Orange Bricks vs Blu-rays (2014) - Definitive Discussion

[JustAlex1997]

Brief Note - Before I begin, I'd like to note that the intention of this thread is to provide (and be provided) factual information. Anything I provide, especially in regards to screenshots, will come from official, legally-acquired sources and not altered in any way. Please respect this by only posting what you know to be true.

Dragon Ball Z has two main releases for the average consumer through the DVD and Blu-ray (2014) season sets. The DVD sets, or Orange Bricks as I'll be referring to them as, are the cheaper and most infamous of the two. Below you'll see the two biggest problems of these releases.

1. Cropping

As you can see, the series was cropped from its original 4:3 aspect ratio to a 16:9 aspect ratio. This was done by simply zooming in on the center of the image, and framing in pretty much every scene is negatively impacted as a result. In this particularly extreme example, Vegeta is decapitated by the top of the screen.


2. Color Correction

With Funimation's poor color correction, the series was left with oversaturated (and, in some cases, bleached) colors. This is not only unpleasing to look at, but the below example of Gokou shows how it can make the image appear as though time has ruined the film.


While some say that the Blu-ray season sets address both of these issues (such as adjusting the frame to improve framing), others say that both releases are largely comparable. Screenshot comparisons also show conflicting results and, in rare cases, actually show the framing issues being even worse on the Blu-rays.

If you own both the Orange Bricks and Blu-rays and have extensive experience with both, are the Blu-rays better products overall? Or are the two equally as bad?

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

The other significant issue of the Orange Bricks aside from the above especially with the early sets is the disappearance of lines due to the overdone DNR process, here are some notable examples compared to a better version i.e. the Dragon Boxes. Seriously, i don't see how anyone could think this looks good. Also, i don't own the Season Blu-rays but have seen enough footage to say that they are a little better with the few improvements made but not that much more overall so overall it isn't as bad as the Bricks but still not great.

Spoiler:

[KBABZ]

I think some more direct comparisons would be helpful. We have a few but I feel for best analysis there should be a OB/BR/DBx trio of the shots.

Side-bar: your avatars are gonna make this thread veeeeeery confusing!

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

I think some more direct comparisons would be helpful. We have a few but I feel for best analysis there should be a OB/BR/DBx trio of the shots.

Side-bar: your avatars are gonna make this thread veeeeeery confusing!

Wow, and i just noticed he's got the same avatar as me as do one or two others on the forum. It's always confusing when more than one user has the same ones and the only way to tell who's who is the account name.

[Danfun64]

The Orange Bricks are a center crop. The Blu-rays apparently use an automated tilt and scan. Sometimes the result is better, sometimes the result is worse. I know you didn't include them in your comparison, but you should also include 16:9 Kai, which of the three clearly had the most work in trying to make 16:9... well work. Kai tends to use multiple methods. Sometimes center crop, sometimes a shot by shot static tilt, sometimes reanimating the scene (ep 1-98 only), and sometimes recompositing the scene with existing elements.

Kai, in general, is probably the least destructive of the three (four if you count ep 1-98 separate from ep 99-167). Of the two Funi options, the Season Blu-rays appear to have had more actual cleanup compared to the Orange Bricks. Certainly, the Orange Bricks show more dirt. The Orange Bricks AFAIK were always more saturated than the Season Blu-rays, but the problem was worse in the earliest seasons. There's some pretty bad line erasure going on in the earlier Orange Bricks, but the problem has pretty much gone away in the last few seasons. Even when the Season Blurays kept more of the linework, the Orange Bricks always looked more film-like than the Season Blu-rays. The Season Blu-rays have the "advantage" of having a similar 4:3 master (the 30th Anniversary Blu-ray), while there aren't any Orange Brick quality 4:3 masters out there. Sure, stuff like the Levels and the "raws" are much better in quality, but still worth noting. Of course, Kai ep 1-98 have a 4:3 master of almost identical quality to the 16:9 master.

When it comes to English language episode titles, the Orange Bricks were more authentic than the Funi Z releases that came afterwards (Funi Dragon Box doesn't count because it only used the Japanese titles). All of them (Levels, Season Blu-rays, 30th Anniversary) use a different font compared to the original broadcast (the font in the English viewing angle of the Orange Bricks was fairly close to the 67b-291 font). And of course, the Orange Bricks appear to be the only one of their film-based masters to have Japanese episode titles as an option. Notice that Funi apparently never uploaded Japanese sub only versions of the Level, Season, or 30th Anniversary masters to their streaming services? It's either been the Orange Bricks master or the Funi Dragon Box master.

