Funi's DB/DBGT video releases vs. DBZ's

[JohnnyCashKami]

The FUNi GT Singles would have been nearly perfect as the definitive 'US Dragon Box GT' had they not been heavily compressed but even so, they are fantastic and I'd favor them any day over the Green Bricks. The Green Bricks (Dragon Ball GT) and Blue Bricks (Dragon Ball) are nowhere near as bad as the Orange Bricks but they're kind of too blurry, missing original stuff and all that.

This is what I've got:

For Dragon Ball - Saga Sets
For Dragon Ball Z - Dragon Box Z & Level Blu-rays (1.1, 1.2)
For Dragon Ball GT - Singles
For the Movies & Specials - Singles

But admittedly, it's been years since I've touched any of that as it has gathered dust just being on the shelves.

[Char Aznable]

The FUNi GT Singles would have been nearly perfect as the definitive 'US Dragon Box GT' had they not been heavily compressed but even so, they are fantastic and I'd favor them any day over the Green Bricks. The Green Bricks (Dragon Ball GT) and Blue Bricks (Dragon Ball) are nowhere near as bad as the Orange Bricks but they're kind of too blurry, missing original stuff and all that.

This is what I've got:

For Dragon Ball - Saga Sets
For Dragon Ball Z - Dragon Box Z & Level Blu-rays (1.1, 1.2)
For Dragon Ball GT - Singles
For the Movies & Specials - Singles

But admittedly, it's been years since I've touched any of that as it has gathered dust just being on the shelves.

That's exactly the collection I'm working on (minus the Levels), just slowly grabbing the movie singles now. However, I've also picked up the movie boxsets because of their price, the cover art, and the remastering on the movies seems better than most of FUNi's other work.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

The FUNi GT Singles would have been nearly perfect as the definitive 'US Dragon Box GT' had they not been heavily compressed but even so, they are fantastic and I'd favor them any day over the Green Bricks. The Green Bricks (Dragon Ball GT) and Blue Bricks (Dragon Ball) are nowhere near as bad as the Orange Bricks but they're kind of too blurry, missing original stuff and all that.

This is what I've got:

For Dragon Ball - Saga Sets
For Dragon Ball Z - Dragon Box Z & Level Blu-rays (1.1, 1.2)
For Dragon Ball GT - Singles
For the Movies & Specials - Singles

But admittedly, it's been years since I've touched any of that as it has gathered dust just being on the shelves.

That's about similar to my collection as well only without the Level sets and a mix of the movie packs and singles, though of course i have the Blue Bricks for DB because although they are missing the other opening/three closings and NEP's they are still overall good releases for what they are.

[JEFFMAN219]

I bought Funimation's GT complete series DVD set a few hours ago, and watching it got me thinking, why did Funimation release acceptable DVD versions of DB and GT, but completely drop the fucking ball on Z's? Why'd they even bother """remastering""" DBZ for the Orange Bricks when they hardly touched the other two series? I get that this has probably been discussed to death, but I don't understand why they'd do what they did with the Orange Bricks when it would've been cheaper and faster to just slap the original footage on some DVDs, especially considering they did exactly that for two other series.

I've been asking myself that question for the last 7 years

[Robo4900]

For GT, Funimation were initially given the D2 tape master of GT, I'd guess from Mexico. However, they only used this footage for the ending song, aswell as a few shots of the opening song of their version of GT.
The vast majority of their footage comes from a work-in-progress version of the Dragon Box remaster, which was presumably given to Funi by Toei.

I guess this justifies my decision when collecting GT to track down all the singles (as well as the box sets they came in for aesthetic purposes) over the bricks. I don't really care about the dub with Japanese music and I suppose if I ever do the bricks are dirt cheap, but they just don't seem to look as good.

Yeah. For the Bricks, Funi basically took the proto-DBox master Toei gave them and applied a heavy blur filter to get rid of all traces of grain. So it's exactly the same footage, but super-blurry and soft. >_<

They also cropped it down by about 2 lines of pixels off the top and bottom, as two lines at the left and right edges were totally black in the masters Funi had, so they decided to crop that out by just zooming the whole picture in slightly.
A nitpick, sure, but it's kind of ridiculous that they'd do that (anyone watching on a 4:3 screen would never notice the two lines of black pixels, and if you're watching on a widescreen monitor, expanding the black bars out by two pixels is no bother, so I really don't understand this...), and it really does show the sheer nonsense behind the thinking put into Funi's brick mastering, even outside of Z's infamously butchered presentation.

