Manga UK picks up Dragon Ball

[bkev]

Jesus, all of their screenshots are cels. That's some review there.

[GarrettCRW]

It's nice that the reviewer is asking for the Dragon Box remasters, but seeing as how I'm part way through the third episode (Bulma's just found out what Roshi actually saw when she flashed him), the colors aren't exactly "faded". The encode is a tad dated (it doesn't play that well with the 16mm grain), and the angle change after the title card has that annoying momentary cut to black, but otherwise, it's fine so far. In fact, there's been practically no signs that it's an NTSC-to-PAL conversion, as there are pretty much no apparent examples of frame-blending so far.

[GarrettCRW]

Jesus, all of their screenshots are cels. That's some review there.

Nope, it's promo art.

[dbboxkaifan]

Nope, it's promo art.

It's still misleading because if someone happens to think that's the actual picture quality they'll be disappointed.

Hell, it's not hard to take lossless screenshots of the DVD episodes just open up VLC, boot up the DVD, choose an episode and take the shots you want.

[LostTimeLord]

I suspect that the the errors in that review are likely due to the reviewer primarily watching the English dub and just coping the technical info from the menus (assuming it to be correct), plus there's the possibility of the Japanese audio being dual-mono (i.e. encoded in stereo from a mono source), and if so would appear to be stereo at a quick glance. I suppose it's not necessarily obvious that 'Blood Rubies' is edited to anyone who hadn't seen the original (though the painted-on graphics are about as far from seamless as you can get), but the lack of a Japanese track, and the fact that it's an entirely different dub cast should still have been mentioned.
I'm surprised that no review seems to have pointed out the the English audio is only in stereo, when the cover advertises it as being in 5.1.

[90sDBZ]

I suspect that the the errors in that review are likely due to the reviewer primarily watching the English dub and just coping the technical info from the menus (assuming it to be correct), plus there's the possibility of the Japanese audio being dual-mono (i.e. encoded in stereo from a mono source), and if so would appear to be stereo at a quick glance. I suppose it's not necessarily obvious that 'Blood Rubies' is edited to anyone who hadn't seen the original (though the painted-on graphics are about as far from seamless as you can get), but the lack of a Japanese track, and the fact that it's an entirely different dub cast should still have been mentioned.
I'm surprised that no review seems to have pointed out the the English audio is only in stereo, when the cover advertises it as being in 5.1.

Yeah I did find it amusing how the reviewer said that we got the "Ocean dub" of DB on UK TV even though it was actually the Blue Water dub and yet they completely failed to mention that the movie actually is in Ocean dub.

[dbboxkaifan]

The new designed covers have been added to Amazon.

Season 2

Spoiler:

Season 3

Spoiler:

There's still time to fix those problems, Manga UK.

[Baggie_Saiyan]

Does anyone know if they have revisable cover art that hide the annoyi manga/bbfc rating?
I'm planning to pick these up after FUNI finishes releasing Z.

[Solidus]

Does anyone know if they have revisable cover art that hide the annoyi manga/bbfc rating?
I'm planning to pick these up after FUNI finishes releasing Z.

Yea, there is. The picture quality is way better than I expected and looks great up-scaled on PS3.

[Baggie_Saiyan]

Does anyone know if they have revisable cover art that hide the annoyi manga/bbfc rating?
I'm planning to pick these up after FUNI finishes releasing Z.

Yea, there is. The picture quality is way better than I expected and looks great up-scaled on PS3.

Sweet! Thanks! I'm sold. Deffo be purchasing all 5 in January. Hopefully prices drop too. Season 5 is £33 on Amazon

[dbboxkaifan]

Does anyone know if they have revisable cover art that hide the annoyi manga/bbfc rating?
I'm planning to pick these up after FUNI finishes releasing Z.

They do.



Link: http://www.kanzenshuu.com/forum/viewtop ... 20#p785506

Yea, there is. The picture quality is way better than I expected and looks great up-scaled on PS3.

Except for when they crammed 7-8 episodes per DVD to cover an arc (i.e, Tenshinhan Saga set) of it completely, which in result of this the compression at times looks pretty bad when it's fast scenes showing up.

The Piccolo Daimao set for example has 4-5 episodes so the picture quality definitely looks better and more appealing to the eye.