[JustAlex1997]

I think some more direct comparisons would be helpful. We have a few but I feel for best analysis there should be a OB/BR/DBx trio of the shots.

Side-bar: your avatars are gonna make this thread veeeeeery confusing!

Wow, and i just noticed he's got the same avatar as me as do one or two others on the forum. It's always confusing when more than one user has the same ones and the only way to tell who's who is the account name.

I couldn't find an easy way of uploading my own image, so I went with the default one that I felt looked the best. My apologies.

[JustAlex1997]

The Orange Bricks are a center crop. The Blu-rays apparently use an automated tilt and scan. Sometimes the result is better, sometimes the result is worse. I know you didn't include them in your comparison, but you should also include 16:9 Kai, which of the three clearly had the most work in trying to make 16:9... well work. Kai tends to use multiple methods. Sometimes center crop, sometimes a shot by shot static tilt, sometimes reanimating the scene (ep 1-98 only), and sometimes recompositing the scene with existing elements.

Kai, in general, is probably the least destructive of the three (four if you count ep 1-98 separate from ep 99-167). Of the two Funi options, the Season Blu-rays appear to have had more actual cleanup compared to the Orange Bricks. Certainly, the Orange Bricks show more dirt. The Orange Bricks AFAIK were always more saturated than the Season Blu-rays, but the problem was worse in the earliest seasons. There's some pretty bad line erasure going on in the earlier Orange Bricks, but the problem has pretty much gone away in the last few seasons. Even when the Season Blurays kept more of the linework, the Orange Bricks always looked more film-like than the Season Blu-rays. The Season Blu-rays have the "advantage" of having a similar 4:3 master (the 30th Anniversary Blu-ray), while there aren't any Orange Brick quality 4:3 masters out there. Sure, stuff like the Levels and the "raws" are much better in quality, but still worth noting. Of course, Kai ep 1-98 have a 4:3 master of almost identical quality to the 16:9 master.

When it comes to English language episode titles, the Orange Bricks were more authentic than the Funi Z releases that came afterwards (Funi Dragon Box doesn't count because it only used the Japanese titles). All of them (Levels, Season Blu-rays, 30th Anniversary) use a different font compared to the original broadcast (the font in the English viewing angle of the Orange Bricks was fairly close to the 67b-291 font). And of course, the Orange Bricks appear to be the only one of their film-based masters to have Japanese episode titles as an option. Notice that Funi apparently never uploaded Japanese sub only versions of the Level, Season, or 30th Anniversary masters to their streaming services? It's either been the Orange Bricks master or the Funi Dragon Box master.

With Dragon Ball Kai, only the DVD's are cropped to 16:9. As a 4:3 version is readily available, I didn't think it was really necessary to include. If someone just really needs the series in 16:9, though, I did see one or two DVD screenshots where nothing important was lost (I.E. the tip of a tree as opposed to the top of a head). They do seem to be the best way of watching the series in widescreen.

[JustAlex1997]

EDIT: Because I'm dumb and didn't clearly state it, my two screenshots from the original post are from the Orange Bricks.

[Danfun64]

With Dragon Ball Kai, only the DVD's are cropped to 16:9.

That's only for the Japanese release. The French and German releases are 16:9 and available on Blu-ray as well as DVD. And of course, this all only applies to ep 1-98, as The Final Chapters was only done in 16:9 to begin with.

[JustAlex1997]

With Dragon Ball Kai, only the DVD's are cropped to 16:9.

That's only for the Japanese release. The French and German releases are 16:9 and available on Blu-ray as well as DVD. And of course, this all only applies to ep 1-98, as The Final Chapters was only done in 16:9 to begin with.

Oh? That's interesting. My knowledge of releases from other regions is admittedly limited.

