Hi guys
Well after not being able to resist the tempation of buying the season 2 set of Funi's DBZ dvds, I finally caved in and snagged a copy off ebay for $20. I will now give you my full impressions of the first dvd contained in the season 2 set.
I popped in disc one yesterday evening in my PS3. Let me start by describing my HT rig:
The PS3 is a very VERY nice standard def DVD player! The upscaling is phenomenal and I believe may honestly be better than the Oppo line of DVD players.
Anyway, while the Funi disc was running in my PS3, the MI dvd containing the same episode was running in my Oppo player. The Oppo player is world renowned(sp?) for being one of the best bang for your buck upscaling dvd players on the market.
Both players are connected via HDMI to my Yamaha 5990HTR Home Theater Reciever. The receiver is running a special $700 dollar Cryo twisted HDMI cable to my BenQ 8720 DLP front projector. This projector is top of line, with a native 720P lens and a CR of 15000:1. Retail on this PJ was a bit over $6000 last year when I bought it. Screen itself is a 16:9 Carada Brilliant White Projection Screen at approxiamately 110" big.
Now...after watching all the episodes on disc one of the Funi set and swapping back and forth between the Funi set and my MI DVD, let's just say my feelings are mixed.
The cropping on the Funi dvd is
*DEFINITELY* noticeable *AND* distracting in many scenes. This particular episode(#40) has lots of facial close ups and you can just tell the ratio of the picture is just plain wrong.
Now...the ridiculous whiteness that you've seen in the screenshots posted all over the forums
*IS* accurate and again....very bothersome and distracting! I swapped back to my MI dvd to compare and the difference is friggin enormous! This, to me, is a worse offender than the cropping! When the hell have you ever seen any human being with skin this pale??? The reason for this is simple. Funimation mastered these discs with the contrast ratio turned up way and I mean
WAY too high! I honestly have no idea what they were thinking while they were mastering these discs, because anyone with even 5/20 vision could see that the contrast is just way too much. There IS some good news regarding the contrast issue however, and that is fortunately for me, my front projector is one bad-ass machine! In other words, I was able to significantly tame the blown-out whites by simply changing the color temperature on the unit from "Cool" to "Warm", then turn the contrast and brightness down some, and finally closing the iris on the lens a bit. This a pretty damn good difference and made the picture look much more natural and "Dragonbox-like". If you do not have a TV set that has color temperature adjustment, then I'm afraid you're screwed, and will have to deal with Funi's overly white scenes.
Now....moving onto one last thing regarding image quality. Despite the flaws described above, these Funimation dvds have one HUGE saving grace....the sharpness and detail. I am a sucker for image definition and clarity, and this dvd delivers is SPADES!!!! Jesus Christ.... the amount of clarity displayed on this dvd is
B---A---N---A---N---E---R----S---!!!!!!!
I have never....and I mean
NEVER seen this much detail, definition and sharpness on a dvd for an animated show....EVER!!!! Some scenes literally, and mean
L-I-T-E-R-A-L-L-Y look as if Akira Toriyama himself walked up to my projection screen, and drew the picture by hand using water colors!!!! It's
THAT ridiculous! After rubbing my eyes, and had to compare this dvd to my Blu-Ray version of Ghost in the Shell: Innocence on my PS3....guess what? I bullshit you not, even
that disc doesn't have the clarity diplayed on these Funimation dvds! I gotta be honest here folks, I am the LAST person who thought I would have any kind of positive thing to say about these Funimation remastered dvds, but I am simply floored by what they did to get the picture this crystal clear.
Yeah it's cropped, yeah the colors aren't 100% accurate, and yeah the whites are blown to bits....but I'll be
damned if it doesn't display the clearest most defined image ever shown on my projection screen!
Finally, I need to go on a serious rant regarding the audio and subs:
Simply put, what the HELL is going on with this English dub???? It's
HORRIBLE!!!! I don't mean the voice performance itself, it's actually not
TOO bad(although the new Vegeta is garbage incarnate), but the actual translation is garbage! I watched the episodes with the English dialog/5.1.Jp bgm track, and had the subtitles running at the same time.....the dialog spoken often resembles NOTHING to do with what the subs are saying! Infact, I've even spotted mistakes on a couple occasions!
When Bulma, Gohan and Krillin find the 6th fake Dragonball in that underground cave-like place after melting some ice, in English Gohan says
"Yay, the 5th one!" while the subtitles say
"Alright, we found the 6th one!" WTF???? I can't believe the amount of liberties Funimation took while creating this dub. It's downright embaressing and often times delivers dialog that has very little to do with the original Japanese dialog as proven by the what's being said in the subs.
Of all the things about these dvds, this is
THE WORST offender PERIOD end of story! To think that many of you often bash the translation of the subtitles off boots, yet say nothing of the laughable translation of the English dub, is just mindblowing. I can't believe how many people were doing backflips and cartwheels over the news of Funi putting their English dub to the original Japanese 5.1 track. You guys should be as pissed as I am, that they didn't give us the ORIGINAL Japanese language audio track
with the original Japanese background track as one 5.1. mix. Instead we gotta settle for 2.0 Stereo. The English dub track could've been set against a 7.1 DTS Japanese track for all I care, but what good would it have done when the damn translation is butchered to bits and liberty-ridden?
Bottom-line is this. The cropping here is an issue but I must admit, I
did actually forget it about after a while, maybe because my projector can fill up my screen with no black borders on the top and bottom and that gives the illusion of watching it in full screen. The blown out whites and insane contrast level however, is more distracting than the cropping and definitely should be labeled as a major image quality issue. Fortunately for me, I am able to tame the whites significantly on my personal home theater setup, and it allows me to tolerate, if not ignore this issue altogether. I guess it pays to spend big bucks on a quality display
All that being said, I cannot for the life of me get over how insanely sharp this picture is. If I walked into my own room not knowing what kind of disc was in the player and somebody told me I was looking at a Blu-ray disc displayed in full blown 1080p, I'd believe you in a heartbeat. Being the image clarity and sharpness whore that I am, I cannot dismiss the joy at looking at a picture this detailed. If the Blu-ray version of Innocence can't even deliver this kind of definition against a
STANDARD def dvd, then you know Funi at least did
SOMETHING right!
Honestly, if Funi would have given us the original Japanese language and bgm track in its entirety at 5.1DD and not cropped the picture, I can honestly say I would be planning on buying these sets without a second thought. But given I now have the entire series on dvd courtesy of MI dvds, I don't even need to be bothered with them. The MI discs are still very very good and the subs, although not as "grammar-perfect" as Funi's, still hold their own and conveys the messages and story just as well.
Here's hoping Toei brings out a Blu-ray version with optional English subs
)