[Char Aznable]

For GT, Funimation were initially given the D2 tape master of GT, I'd guess from Mexico. However, they only used this footage for the ending song, aswell as a few shots of the opening song of their version of GT.
The vast majority of their footage comes from a work-in-progress version of the Dragon Box remaster, which was presumably given to Funi by Toei.

I guess this justifies my decision when collecting GT to track down all the singles (as well as the box sets they came in for aesthetic purposes) over the bricks. I don't really care about the dub with Japanese music and I suppose if I ever do the bricks are dirt cheap, but they just don't seem to look as good.

Yeah. For the Bricks, Funi basically took the proto-DBox master Toei gave them and applied a heavy blur filter to get rid of all traces of grain. So it's exactly the same footage, but super-blurry and soft. >_<

They also cropped it down by about 2 lines of pixels off the top and bottom, as two lines at the left and right edges were totally black in the masters Funi had, so they decided to crop that out by just zooming the whole picture in slightly.
A nitpick, sure, but it's kind of ridiculous that they'd do that (anyone watching on a 4:3 screen would never notice the two lines of black pixels, and if you're watching on a widescreen monitor, expanding the black bars out by two pixels is no bother, so I really don't understand this...), and it really does show the sheer nonsense behind the thinking put into Funi's brick mastering, even outside of Z's infamously butchered presentation.

Plus when you provided the comparison shots of the GT R1 singles and Dragon Box GT, I can tell the difference clicking back and forth but it's so minor it really doesn't matter to me. As far as I'm concerned, if FUNi had just taken 'Proto-Box' GT and just put the new dub track on there and leave everything else alone it would've been perfect. I would've gladly picked up the bricks despite how much I dislike the packaging (not that the singles were that much better but at least the box sets were decent enough). I could imagine it would've been cheaper too to not have to do literally anything at all to the video footage and just slap a new audio track on there.

But no, like you said, FUNi took this weird approaches with these bricks that basically make them look like crap. The only acceptable one is the blue brick in my opinion, and even then I've taken the liberty of tracking down the singles because of Japanese title cards and I feel the Saga sets still look slightly better.

[Robo4900]

Plus when you provided the comparison shots of the GT R1 singles and Dragon Box GT, I can tell the difference clicking back and forth but it's so minor it really doesn't matter to me. As far as I'm concerned, if FUNi had just taken 'Proto-Box' GT and just put the new dub track on there and leave everything else alone it would've been perfect. I would've gladly picked up the bricks despite how much I dislike the packaging (not that the singles were that much better but at least the box sets were decent enough). I could imagine it would've been cheaper too to not have to do literally anything at all to the video footage and just slap a new audio track on there.

But no, like you said, FUNi took this weird approaches with these bricks that basically make them look like crap. The only acceptable one is the blue brick in my opinion, and even then I've taken the liberty of tracking down the singles because of Japanese title cards and I feel the Saga sets still look slightly better.

I agree...

Except that I hate the look of the Blue Bricks' blurry, awful footage, and would never pick them up.
Thankfully, as a Brit, Blue Bricks aren't an option; I'd have the Yellow Bricks instead, which use the single footage...

Except it's the Madman masters, without the reissued DVD fix from season 3, so a full episode and two half-episodes are missing on the Japanese track, and one is dubtitles instead of Mandelin's proper subs.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

I guess this justifies my decision when collecting GT to track down all the singles (as well as the box sets they came in for aesthetic purposes) over the bricks. I don't really care about the dub with Japanese music and I suppose if I ever do the bricks are dirt cheap, but they just don't seem to look as good.

Yeah. For the Bricks, Funi basically took the proto-DBox master Toei gave them and applied a heavy blur filter to get rid of all traces of grain. So it's exactly the same footage, but super-blurry and soft. >_<

They also cropped it down by about 2 lines of pixels off the top and bottom, as two lines at the left and right edges were totally black in the masters Funi had, so they decided to crop that out by just zooming the whole picture in slightly.
A nitpick, sure, but it's kind of ridiculous that they'd do that (anyone watching on a 4:3 screen would never notice the two lines of black pixels, and if you're watching on a widescreen monitor, expanding the black bars out by two pixels is no bother, so I really don't understand this...), and it really does show the sheer nonsense behind the thinking put into Funi's brick mastering, even outside of Z's infamously butchered presentation.