[Arteaga4K]

I don't own either release, but from footage and screenshots I've seen I can say with confidence the blu-rays are the better buy (not a high bar at all, but should be said). Both are cropped, DNR'd cheap releases but the blu-rays win simply by not having the line disappearing issue (I know after around season 5/6ish it stopped, but still) and seasons 1-2 especially had some of the worst looking footage I've ever seen. The blurays have their own set of problems though, like watercolor backgrounds and oversharpening but I'll take that over disappearing lines and bleached colors any day. But yeah it's still pretty bad so Kai on blu ray is good enough for me.

[Robo4900]

The OBs and the Season BDs were both cropped, which is terrible.
One could argue the Season BD cropping is slightly less shitty because they were slightly more selective about the framing area, but it's a matter of comparing degrees of how hard you'd prefer to be kicked in the dick.

The OBs and Season BDs both have excessive DNR, to somewhat different results.
The OBs are very soft/blurry, the Season BDs are smudgy, oversharpened, and all semblance of the original linework boldness is gone, washed out to a faded, soft look, and all texture to the backgrounds is obliterated.
So, the OBs' DNR is less objectionable, even though they are still quite blurry as a result, basically the same as Kai 1.0.

The OBs have some line erasure due to the automatic cleanup, however the strong filtering on the Season BDs equally destroys a lot of detail, particularly in backgrounds, subtle shading, etc. One could argue which is worse for days, but like the cropping, both are shit in this regard.

Both the OBs and the Season BDs are oversaturated to shit, and generally have poor colouring.

Both the OBs and the Season BDs contain poor-quality Japanese audio, and a really badly-done remix of the dub audio with a shitty partial redub, really poor mixing (resulting in music or voices being inconsistently drowned out), wrong takes of lines (sometimes resulting in different, wrong lines being used), missing vocal filters (Super Boo, Yakon, and Broly all originally had filters on their voices), misplaced replacement score pieces (the Faulconer score was rearranged, and it wasn't deliberate; they weren't using the finalised masters, and never bothered to fix the pieces to show up as intended), incorrect OP/ED songs on the Kikuchi score track (they use the US replacement score OP/ED song, rather than Cha-La & ZENKAI Power & We Gotta Power & Angel), and generally poor-quality music and SFX elements.

The bottom line is this:
Both are crap, neither is particularly better than the other, it's a choice between two unbelievably shit, not-worth-your-money sets, which you really shouldn't buy. But if you absolutely must pick which one, just pick whichever is cheaper, and buy it second-hand. Then with the vague moral covering of "I now own an official release", pirate a not-shit version to actually watch.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

I don't have screenshots to compare, but I have owned both releases and both are terrible, but the Blu-Rays are slightly better.

The disappearing lines and bleached out colours on the earlier orange bricks really take you out of the experience. The colours in the later seasons are better in both releases, but neither is ideal, whichever is better is up to you, it's much of a muchness. Sure the colours on the Blu-Rays can be more washed out at times, but they are still more well balanced and not as disgustingly bright as the orange bricks are at their worst.

Neither release should have been cropped to begin with, but based on my experience watching both I can say the orange bricks was more jarring for the most part. The manual cropping done for the Blu-Rays makes the show watchable, but again still not ideal. Buu Kai is another slight improvement for that portion of the series, but like these two releases 4:3 would have been undeniably better and more faithful.

The audio tracks are also a slight improvement on the Blu-Rays. The Japanese audio is a notable improvement, and Funimation probably did the best they could with the mono track they had to work with, sadly we got none of the broadcast audio. The dub track also has its share of problems on both releases. The rearranged Faulconer score, redubbing was a disservice to the fans who grew up on the US Toonami broadcast, although the Blu-Rays at least have reinstated lines.

Packaging wise, orange bricks are terrible, Blu-Rays are serviceable. The former have a design quirk with Shenlong on the spines but the necessity to remove the slipcovers means you either dispose of them or put them aside taking up even more space than the bricks already do really hurt this quirk. The latter look nice lined up on a shelf and the artwork is neat for what it's worth, no glaring flaws here overall. Only thing orange bricks have going is less bland disc art and inserts that were discontinued so no longer relevant.

In sum, if you don't own any Dragon Ball Z releases and want to have one legally knowing TOEI will never do a new remaster you'd probably be no worse off getting whatever's cheapest, but if I had to recommend one over the other it would be the Blu-Rays.

