How does the remastering look on the Dragon Ball Blue Boxes

[pjay]

How does the Funimation remastering look on the Dragon Ball Blue Boxes. Considering the loss of detail that happen with the Dragon Ball Z remastering, I'm leary of buying the set, even if they did leave it in 4:3 format. I want to know if it's worth buying or should I hold out for a domestic version of the Dragon Box for that series?

[B]

Well, they're zoomed in, for whatever reason, so there's a tad bit of picture missing from the left side and bottom, a la an "L" shape.

[pjay]

Ack! nm then.

[Tanooki Kuribo]

Ack! nm then.

Well, don't dismiss it just yet. I don't think it's actually that bad. I really like the blue bricks. If they ever released the DragonBall Dragon Box here, I may have to pass on it. But hey, that's just me.

Here is the DragonBox:



And here is the blue brick...

[Gaffer Tape]

Oh, wow. They zoomed that in more than I thought. I'm holding out for a DB Dragon Box. No need to spend more money than I really need to. That said, I just bought the Red Ribbon Army 2-disc set used for only a few bucks. That can help tide me over until that happy day comes.

[sumpter360]

Eek, I didn't realize just HOW zoomed in they were... That's pretty bad. Why would they even do that? It couldn't've been an accident... could it?

[Tanooki Kuribo]

Oh, wow. They zoomed that in more than I thought. I'm holding out for a DB Dragon Box

I doubt we'll get a DragonBall DragonBox but, I guess you can wait.

Are people really that torn over this? I don't know, it might just be me, it really don't bother me that much. Maybe cause it's not DragonBall Z...

[Dr. Casey]

I've always found Daizenshuu's obsession with video specs annoying, and think threads regarding the Dragon Box or seasonal sets are a complete bore because discussion regarding video minutiae outnumbers discussion about the show itself somewhere around a hundred to one, but even I have to admit that's pretty bad. It screws with the sense of perspective quite a bit; in the original, Goku and Bulma feel much smaller in comparison to the breadth of their surroundings. The second picture doesn't feel as... naturey. Definitely a bad change, and it's in no way easier on the eyes since the new focused image is more intense. Oh well, I'd just ignore it and carry on. So long as I didn't think about what I was missing out on, I'd probably forget quickly enough and stop caring.

[pjay]

I'm not even sure why they would bother zooming in on the picture.

[Tsukento]

Here's a good question:

How does it compare to the original DVD releases?

[Gotham22]

What was FUNi thinking when they did all this zoomed in and cropped stuff?

[Metalwario64]

They likely zoomed in so that the DVNR process they used (while much, much weaker than the one on the Z sets) wouldn't harm the line work. If that is the case, then I am glad they did, because the detail looks nearly as good as the Dragon Box footage, only zoomed in and with little-to-no grain. And there's none of that crap that the Z sets had where entire outlines were completely erased. Some slight line blending during scenes with the screen flying all over the place, but hardly noticeable.

I also prefer the colors; on the Dragon Boxes it looks way too greenish, and on the Season Sets the skin tones look more natural. The colors actually look a lot like the Z Dragon Boxes colors with its warmer palette.

[Gotham22]

The quality of the DB and GT season sets were good but for the Z season sets it was just unnecessary.

[Daimo-Rukiri]

Ack! nm then.

Well, don't dismiss it just yet. I don't think it's actually that bad. I really like the blue bricks. If they ever released the DragonBall Dragon Box here, I may have to pass on it. But hey, that's just me.

Here is the DragonBox:



And here is the blue brick...

I gotta agree with some of the comments posted, the blue bricks actually do to some degree have better video quality. It was confirmed by the Dbox movies that his cloths were purple. As for the zooming honestly don't really care as it's hardly an issue, you can zoom out like 5% if you want to with your tv.

Though with the Dboxs his cloths are Blue only because of the path to power film where the cloths were blue instead of purple. FUNis colors are actually closer to the original, the dbox was re-colored to some degree.

[Tsukento]

Though with the Dboxs his cloths are Blue only because of the path to power film where the cloths were blue instead of purple. FUNis colors are actually closer to the original, the dbox was re-colored to some degree.

I'm no expert on the technicalities of the DVDs and what not, but I'm pretty sure they did no such thing.

You might be confusing that with FUNi's movie releases, such as the 6th one, which had a hideous blue tint to it.

And because I can't be bothered to pop in my own Dragon Box and snap a screenshot, here's one from MFG.com's Movie 1 set:


Goku's clothes are a blue tint. It had nothing to do with Path to Power.

[Daimo-Rukiri]

Though with the Dboxs his cloths are Blue only because of the path to power film where the cloths were blue instead of purple. FUNis colors are actually closer to the original, the dbox was re-colored to some degree.