Sweet! Thanks! I'm sold. Deffo be purchasing all 5 in January. Hopefully prices drop too. Season 5 is £33 on Amazon

I remember giving you an eBay link of an auction that had the entire Dragon Ball Saga Sets from Region 4 with the original paper boxes for £40 but I guess you skipped that, it's a damn shame because that was a sweet deal.

[thomas1up]

Do these sets come with the opening and endings and if that the right versions at the right time? That's what determines if I want it or not, I'd love NEPs but they're not as important as the op and end to me.

[eledoremassis02]

I would love to have dragon ball in this quality! The grain would be a plus since to achieve the smooth quality would mean removing the grain


Also made this comparing of the new bricks (from the trailer as I dont have the DVDs) and R4 DVD single

Spoiler:

[LostTimeLord]

Do these sets come with the opening and endings and if that the right versions at the right time?

As far as I'm aware all English releases use the first opening animation (of two) and second ending animation (of four) for all of the episodes, as FUNi apparently never received the other ops/eds in the first place.

Also made this comparing of the new bricks (from the trailer as I dont have the DVDs) and R4 DVD single

Manga's trailer wasn't their season footage though, it was just the American trailer for the first Blue Brick with the final shot changed and "digitally remastered" edited out of the narration (Assuming you mean the trailer Manga posted on YouTube).

[eledoremassis02]

Also made this comparing of the new bricks (from the trailer as I dont have the DVDs) and R4 DVD single

Manga's trailer wasn't their season footage though, it was just the American trailer for the first Blue Brick with the final shot changed and "digitally remastered" edited out of the narration (Assuming you mean the trailer Manga posted on YouTube).[/quote]

Oh! disregard that post then lol.

[Gokuden]

From my 2 minutes in this thread, I was able to gather that: this is a censored release, sub-par encode, and technically misleading. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Why can't they just get Dragon Box masters and put them on disc? It's been 27 years for Christ's sake.

[GarrettCRW]

It's not censored (the episodes, at least-the first movie is), but otherwise you're generally correct.

EDIT: It should be noted that Toei isn't exactly known for playing well with their licensees even when the license holder has a stated desire not to screw over consumers with multiple piss-poor releases. Also, at this stage, I think it would be best if Toei started work on some sort of a Blu-ray release, if they haven't already. The Dragon Box masters are great and all, but they are just positively ancient by today's standards, and DVD compression has never handled 16mm grain as well as Blu-ray can, IMO.

[dbboxkaifan]

Also made this comparing of the new bricks (from the trailer as I dont have the DVDs) and R4 DVD single

Spoiler:

This is odd that the Banana Bricks' are slightly cropped because the menus and are all Saga set R4-like, so this kinda comes as a surprise.

From my 2 minutes in this thread, I was able to gather that: this is a censored release, sub-par encode, and technically misleading. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Why can't they just get Dragon Box masters and put them on disc? It's been 27 years for Christ's sake.

It's the Saga sets which at least are better than the Blue Bricks.

[Baggie_Saiyan]

@dbboxkaifan.
Yeah unfortunately I don't have my region free DVD player anymore. Was scrapped to make room for the shitty PS4.

[sangofe]

Cult TV Times has reviewed Dragon Ball: Season 1 which did a decent job for reviewing the story but that's about it, because goes downhill when it gets to the technical aspects.

Audio, Visuals and Extras

Video & Audio

The video has been through a basic clean-up and thankfully remains in its original 4:3 aspect ratio, unlike the Dragon Ball Z box sets which cropped the show into a widescreen-aspect screen ratio. The colours are a little faded, making it a shame that after the long wait for a U.K. release that the superior Dragon Box remaster wasn’t used.

The original Japanese audio is presented in stereo with solid, readable subtitles. The English dub is also included in stereo, and it should be noted this is the U.S. FUNimation dub and not the Canadian Ocean dub which aired on U.K. TV.

Extras

The set also includes the stand-alone film Curse of the Blood Rubies. The movie is a stand-alone retelling of Dragon Ball. Like many of the Dragon Ball movies it’s rather weak, but its inclusion as an extra is welcome.

http://www.culttvtimes.com/content/revi ... 1-u-k-dvd/



I feel your pain, Vegeta.

Interesting, the reviewer went to kanzenshuu after getting criticism

Looking through the Daizenshuu Ex guides it seems like the FUNi version ( made later) has mono which is interesting ( sadly they don’t seem to have a Madman listing). So I’m guessing here you mean you don’t consider it a true stereo mix? Again apologies for the confusion. If you can clear up what the difference is feel free.