[Metalwario64]

Both are crap, neither is particularly better than the other, it's a choice between two unbelievably shit, not-worth-your-money sets, which you really shouldn't buy. But if you absolutely must pick which one, just pick whichever is cheaper, and buy it second-hand. Then with the vague moral covering of "I now own an official release", pirate a not-shit version to actually watch.

I completely agree, though if one intends on watching the orange bricks and wants to buy them cheap, they should check to make sure they aren't bootlegs, because those are half the size and have way more compression, which makes the problems all the worse (and ruins the decent looking later episodes).

Also, while people complain about Season 1 looking terrible, I agree that there are episodes that are a bit too blurry, but even then, I think the footage, despite the filters FUNimation put on it manage to look better than the singles in these episodes:

Single:


Brick:


Single:


Brick:


Here's a comparison from Season 5 that I took recently while rewatching the bricks (I had this single shot on hand from years ago. I don't know if I still have it or not):

Single:


Brick:


While the brick has a reddish color cast, I think it overall looks better than the single here, because the DNR wasn't turned up so high, and on the single, Piccolo's skin was oversaturated to such a ridiculous degree that it causes artifacts on the green liquid from his regenerated arm.

While I hate the disappearing lines, I think the constant issues the BDs have are probably a bit worse overall since the footage looks terrible in motion due to the way they tried to eliminate the grain, and then resharpen it.

Plus, I feel the need to bring up the nauseating (and unnecessary) panning in Goku's Super Saiyan transformation, which ruins an iconic scene:

(brick - left BD - right)

The orange bricks shouldn't have been released in this state, but given the only other (non piracy) options, I feel that it is the lesser evil.

(Here are a few other screenshots of pre-season 6 episodes I thought looked pretty good):

Spoiler:

One last thing I remembered, is that I recall seeing and reading that in season 5 of the BDs, the footage starts looking out of focus, and I think that issue persists for the rest of the sets. Ironically, that's where the bricks start making improvements.

[Robo4900]

Both are crap, neither is particularly better than the other, it's a choice between two unbelievably shit, not-worth-your-money sets, which you really shouldn't buy. But if you absolutely must pick which one, just pick whichever is cheaper, and buy it second-hand. Then with the vague moral covering of "I now own an official release", pirate a not-shit version to actually watch.

I completely agree, though if one intends on watching the orange bricks and wants to buy them cheap, they should check to make sure they aren't bootlegs, because those are half the size and have way more compression, which makes the problems all the worse (and ruins the decent looking later episodes).

Also, while people complain about Season 1 looking terrible, I agree that there are episodes that are a bit too blurry, but even then, I think the footage, despite the filters FUNimation put on it manage to look better than the singles in these episodes:

Spoiler:

Single:


Brick:


Single:


Brick:


Here's a comparison from Season 5 that I took recently while rewatching the bricks (I had this single shot on hand from years ago. I don't know if I still have it or not):

Single:


Brick:

While the brick has a reddish color cast, I think it overall looks better than the single here, because the DNR wasn't turned up so high, and on the single, Piccolo's skin was oversaturated to such a ridiculous degree that it causes artifacts on the green liquid from his regenerated arm.

While I hate the disappearing lines, I think the constant issues the BDs have are probably a bit worse overall since the footage looks terrible in motion due to the way they tried to eliminate the grain, and then resharpen it.

Plus, I feel the need to bring up the nauseating (and unnecessary) panning in Goku's Super Saiyan transformation, which ruins an iconic scene:

Spoiler:

(brick - left BD - right)

The orange bricks shouldn't have been released in this state, but given the only other (non piracy) options, I feel that it is the lesser evil.

(Here are a few other screenshots of pre-season 6 episodes I thought looked pretty good):

Spoiler:

One last thing I remembered, is that I recall seeing and reading that in season 5 of the BDs, the footage starts looking out of focus, and I think that issue persists for the rest of the sets. Ironically, that's where the bricks start making improvements.

All fair points.

But the OBs and BDs are ultimately shit. And even though there's better contrast on some of the early bricks than on their single counterparts, the singles are ultimately still a superior master. They're 4:3, for one thing. For another, the dub audio hasn't been fucked up.
It's easy to say the better dark detail in that Piccolo shot is a big up, but in fairness, that is how release prints look, that's likely closer to how it would've been broadcast, and Toei's animators would've known that that's how that would look.