Plus when you provided the comparison shots of the GT R1 singles and Dragon Box GT, I can tell the difference clicking back and forth but it's so minor it really doesn't matter to me. As far as I'm concerned, if FUNi had just taken 'Proto-Box' GT and just put the new dub track on there and leave everything else alone it would've been perfect. I would've gladly picked up the bricks despite how much I dislike the packaging (not that the singles were that much better but at least the box sets were decent enough). I could imagine it would've been cheaper too to not have to do literally anything at all to the video footage and just slap a new audio track on there.

But no, like you said, FUNi took this weird approaches with these bricks that basically make them look like crap. The only acceptable one is the blue brick in my opinion, and even then I've taken the liberty of tracking down the singles because of Japanese title cards and I feel the Saga sets still look slightly better.

The only downside to both of Dragon Ball's releases (Saga sets and Blue Bricks) are that the second opening as well as the three other closing animations and the NEP's are not there, though of course that is because the materials Toei had sent to FUNi in the early 2000's were creditless duplicate copies of the episodes that only had the second version of the opening and closing.

[Robo4900]

Yeah. For the Bricks, Funi basically took the proto-DBox master Toei gave them and applied a heavy blur filter to get rid of all traces of grain. So it's exactly the same footage, but super-blurry and soft. >_<

They also cropped it down by about 2 lines of pixels off the top and bottom, as two lines at the left and right edges were totally black in the masters Funi had, so they decided to crop that out by just zooming the whole picture in slightly.
A nitpick, sure, but it's kind of ridiculous that they'd do that (anyone watching on a 4:3 screen would never notice the two lines of black pixels, and if you're watching on a widescreen monitor, expanding the black bars out by two pixels is no bother, so I really don't understand this...), and it really does show the sheer nonsense behind the thinking put into Funi's brick mastering, even outside of Z's infamously butchered presentation.

Plus when you provided the comparison shots of the GT R1 singles and Dragon Box GT, I can tell the difference clicking back and forth but it's so minor it really doesn't matter to me. As far as I'm concerned, if FUNi had just taken 'Proto-Box' GT and just put the new dub track on there and leave everything else alone it would've been perfect. I would've gladly picked up the bricks despite how much I dislike the packaging (not that the singles were that much better but at least the box sets were decent enough). I could imagine it would've been cheaper too to not have to do literally anything at all to the video footage and just slap a new audio track on there.

But no, like you said, FUNi took this weird approaches with these bricks that basically make them look like crap. The only acceptable one is the blue brick in my opinion, and even then I've taken the liberty of tracking down the singles because of Japanese title cards and I feel the Saga sets still look slightly better.

The only downside to both of Dragon Ball's releases (Saga sets and Blue Bricks) are that the second opening as well as the three other closing animations and the NEP's are not there, though of course that is because the materials Toei had sent to FUNi in the early 2000's were creditless duplicate copies of the episodes that only had the second version of the opening and closing.

That and the fact the Blue Brick release is heavily blurred; looks all oily and awful. Almost like the film is melting as it goes through the telecine gate. And there's the fact the Madman masters screwed up a few of the Fortuneteller Baba episodes, which wasn't fixed for the UK release. And like all of the singles/sagas/whatever, DB's US "Saga" DVDs suffer from low-bitrate encoding.

You can just pick up the Blue Bricks and watch the show; it's an acceptable, watchable release, but pretty much every aspect of these DVDs is cheap crap (for instance, one thing you may not know about DB is that, despite the Blue Bricks having a 5.1 dub track, and all other releases having only a 2.0 dub track, Funi only mixed the DB dub in mono; the 5.1 and 2.0 tracks just reverb the mono mix into additional channels), and if you live in the UK and have to go with the Yellow Bricks, the picture will be better, but you'll be screwed if you want to watch subbed.

Also, point of note: Toei didn't send Funi any video masters until GT. Funi's masters of DB were, like everything else they had at that point, tapes from Latin America.

[JohnnyCashKami]

The UK Dragon Ball Yellow Bricks used sort of a "new" cover but the discs were the same ones as released in Australia. Still, I'd recommend the Saga Sets over the Blue Bricks because it looks a lot nicer and it features the original Japanese episode title cards.

[Robo4900]

The UK Dragon Ball Yellow Bricks used sort of a "new" cover but the discs were the same ones as released in Australia. Still, I'd recommend the Saga Sets over the Blue Bricks because it looks a lot nicer and it features the original Japanese episode title cards.

