Detail Loss in the Orange Bricks: Not Seeing It

TheBlackPaladin · Post by **TheBlackPaladin** » Thu Dec 15, 2011 1:31 am

Well, this does bring up an interesting point. Namely, the comparison of what the casual consumer sees and what the hardcore fan sees. I hate the Orange Bricks now, but I honestly thought they looked incredible when I first bought them. It wasn't until I went to Daizex and saw the screenshots that I really noticed anything bad. It would seem that most other people didn't notice anything too bad, either--the Dragon Boxes are discontinued, the Orange Bricks aren't. Just saiyan.'

Perfect · Post by **Perfect** » Thu Dec 15, 2011 1:36 am

TheBlackPaladin wrote:Well, this does bring up an interesting point. Namely, the comparison of what the casual consumer sees and what the hardcore fan sees. I hate the Orange Bricks now, but I honestly thought they looked incredible when I first bought them. It wasn't until I went to Daizex and saw the screenshots that I really noticed anything bad. It would seem that most other people didn't notice anything too bad, either--the Dragon Boxes are discontinued, the Orange Bricks aren't. Just saiyan.'

They were planned as limited releases from the start. Plus I doubt the BRs would be discontinued, let alone not revered by the casual consumer over the OBs.

TheBlackPaladin · Post by **TheBlackPaladin** » Thu Dec 15, 2011 1:41 am

Perfect wrote:
TheBlackPaladin wrote:Well, this does bring up an interesting point. Namely, the comparison of what the casual consumer sees and what the hardcore fan sees. I hate the Orange Bricks now, but I honestly thought they looked incredible when I first bought them. It wasn't until I went to Daizex and saw the screenshots that I really noticed anything bad. It would seem that most other people didn't notice anything too bad, either--the Dragon Boxes are discontinued, the Orange Bricks aren't. Just saiyan.'
They were planned as limited releases from the start. Plus I doubt the BRs would be discontinued, let alone not revered by the casual consumer over the OBs.

Well, I could be wrong, and if I am, someone feel free to say so. However, is there any indication that they were planned as a limited release from the start? FUNimation's tone seemed to change regarding the Dragon Boxes as time went on. For example, as I recall, the initial announcement mentioned the acquisition of the movies in Dragon Box format...which were never released in North America. More to the point, though, I don't think the initial announcement said anything about a limited release. I really wish I could recall the specific date and interview, but I vaguely recall that the first mention of the term "limited release" with regard to the Dragon Boxes was with an ANN interview with a FUNimation staff member (the head of marketing?), several months after a few of the Dragon Boxes had already been released.

I took that to mean that FUNimation wanted to wait to see how well the Dragon Boxes would do, and when they didn't perform amazingly well, they were quietly discontinued. In other words, they were not meant to be a limited release, but became one when sales didn't justify continuing to print them. Again, that's just my impression based on my memory. If any of it is off, feel free to say so.

Perfect · Post by **Perfect** » Thu Dec 15, 2011 1:53 am

TheBlackPaladin wrote:
Perfect wrote:
TheBlackPaladin wrote:Well, this does bring up an interesting point. Namely, the comparison of what the casual consumer sees and what the hardcore fan sees. I hate the Orange Bricks now, but I honestly thought they looked incredible when I first bought them. It wasn't until I went to Daizex and saw the screenshots that I really noticed anything bad. It would seem that most other people didn't notice anything too bad, either--the Dragon Boxes are discontinued, the Orange Bricks aren't. Just saiyan.'
They were planned as limited releases from the start. Plus I doubt the BRs would be discontinued, let alone not revered by the casual consumer over the OBs.
Well, I could be wrong, and if I am, someone feel free to say so. However, is there any indication that they were planned as a limited release from the start? FUNimation's tone seemed to change regarding the Dragon Boxes as time went on. For example, as I recall, the initial announcement mentioned the acquisition of the movies in Dragon Box format...which were never released in North America. More to the point, though, I don't think the initial announcement said anything about a limited release. I really wish I could recall the specific date and interview, but I vaguely recall that the first mention of the term "limited release" with regard to the Dragon Boxes was with an ANN interview with a FUNimation staff member (the head of marketing?).

I took that to mean that FUNimation wanted to wait to see how well the Dragon Boxes would do, and when they didn't perform amazingly well, they were quietly discontinued.

