To anyone who owns TOEI's DVD's and have seen/own FUNi's...

[Gohan-kun]

I have a question. I know that the video quality in TOEI's is in progressive format. My question is, how much better is the video quality than FUNimations? And how much better is the sound than FUNimation's?

[VegettoEX]

I don't own any of the "Dragon Box" sets, but I can help explain a few things...

It's really difficult to say which is "better" than the other. Toei's sets are at a much higher bitrate; but this has nothing to do with the fact that it's not FUNimation doing them. All R2 DVDs are traditionally at MUCH higher bitrates than R1 DVDs (usually twice as much); they're also ridiculously more expensive, with less episode counts.

Toei's done a good deal of scratch removal and such, while FUNimation has fiddled with the colors a bit more (mostly using some saturation filters, which can add a greal deal of vibrance to the picture). It really goes back and forth... both have advantages over the other, in terms of video quality.

When it comes to progressive vs. interlaced... keep in mind that unless you're watching progressive footage on something like a digital HDTV with a DVD player with hardware-enabled progressive playback...

Your DVD player is going to interlace the footage on playback. This is called a 3:2 pulldown. Film rate is 23.976 fps, which is telecined up to 29.97 fps for regular NTSC playback. A flag can be set on 23.976 fps video streams that tells the player to interlace it on-the-fly during playback, which is exactly what is being done. So essentially, you're watching interlaced footage no matter what you watch.

As for the sound... they're both about the same. Once you start getting above 224 kbps audio, especially on an old monoaural source like DBZ, they really are essentially the same thing.

So that's that... sorta, not really. It's just a matter of preference. Go with what you like, and what you plan on doing with it! If you just want to sit back and enjoy the show with great subtitles, go with FUNimation's. If you want to see the show as Toei presents it (and have the cash), go with theirs.

No matter what you do, have fun with it! That's what it's all about ^_~

[Gohan-kun]

Thanks for the reply. You seem to know a lot about this stuff so I have one more question:

If I were to get HDTV, and a progressive scan DVD player, will the picture quality of DBZ DVD's still improve over my regular 27 inch JVC TV, even though the DVD's themselves aren't progressive? Would having HDTV increase the picture of the DVD's over my regular TV? Thanks for the help

[Dai]

Actually, EX, FUNi also cuts some of the footage away... As in the bottom part and such is not shown on their DVD's. TOEI leaves in all content. Also, FUNi's DVD's tend to be darkened, which makes a lot of things unclear and grainy. That, and FUNi's DVD's are a bit more grainy than they could be... While TOEI's hardly are, at all.

That's just my personal experience, anyway.

[VegettoEX]

Actually, EX, FUNi also cuts some of the footage away... As in the bottom part and such is not shown on their DVD's. TOEI leaves in all content.

Is this due to you just not seeing it on FUNi's discs due to it being in the NTSC safe-zone? The same could be said for Toei's discs, probably, but I haven't taken, say, exact shots from both discs to see if there's a difference. Not much of a big deal, though ^^;;

Also, FUNi's DVD's tend to be darkened, which makes a lot of things unclear and grainy. That, and FUNi's DVD's are a bit more grainy than they could be... While TOEI's hardly are, at all.

The grain is really mostly due to the low-bitrate. That'll take whatever grain is there, anyway, and kinda amplify it. There's some on Toei's... but you just don't notice it because it's pretty well taken care of ^^.

[Gohan-kun]

I always thought grain was due to the age of the masters.

Oh and EX, could you answer my other question?

[VegettoEX]

A progressive-able player will still play back interlaced footage as interlaced; you can't exactly inverse-telecine footage on the fly ^^;;.

So if you were to get a super kick-ass TV with a super-kick ass DVD player, FUNimation's discs are still going to be at a low-bitrate and interlaced-only. The colors will still be extremely vibrant, and the audio will sound nice.... but you can't really improve upon something that's mastered, like that.

If you want to do what I do for my videos... and IVTC all the footage, color-correct it, and do some temporal cleaning on them... re-export it all back to MPEG-2 and make a DVD.... sure, do whatever you want .

[Gohan-kun]

Oh ok. I know that with a HDTV and progressive scan DVD player won't make the DVD progressive but I always thought HDTV would make the picture look better than my 27 inch JVC. Thanks for the info.