I don't see the big deal about the title cards people always make, but... Yeah, sure. I agree.

Though, note that it's not just that the Yellow Bricks used the Australian discs, but they used the masters from before the repressings in Australia that fixed the authoring errors in the Baba saga.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Plus when you provided the comparison shots of the GT R1 singles and Dragon Box GT, I can tell the difference clicking back and forth but it's so minor it really doesn't matter to me. As far as I'm concerned, if FUNi had just taken 'Proto-Box' GT and just put the new dub track on there and leave everything else alone it would've been perfect. I would've gladly picked up the bricks despite how much I dislike the packaging (not that the singles were that much better but at least the box sets were decent enough). I could imagine it would've been cheaper too to not have to do literally anything at all to the video footage and just slap a new audio track on there.

But no, like you said, FUNi took this weird approaches with these bricks that basically make them look like crap. The only acceptable one is the blue brick in my opinion, and even then I've taken the liberty of tracking down the singles because of Japanese title cards and I feel the Saga sets still look slightly better.

The only downside to both of Dragon Ball's releases (Saga sets and Blue Bricks) are that the second opening as well as the three other closing animations and the NEP's are not there, though of course that is because the materials Toei had sent to FUNi in the early 2000's were creditless duplicate copies of the episodes that only had the second version of the opening and closing.

That and the fact the Blue Brick release is heavily blurred; looks like you've got oil smeared all over your screen. And there's the fact the Madman masters screwed up a few of the Fortuneteller Baba episodes, which wasn't fixed for the UK release. And like all of the singles/sagas/whatever, DB's US "Saga" DVDs suffer from low-bitrate encoding.

You can just pick up the Blue Bricks and watch the show; it's an acceptable, watchable release, but pretty much every aspect of these DVDs is cheap crap (for instance, one thing you may not know about DB is that, despite the Blue Bricks having a 5.1 dub track, and all other releases having only a 2.0 dub track, Funi only mixed the DB dub in mono; the 5.1 and 2.0 tracks just reverb the mono mix into additional channels), and if you live in the UK and have to go with the Yellow Bricks, the picture will be better, but you'll be screwed if you want to watch subbed.

Also, point of note: Toei didn't send Funi any video masters until GT. Funi's masters of DB were, like everything else they had at that point, tapes from Latin America.

Yeah, the blue bricks aren't the perfect release i will admit but they are however the most readily available one at this point. Not to mention the only place where you can get the first 13 episodes of the series uncut and bilingual here in the States because of the fact that FUNi couldn't release them for so long due to Lionsgate (formerly Kidmark and Trimark) having an iron grasp on the sublicense to the edited, dub only versions of them from back in 1995. For the longest time the only option was that Saga of Goku set which contained said edited cuts, unless you were to import the region 4 Saga version released by Madman that corresponds to the Saga sets here which you would need a region free DVD player to watch.

I would definitely love for a DB Dragon Box release here, but of course that's not looking very likely at this point. Still, i just have to say for their faults they aren't nearly as god awful as the Orange Bricks. Note that i just realized i made an error when talking about the OP/ED on the releases here, they only contain the first opening used from episode 1 up to the start of the Piccolo arc and the second closing animation used to around the same time.

[Robo4900]

Yeah, the blue bricks aren't the perfect release i will admit but they are however the most readily available one at this point. Not to mention the only place where you can get the first 13 episodes of the series uncut and bilingual here in the States because of the fact that FUNi couldn't release them for so long due to Lionsgate (formerly Kidmark and Trimark) having an iron grasp on the sublicense to the edited, dub only versions of them from back in 1995. For the longest time the only option was that Saga of Goku set which contained said edited cuts, unless you were to import the region 4 Saga version released by Madman that corresponds to the Saga sets here which you would need a region free DVD player to watch.

True.
Though, the consolation here is the 1995 version is better for dubbed viewing. Shame it doesn't have a sub option; if it did, I'd have imported those discs long ago; they'd be an ideal release for me for that first movie and those initial 13 episodes.

Also rather a shame the encoding on the 1995 discs wasn't very good; I'd love them to reissue the 1995 dub in a boxset sometime and fix that. Maybe throw in the unreleased pilot version of the movie too. Throw in some cast interviews and such if they can too... I'd buy that.