If you take in the simple facts that they actually sold quite nicely as I recall, the fact that the original Japanese Dragon Boxes are limited releases and just that the overall packaging for the boxes are so premium for FUNimation standards, it really all seems to pan together, as opposed to "Everyone bought the Orange Bricks over the tailor-made set for hardcore fans (instead of the casual consumer) that doesn't even contain the HARDCORE AMERICAN SOUNDTRACK". While I won't argue that the Dragon Boxes had significant sales figures, I also won't argue that they weren't all that much in comparison to the other Dragon Ball releases at the time. All signs really seem to point to the sets being limited, just look at the differences. The Orange Brick's packaging is cheap and trashy, less episodes, made to appeal to the average consumer (as if they're gonna know it's over-saturated and cropped all to hell), extremely cheaper, more volumes; it's really all about marketing. I wouldn't doubt FUNi'll pull a Disney in 5-10 years and say, "NOW FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY, WE'VE TAKEN THE DRAGON BOXES OUT OF OUR VAULT... etc".

Again, you really have to figure just how many "hardcore" fans there are, being that those fans actually prefer original openings and next episode previews with vivid colors on the Japanese track with nice little dragon books, versus the main portion of the fan base that really doesn't care so long as it says "Remastered". If you look at the BRs, while they contain great quality picture wise, they don't contain the next episode previews, original openings/endings, premium packaging or any special booklet. It's in essence the same release as the Orange Bricks marketing wise, but you know, for BR (Yeah yeah and a thousand times better picture, etc).

Craddle · Post by **Craddle** » Thu Dec 15, 2011 1:59 am

ringworm128 wrote:Those pics (from what I've seen) are the worst offenders.

I agree. They are. We are trying to make a point here though. What do you suggest? I post the least possible offenders? lol That wouldn't make sense.

DragonBoxZTheMovies · Post by **DragonBoxZTheMovies** » Thu Dec 15, 2011 3:10 am

Craddle wrote:
Hujio wrote:you probably won't notice that much, especially if you're not anal about your video quality.
Anal? So fans who wont settle for a show they enjoy presented with missing details, lines, chopped off heads, feet, 20% of the of the image cropped, over saturated colors, ect are in your opinion anal?

How can I put this nicely? You're uninformed, if you think that's the case.

Errr, yeah, Hujio's been on this forum since 2004 and he runs an insanely popular website with Herms. I think he's pretty well informed...

And yeah, to a casual fan or a person who doesn't know or care about video that would seem pretty "anal".

Craddle · Post by **Craddle** » Thu Dec 15, 2011 3:25 am

DragonBoxZTheMovies wrote:
Craddle wrote:
Hujio wrote:you probably won't notice that much, especially if you're not anal about your video quality.
Anal? So fans who wont settle for a show they enjoy presented with missing details, lines, chopped off heads, feet, 20% of the of the image cropped, over saturated colors, ect are in your opinion anal?

How can I put this nicely? You're uninformed, if you think that's the case.
Errr, yeah, Hujio's been on this forum since 2004 and he runs an insanely popular website with Herms. I think he's pretty well informed...
And yeah, to a casual fan or a person who doesn't know or care about video that would seem pretty "anal".

I know who he is... (I've been here for 4 years myself. lol)

If that is in fact how he feels then... Or is that how he thinks the casual fan feels? That's what I'm getting at.

Edit: After re-reading his entire post and not just reading the portion that was taken out of context by ringworm, I see now what he was saying. I apologize for the misunderstanding.

MCDaveG · Post by **MCDaveG** » Thu Dec 15, 2011 4:27 am

I'm with Hujio in this. I can say the OB's are looking like shit compared to Dragon Box even in motion. Not to mention, I'm pissed off about the missing Japanese TV format as it was the version I grew up on.

And yeah, casual customers are anals, or rather say, asshole simpletons. They don't care much and are buying products that are served to them on golden plate, without any doubts.
''The official company released it, that's how it goes, it can't be baaaad''
And those more advanced will read an review, mostly on ANN, which is popular between casual anime fans I think. Well, I appreciate the news and encylopedia section, but I'm missing guys like VeggetoEX or Hujio (not me, I don't f**king like almost everything) in reviews section. As the most important things in the reviews are comparisons of the dub tracks on the release, cover art, dvd features. I don't say these are not valid, but nobody is questioning the quality of sound, picture, encode. How true is the show in comparison to original presentation in Japan for example.

Nope, much of the reviewers are probably sticking the DVD releases up in their asses and writing: ''Umh, the english dub is so awesome, that it beats down of the planet's dubs!''
and the reviewers ass probably.