I'm no expert on the technicalities of the DVDs and what not, but I'm pretty sure they did no such thing.

You might be confusing that with FUNi's movie releases, such as the 6th one, which had a hideous blue tint to it.

The screen cap is more purple than blue.. Could just be the age..

[DemonRin]

The way I've always been told, FUNi has ALWAYS been Zoom-copping Dragon Ball and DBZ. For DB and DBZ, they were provided Multi-generational Film Masters, and they were rather aged. This causes imperfections in the tops and bottoms of the film (because that's the parts of the film that are exposed to the elements).
Basically, if you looked at straight-up FUNi masters of DB and DBZ, you see grainy messed up picture on the tops and/or Bottoms of the images (depending on the scene). GT got away from this I think, because they weren't provided film stock, they were provided Digi-Beta, but I don't like GT so I haven't checked this.
Anyway, to combat this, they've ALWAYS been cropping DB and DBZ in America. The thing is, the damage is pretty minimal, so you only have to crop a bit. But that skews the aspect Ratio, so for every release but the Orange Bricks, they also crop the sides a little bit to get it back to a 4:3 aspect.
For the DBZ Orange Bricks, they just decided to crop more on the top and bottom than they needed to and make it a Widescreen show, which REALLY cuts off a lot of important stuff. The amount of cropping on the Blue Bricks is VERY small in comparison, and you lose nothing really important (from what I've been told)

The reason you see almost no cropping on the American Dragon Box Z (There's like ONE pixel worth of cropping on the left side I think) is because those are the new DBoxZ Masters straight from Toei. Toei has the original First Generation Film-prints that they pulled out of cold storage and remastered frame-by-frame, so they were able to produce an un-cropped version of the show. Remember, FUNi was provided bad masters, so the only way we'll get entirely uncropped DB here is if FUNi goes for the Toei DBox masters for DB too, which will only happen if the DBoxZ is a success and they see it as being a good Idea financially, but there's really nothing wrong with the Blue Bricks, they're just about the best we could hope for using FUNi's old Masters.

The Cropping so so negligible, it all comes down to you. Can you wait to see if FUNi does anything Dragon Box Related for DB, or do you want the series now? Because if so, the Blue Bricks are perfectly acceptable.

Personally, I'm waiting for a US DBox, but I', not holding out for video quality. The Blue Bricks are really tempting to me for the video quality actually, I'm waiting for the DBox for stylistic purposes. I want the whole series in DBox form, and I LOVE the DBook and want all of them. Hell, I HATE GT but I will buy GT if a Dragon Box is released stateside. But that's just me.

[Greenman]

Here's a good question:

How does it compare to the original DVD releases?

Blue brick:


The Saga of Goku set:

[Tsukento]

Thanks for the comparison. So I guess they're more or less the same, but only the blue bricks are cleaner looking.

Though I do have to wonder, what of episodes that were notorious of having macroblocking occur in the original sets (such as heavy fight scenes)?

[VegettoEX]

I've always found Daizenshuu's obsession with video specs annoying, and think threads regarding the Dragon Box or seasonal sets are a complete bore

And yet people continue to ask about it when appropriate to do so, so clearly not only do people want this type of discussion, but they see the folks in this specific community as the experts to answer them. I don't see a single thing wrong with that.

because discussion regarding video minutiae outnumbers discussion about the show itself somewhere around a hundred to one

That's completely false. You don't like those discussions, so when you see any at all, it's overwhelming to you. Of the 50 topics on the first page of the "General Discussion" forum (and discounting the three stickies at the top), just under 50% of the threads are directly about the in-universe series itself. The next runner-up at 10% is "meta" discussions such as general fandom, websites, production, etc. Discussions about video quality? 1. This one right here.

but even I have to admit that's pretty bad. It screws with the sense of perspective quite a bit; in the original, Goku and Bulma feel much smaller in comparison to the breadth of their surroundings. The second picture doesn't feel as... naturey. Definitely a bad change, and it's in no way easier on the eyes since the new focused image is more intense. Oh well, I'd just ignore it and carry on. So long as I didn't think about what I was missing out on, I'd probably forget quickly enough and stop caring.

And this is what's funny to me . You begin by wondering why on Earth people care about these threads since you personally find them so boring, and yet you go on to contribute more written words about video quality than anything else.

I guess that's kinda defensive, but... I don't know, it seems like a bunch of hypocritical bad-mouthing for no real reason, especially when you go on to contribute to the discussion.

As for the discussion at hand, I don't think it's worth it to compare "Season One" to any release of "The Saga of Goku" due to the PAL conversion that went on with the Australian release... and the original R1 release is just pointless to use as a reference. I'd also like to toss out that, amazingly, many (though not all) of the original 2-disc sets had single layer discs with lots of episodes on them... and that was back before their compression took a jump up.