... At least, I would as long as they don't screw it up like they did for RTD. Bloody thing was so limited and now collectible I have no chance of getting a copy, and even if I could, it turns out it sucks anyway... It had Tree Of Might and the original audio for episodes 1 and 2, but everything else about it was a strict, strong downgrade compared to the original releases. >_<

I would definitely love for a DB Dragon Box release here, but of course that's not looking very likely at this point.

I would also love a DB release, but I will say this... After Z's new remaster comes out, I'm sure DB and GT in HD will be right around the corner. And then we'll finally have a good master of DB, rather than three or four acceptable-but-not-ideal ones.

An imported DBox release would have been nice, but ultimately the DBoxes really aren't that good. The new wave of remasters that are apparently coming are really our only hope for an actually good release right now. And that is what we should be pushing for. Not the just-good-enough DVD release from 2003 that managed to be better than all the crap Funi's put out.

Still, i just have to say for their faults they aren't nearly as god awful as the Orange Bricks.

True... But a punch in the face isn't nearly as god-awful as a sword in the face.

Better =/= good, even if the better option is just barely acceptable. Doesn't mean we shouldn't still voice our gripes with the crappiness of the thing whenever we can. Especially when we're in the situation where this lesser of the many evils is still significantly worse than the deeply-flawed Dragon Boxes.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Yeah, the blue bricks aren't the perfect release i will admit but they are however the most readily available one at this point. Not to mention the only place where you can get the first 13 episodes of the series uncut and bilingual here in the States because of the fact that FUNi couldn't release them for so long due to Lionsgate (formerly Kidmark and Trimark) having an iron grasp on the sublicense to the edited, dub only versions of them from back in 1995. For the longest time the only option was that Saga of Goku set which contained said edited cuts, unless you were to import the region 4 Saga version released by Madman that corresponds to the Saga sets here which you would need a region free DVD player to watch.

True.
Though, the consolation here is the 1995 version is better for dubbed viewing. Shame it doesn't have a sub option; if it did, I'd have imported those discs long ago; they'd be an ideal release for me for that first movie and those initial 13 episodes.

Also rather a shame the encoding on the 1995 discs wasn't very good; I'd love them to reissue the 1995 dub in a boxset sometime and fix that. Maybe throw in the unreleased pilot version of the movie too. Throw in some cast interviews and such if they can too... I'd buy that.

... At least, I would as long as they don't screw it up like they did for RTD. Bloody thing was so limited and now collectible I have no chance of getting a copy, and even if I could, it turns out it sucks anyway... It had Tree Of Might and the original audio for episodes 1 and 2, but everything else about it was a strict, strong downgrade compared to the original releases. >_<

I would definitely love for a DB Dragon Box release here, but of course that's not looking very likely at this point.

I would also love a DB release, but I will say this... After Z's new remaster comes out, I'm sure DB and GT in HD will be right around the corner. And then we'll finally have a good master of DB, rather than three or four acceptable-but-not-ideal ones.

An imported DBox release would have been nice, but ultimately the DBoxes really aren't that good. The new wave of remasters that are apparently coming are really our only hope for an actually good release right now. And that is what we should be pushing for. Not the just-good-enough DVD release from 2003 that managed to be better than all the crap Funi's put out.

Still, i just have to say for their faults they aren't nearly as god awful as the Orange Bricks.

True... But a punch in the face isn't nearly as god-awful as a sword in the face.

Better =/= good, even if the better option is just barely acceptable. Doesn't mean we shouldn't still voice our gripes with the crappiness of the thing whenever we can. Especially when we're in the situation where this lesser of the many evils is still significantly worse than the deeply-flawed Dragon Boxes.

Yeah, i might just consider getting the old Saga of Goku DVD set at some point since apparently the 1995 BLT dub with the Ocean Group cast is more accurate to the original than the 2001 FUNi dub of the same episodes at points. Even though it is edited, they did a decent job with those and the scripts weren't nearly as heavily re written as the ones for the later Z dub. Though of course, i mostly almost exclusively watch the show subbed anyway.

It's possible that they may come out with a newer high def remastered release of DB and maybe even GT at some point down the road, perhaps if they get good quality copies of Toei's first or second gen film or something. And yes, i get that the Dragon Boxes have their flaws but as things stand currently they are the best available release at this point until a future release surpasses them.