DBZ Mick · Post by **DBZ Mick** » Thu Dec 15, 2011 4:55 am

I bought the first three Orange Bricks knowing full well their flaws, but it was the best offer I had at the time and I couldn't import.

Now that I can import, I'm buying one of the Dragon Boxes- I could go and buy up until the end of Freeza but I've decided not to. While I hate the over saturated colours (which I've found a way to somewhat fix), the damage to actual picture at times and cropping I'm just saving my money and because I'm suprisingly fine with them desaturated- especially Season 2... And I'm getting the rest of the series in manga form for Christmas anyway.

I'm buying Dragon Box 7 mainly for novelty and because I really want to see the footage I've read so much about for so many years here for myself.

Sorry for going off-topic...

Craddle · Post by **Craddle** » Thu Dec 15, 2011 5:10 am

MCDaveG wrote:I'm with Hujio in this. I can say the OB's are looking like shit compared to Dragon Box even in motion. Not to mention, I'm pissed off about the missing Japanese TV format as it was the version I grew up on.

And yeah, casual customers are anals, or rather say, asshole simpletons. They don't care much and are buying products that are served to them on a golden plate, without any doubts.
''The official company released it, that's how it goes, it can't be baaaad''
And those more advanced will read an review, mostly on ANN, which is popular between casual anime fans I think. Well, I appreciate the news and encyclopedia section, but I'm missing guys like VegetoEX or Hujio (not me, I don't f**king like almost everything) in reviews section. As the most important things in the reviews are comparisons of the dub tracks on the release, cover art, dvd features. I don't say these are not valid, but nobody is questioning the quality of sound, picture, encode. How true is the show in comparison to original presentation in Japan for example.

Nope, much of the reviewers are probably sticking the DVD releases up in their asses and writing: ''Umh, the English dub is so awesome, that it beats down of the planet's dubs!''
and the reviewers ass probably.

Wow, so colorful and so true. The casual customer wouldn't appear so anal if they would be willing to accept a product for what it is. (I would rather they didn't just accept an inferior product, but now were asking too much.) Rather then attempting to make it out to be something it's not. Or blatantly refusing to see what's been presented to them. The Orange Bricks is a prime example of this.

As for reviews, I don't bother with them extensively unless someone points them out to me. I normally evaluate the product myself. Rather then take anyone elses word for it. I'll admit, I bought the first season of the Orange Bricks. For comparison purposes. Once I saw what we were being presented with, I started buying the r2 Singles. There are a few reviewers that I will look into on occasion. Like Mike, Gaffer Tape, SSGOSHINA, ForneverWorld, and BDUBTheAnimeMaster. Mostly Mike. All of them go into detail with their reviews on the important things you've already mentioned. It also probably helps that I agree with them in most cases. Even then, I still do my own investigation into a product thoroughly before investing into it. The biggest problem I find is, customers take a companies word for it. This is the worst thing you could ever do. In any situation. Not just DVD's. ALWAYS get a second opinion.

MCDaveG · Post by **MCDaveG** » Thu Dec 15, 2011 5:43 am

To not sound as completely asshole, I don't think that everyone who bought the orange bricks is like that, but unfortunately average customer is simply sheep and company is the shepherd.
Average customer don't ask questions.

After all Dragon Boxes will wen't out of the stock, there won't be different option then buy the orange bricks.

Craddle · Post by **Craddle** » Thu Dec 15, 2011 5:46 am

MCDaveG wrote:To not sound as completely asshole, I don't think that everyone who bought the orange bricks is like that, but unfortunately average customer is simply sheep and company is the shepherd.
Average customer don't ask questions.

After all Dragon Boxes will wen't out of the stock, there won't be different option then buy the orange bricks.

I don't think they are either. The ones that claim to not see anything wrong with them even after being shown numerous times are though.

Don't forget. They do have another option now. Blu-Ray.

kei17 · Post by **kei17** » Thu Dec 15, 2011 5:52 am

Sorry for being off-topic, but does anyone know how the PAL version of the Orange Bricks looks like? Does it suffer from blurring because of the PAL conversion?

DragonBoxZTheMovies · Post by **DragonBoxZTheMovies** » Thu Dec 15, 2011 6:04 am

I don't have an NTSC OB to compare, but I can tell you that the PAL release of Kai looks pretty bad on DVD, well part one does anyway.

