K Blu-ray players can apparently play regular DVDs as well, maybe it would be worth getting one. Though in reality, it only be good for a select few anime since I personally think live action films look horrendous in 4k. I have no desire to see the pores of all the actor's skin and it just makes everything look like a weird home video, imo.

I must say though, that artwork for the 4k release of GitS is really stylish. Right now I think the only 4k anime which is currently already out that I'd be interested in is Space Adventure Cobra, but how would you rate that release over the regular Blu-ray release? I saw some talk of it earlier when I was going through the whole thread and saw some mixed opinions and it sort of looked like the colors were a bit washed out, for example Cobra's outfit in the screenshot I saw looked like a far brighter shade of red than it should be.

I don't have Cobra, so can't comment on it. Despite the heavy use of noise reduction, people seem to like the transfer because of the use of HDR.

[pikagreg]

Originally Posted by professorwho

They were fixed

That's good to know. I held off for awhile and still have my old DVD's with a milliondiscs in the clampshell thing lol

[vincentric]

Didn't go over the SDBD of FotNS with a fine tooth comb, just had a quick glance at the first few eps but pq was looking real good to me fwiw, may have to post up some screenies of it one of these days.

[BlackDevil]

There was no change to the Cowboy Bebop TV discs on the US steelbook release that came out this year right?

[pikagreg]

Originally Posted by BlackDevil

There was no change to the Cowboy Bebop TV discs on the US steelbook release that came out this year right?

The quality should be the same as the old release though I think they did add one new extra that came with the Ultimate Edition.

[Lambadelta]

Ok

I received Blood+ BD Box.



Screencaps from Episode 1


Overall its obviously an upscale. The lines are soft, and there is some small amounts of banding (but this banding is on the DVDs as well). There is some detail loss in some images compared to the DVDs, but there is also some detailed revealed so its not all bad/good. An example of this mix would be image 6 where you can see more detail in the hand on the BD, but you can notice the detail around the eye is slightly less than the DVD

I did my best to do some comparison pictures. I noticed only after the fact image 4 is slightly a frame or 2 off.

https://slow.pics/c/3jfk6yLg

I personally would consider this set an upgrade purely because the lack of compression noise from the DVD MPEG2 compression is worth the slight detail loss in some small parts of the scene, and the detailed gained elsewhere is a nice bonus.

It's a competent upscale that doesn't cause any glaring issues. I would say at the price of the set if you already have the DVDs then there isn't any real reason to grab this, but if your like me and don't mind unsubbed/dubbed sets, and don't want to risk disc rot then its definitely worth a pickup at the right price.

General
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Overall bit rate mode          : Variable
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Movie name                     : BLOOD+ Blu-ray Disc BOX DISC 01
Encoded date                   : UTC 2020-09-02 15:27:37
Writing application            : MakeMKV v1.15.2 win(x64-release)
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Video
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Format profile                 : High@L4.1
Format settings                : CABAC / 4 Ref Frames
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Format settings, Reference fra : 4 frames
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Maximum bit rate               : 40.0 Mb/s
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Language                       : English
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Original source medium         : Blu-ray

Audio
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Title                          : Stereo
Language                       : Japanese
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Original source medium         : Blu-ray

Menu
00:00:00.000                   : en:Chapter 01
00:01:36.029                   : en:Chapter 02
00:03:10.023                   : en:Chapter 03
00:12:00.986                   : en:Chapter 04
00:21:55.981                   : en:Chapter 05
00:23:26.004                   : en:Chapter 06
00:23:57.035                   : en:Chapter 07
00:24:37.075                   : en:Chapter 08
00:26:11.069                   : en:Chapter 09
00:31:48.973                   : en:Chapter 10
00:45:52.449                   : en:Chapter 11
00:47:22.973                   : en:Chapter 12
00:47:54.004                   : en:Chapter 13
00:48:55.999                   : en:Chapter 14
00:50:30.060                   : en:Chapter 15
00:57:37.053                   : en:Chapter 16
01:09:49.985                   : en:Chapter 17
01:11:20.009                   : en:Chapter 18
01:11:51.040                   : en:Chapter 19
01:12:45.094                   : en:Chapter 20
01:14:19.087                   : en:Chapter 21
01:23:43.018                   : en:Chapter 22
01:33:47.021                   : en:Chapter 23
01:35:17.044                   : en:Chapter 24
01:35:48.075                   : en:Chapter 25
01:36:53.073                   : en:Chapter 26
01:38:27.134                   : en:Chapter 27
01:45:42.069                   : en:Chapter 28
01:57:44.057                   : en:Chapter 29
01:59:14.080                   : en:Chapter 30
01:59:45.111                   : en:Chapter 31
02:01:30.149                   : en:Chapter 32
02:03:04.143                   : en:Chapter 33
02:09:09.141                   : en:Chapter 34
02:21:41.092                   : en:Chapter 35
02:23:11.115                   : en:Chapter 36
02:23:42.146                   : en:Chapter 37
02:25:11.169                   : en:Chapter 38
02:26:45.163                   : en:Chapter 39
02:34:51.148                   : en:Chapter 40
02:45:38.128                   : en:Chapter 41
02:47:08.151                   : en:Chapter 42

[professorwho]

Lamba, you'll have to put the comparison link either in a quote or code, as this forum doesn't like that specific site.

[Lambadelta]

Originally Posted by professorwho

Lamba, you'll have to put the comparison link either in a quote or code, as this forum doesn't like that specific site.

oh. I'll do that quickly then

[BigOnAnime]

Originally Posted by BlackDevil

There was no change to the Cowboy Bebop TV discs on the US steelbook release that came out this year right?

Hardly anyone in this industry ever makes new discs save for Sentai Filmworks (most of their re-releases have new discs, even when it doesn't make much sense), 99% of the time when it comes to FUNimation, a re-release uses the prior release discs. About the only recent instances of new discs when it comes to FUNimation was the Samurai Champloo Anime Classics Blu-ray fixed the problems from the prior release, the Mamoru Hosoda Collection release of Wolf Children has new discs, and that's about it.

[Rosenkreutz]

Originally Posted by BigOnAnime

Hardly anyone in this industry ever makes new discs save for Sentai Filmworks (most of their re-releases have new discs, even when it doesn't make much sense), 99% of the time when it comes to FUNimation, a re-release uses the prior release discs. About the only recent instances of new discs when it comes to FUNimation was the Samurai Champloo Anime Classics Blu-ray fixed the problems from the prior release, the Mamoru Hosoda Collection release of Wolf Children has new discs, and that's about it.

I was just looking into the Blu-ray release for Samurai Shamploo, I had read that the first release had a lot of DNR issues, but it's good to hear that those were fixed, looks like another DVD set that I can replace without worry, there's still quite a few that I need to look more into though.

Speaking of Samurai, I recently read something talking about how the "Complete Murder Sessions" version of Afro Samurai fixed some issues with the previous releases, I think it was something regarding the lack of lossless audio. This version is out of print and fairly expensive, so I was curious if the current standalone releases still had any issues or not since I'd only want to track down the Complete Murder Sessions if they did.

Also, I just noticed that there seemed to be two releases for "Ergo Proxy" the "Classics" and a "10th Anniversary" one. The latter seems to have some extra special features, but is that the only difference? I was curious if it was worth throwing an extra $30 for that specific version or not. I think I might like the look of the 10th Anniversary one a little more, but the Classics one would fit in more with the other Classics series that I was planning to get.