I get what you mean there, that FUNi is capable of putting out much better quality releases for the series as we have seen before but up to now barring a few exceptions like the Z Dragon Boxes and Levels their releases have been either just good enough (Blue Bricks) to downright awful (Orange Bricks) with little room in between. I do have my fingers crossed that the new HD release of Z coming soon is great quality and becomes the new standard going forward, but we will just have to see how things go.

[JohnnyCashKami]

The UK Dragon Ball Yellow Bricks used sort of a "new" cover but the discs were the same ones as released in Australia. Still, I'd recommend the Saga Sets over the Blue Bricks because it looks a lot nicer and it features the original Japanese episode title cards.

I don't see the big deal about the title cards people always make, but... Yeah, sure. I agree.

Though, note that it's not just that the Yellow Bricks used the Australian discs, but they used the masters from before the repressings in Australia that fixed the authoring errors in the Baba saga.

The English title cards looked unimpressive and tacky, plus inserting the FUNimation-made Dragon Ball has always left a sour taste in my mouth. It's even worse if you were watching it on Cartoon Network and the DB logo was behind it.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

The UK Dragon Ball Yellow Bricks used sort of a "new" cover but the discs were the same ones as released in Australia. Still, I'd recommend the Saga Sets over the Blue Bricks because it looks a lot nicer and it features the original Japanese episode title cards.

I don't see the big deal about the title cards people always make, but... Yeah, sure. I agree.

Though, note that it's not just that the Yellow Bricks used the Australian discs, but they used the masters from before the repressings in Australia that fixed the authoring errors in the Baba saga.

The English title cards looked unimpressive and tacky, plus inserting the FUNimation-made Dragon Ball has always left a sour taste in my mouth. It's even worse if you were watching it on Cartoon Network and the DB logo was behind it.

That's what sucks about them removing alternate angles for the Japanese titles like how they had done on their older releases, or even branching video tracks based on the language selection which i believe was included on the GT singles and maybe even the Z singles as well. That primarily had to do with the DVD's having just three or in some cases four episodes a piece where it wouldn't be an issue to include those options, but once they started putting out larger sets with more episodes per disc it got to where they were forced to do away with them for technical reasons such as bitrate among other things.

[ZodaEX]

I don't see the big deal about the title cards people always make, but... Yeah, sure. I agree.

Though, note that it's not just that the Yellow Bricks used the Australian discs, but they used the masters from before the repressings in Australia that fixed the authoring errors in the Baba saga.

The English title cards looked unimpressive and tacky, plus inserting the FUNimation-made Dragon Ball has always left a sour taste in my mouth. It's even worse if you were watching it on Cartoon Network and the DB logo was behind it.

That's what sucks about them removing alternate angles for the Japanese titles like how they had done on their older releases, or even branching video tracks based on the language selection which i believe was included on the GT singles and maybe even the Z singles as well. That primarily had to do with the DVD's having just three or in some cases four episodes a piece where it wouldn't be an issue to include those options, but once they started putting out larger sets with more episodes per disc it got to where they were forced to do away with them for technical reasons such as bitrate among other things.

Wrong. They weren't forced to do that at all. Funimation CHOSE to. You can put anywhere from 1, to roughly 20 episodes on 1 DVD.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

The English title cards looked unimpressive and tacky, plus inserting the FUNimation-made Dragon Ball has always left a sour taste in my mouth. It's even worse if you were watching it on Cartoon Network and the DB logo was behind it.

That's what sucks about them removing alternate angles for the Japanese titles like how they had done on their older releases, or even branching video tracks based on the language selection which i believe was included on the GT singles and maybe even the Z singles as well. That primarily had to do with the DVD's having just three or in some cases four episodes a piece where it wouldn't be an issue to include those options, but once they started putting out larger sets with more episodes per disc it got to where they were forced to do away with them for technical reasons such as bitrate among other things.

Wrong. They weren't forced to do that at all. Funimation CHOSE to. You can put anywhere from 1, to roughly 20 episodes on 1 DVD.

Uh, ok then. Apparently forced wasn't the right word to describe it. I must've been mistaken in terms of their reasoning for cutting out the alternate angles/branching tracks.

[Forte224]

I bought Funimation's GT complete series DVD set a few hours ago, and watching it got me thinking, why did Funimation release acceptable DVD versions of DB and GT, but completely drop the fucking ball on Z's?

I would hardly describe their DB and GT releases as acceptable. Outside of being 4:3 (which is important of course), all the normal issues with their remasters are still present, just maybe not as pronounced as the DBZ remaster. But being better than awful doesn't make something acceptable.