BluezaBladeNZ · Post by **BluezaBladeNZ** » Thu Dec 15, 2011 6:12 am

kei17 wrote:Sorry for being off-topic, but does anyone know how the PAL version of the Orange Bricks looks like? Does it suffer from blurring because of the PAL conversion?

I did compare a shot many years ago and from what I saw, it was a little more blurred and the first 60 or so episodes were slightly squashed leaving black bars about 4-5 pixels on both top and bottom, but after that it was fixed. I think there was a bit more macroblocking too, which is typical for Madman DVDs.

kei17 · Post by **kei17** » Thu Dec 15, 2011 6:17 am

DragonBoxZTheMovies wrote:I don't have an NTSC OB to compare, but I can tell you that the PAL release of Kai looks pretty bad on DVD, well part one does anyway.

BluezaBladeNZ wrote:I did compare a shot many years ago and from what I saw, it was a little more blurred and the first 60 or so episodes were slightly squashed leaving black bars about 4-5 pixels on both top and bottom, but after that it was fixed. I think there was a bit more macroblocking too, which is typical for Madman DVDs.

Thanks for the info! And I have another question: Is it interlaced to keep the playback speed or simply 4% sped up?

BluezaBladeNZ · Post by **BluezaBladeNZ** » Thu Dec 15, 2011 6:24 am

kei17 wrote:Thanks for the info! And I have another question: Is it interlaced to keep the playback speed or simply 4% sped up?

Luckily it wasn't interlaced. They did do a 4% speed up, but the pitch is left as is.

MCDaveG · Post by **MCDaveG** » Thu Dec 15, 2011 7:59 am

Craddle wrote:I don't think they are either. The ones that claim to not see anything wrong with them even after being shown numerous times are though.

Don't forget. They do have another option now. Blu-Ray.

That Blu-ray doesn't look bad. Don't know how is it in USA, but Blu-ray is not much popular here.
I also can't imagine people buying expensive blu-rays with few episodes of long series on each set.
I'm pretty curious how are or will be the sales charts.

kei17 · Post by **kei17** » Thu Dec 15, 2011 8:13 am

BluezaBladeNZ wrote:
kei17 wrote:Thanks for the info! And I have another question: Is it interlaced to keep the playback speed or simply 4% sped up?
Luckily it wasn't interlaced. They did do a 4% speed up, but the pitch is left as is.

Thanks again. That's a clever decision, I think. Though I don't think that NTSC is entirely superior, I kind of feel sorry for people live in the PAL region every time I think/hear about that playback speed problem.

YouTube · Post by **Hujio** » Thu Dec 15, 2011 9:52 am

Craddle wrote:
Hujio wrote:you probably won't notice that much, especially if you're not anal about your video quality.
Anal? So fans who wont settle for a show they enjoy presented with missing details, lines, chopped off heads, feet, 20% of the of the image cropped, over saturated colors, ect are in your opinion anal?

How can I put this nicely? You're uninformed, if you think that's the case.

No, what I'm saying is that ringworm128 may not initially notice the loss of detail I described in my post as he may not be too anal about his video quality, meaning he wouldn't necessarily have studied up on what loss of detail is. He recognized that the background was "darker", but thought the character looked fine. It was clear that he thought that loss of detail was simply relative to the character. But I'm also not saying being anal about your video quality is a bad trait.

Besides, I was specifically talking about him and not the entire fandom in general. For that matter, I'd say that there are some very casual fans out there that have no idea that the "Orange Bricks" are an inferior product for all the reason you stated. There are many reasons why some fans settled for the season sets, and not being a videophile (someone who is concerned with achieving high-quality results in the recording and playback of movies, TV programs, etc. - a.k.a. being anal about video quality) may be one of those reasons. If people don't want to be informed about something, then so be it. They may notice something is weird with their season sets and jump online to find out what happened, but not everyone does that. Believe me, the people on this forum are much more educated about most of this than the very casual fan is, because they're part of this community. Just because you didn't settle for the season sets doesn't mean you're anal, just as much as it doesn't mean you're not anal. Settling for something has nothing to do with being anal, just mostly about caring. Simply put, there are many fans that just don't care, and therefore stay uninformed about it. And trust me, there are some people you just can't make care about it, no matter how hard you try. It is, what it is.

By the by, where was this originally posted, because I couldn't find it anywhere?

Kanzenshuu

Detail Loss in the Orange Bricks: Not Seeing It

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