I will say this for the OBs at least, though:
If it wasn't for the disappearing lines and the cropping, they would honestly be perfectly serviceable DVDs. And the disappearing lines only happen in season 1 (maybe a little in season 2?), so... They weren't far off. The DNR does mean the picture is very blurry, but it is only DVD footage, after all.
The Season BDs, meanwhile, have the awful smudging of the picture. Just makes the whole image look like utter garbage. They dealt with the disappearing lines, they made the cropping more selective and thus slightly less vomit-inducing, and they fixed up the dub audio problems, but they fucked up the video filtering so badly, it's just... Not a good scene.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Both are crap, neither is particularly better than the other, it's a choice between two unbelievably shit, not-worth-your-money sets, which you really shouldn't buy. But if you absolutely must pick which one, just pick whichever is cheaper, and buy it second-hand. Then with the vague moral covering of "I now own an official release", pirate a not-shit version to actually watch.

I completely agree, though if one intends on watching the orange bricks and wants to buy them cheap, they should check to make sure they aren't bootlegs, because those are half the size and have way more compression, which makes the problems all the worse (and ruins the decent looking later episodes).

Also, while people complain about Season 1 looking terrible, I agree that there are episodes that are a bit too blurry, but even then, I think the footage, despite the filters FUNimation put on it manage to look better than the singles in these episodes:

Spoiler:

Single:


Brick:


Single:


Brick:


Here's a comparison from Season 5 that I took recently while rewatching the bricks (I had this single shot on hand from years ago. I don't know if I still have it or not):

Single:


Brick:

While the brick has a reddish color cast, I think it overall looks better than the single here, because the DNR wasn't turned up so high, and on the single, Piccolo's skin was oversaturated to such a ridiculous degree that it causes artifacts on the green liquid from his regenerated arm.

While I hate the disappearing lines, I think the constant issues the BDs have are probably a bit worse overall since the footage looks terrible in motion due to the way they tried to eliminate the grain, and then resharpen it.

Plus, I feel the need to bring up the nauseating (and unnecessary) panning in Goku's Super Saiyan transformation, which ruins an iconic scene:

Spoiler:

(brick - left BD - right)

The orange bricks shouldn't have been released in this state, but given the only other (non piracy) options, I feel that it is the lesser evil.

(Here are a few other screenshots of pre-season 6 episodes I thought looked pretty good):

Spoiler:

One last thing I remembered, is that I recall seeing and reading that in season 5 of the BDs, the footage starts looking out of focus, and I think that issue persists for the rest of the sets. Ironically, that's where the bricks start making improvements.

All fair points.

But the OBs and BDs are ultimately shit. And even though there's better contrast on some of the early bricks than on their single counterparts, the singles are ultimately still a superior master. They're 4:3, for one thing. For another, the dub audio hasn't been fucked up.

If only the single masters (with some touching up for better encoding and video quality) had been what FUNi put on the OB's back in 2007 instead of the cropped and smeared to hell version that actually was, then it would actually be an acceptable release i would be ok with owning.

[Robo4900]

Spoiler:

I completely agree, though if one intends on watching the orange bricks and wants to buy them cheap, they should check to make sure they aren't bootlegs, because those are half the size and have way more compression, which makes the problems all the worse (and ruins the decent looking later episodes).

Also, while people complain about Season 1 looking terrible, I agree that there are episodes that are a bit too blurry, but even then, I think the footage, despite the filters FUNimation put on it manage to look better than the singles in these episodes:

Single:


Brick:


Single:


Brick:


Here's a comparison from Season 5 that I took recently while rewatching the bricks (I had this single shot on hand from years ago. I don't know if I still have it or not):

Single:


Brick:


While the brick has a reddish color cast, I think it overall looks better than the single here, because the DNR wasn't turned up so high, and on the single, Piccolo's skin was oversaturated to such a ridiculous degree that it causes artifacts on the green liquid from his regenerated arm.

While I hate the disappearing lines, I think the constant issues the BDs have are probably a bit worse overall since the footage looks terrible in motion due to the way they tried to eliminate the grain, and then resharpen it.

Plus, I feel the need to bring up the nauseating (and unnecessary) panning in Goku's Super Saiyan transformation, which ruins an iconic scene:

(brick - left BD - right)

The orange bricks shouldn't have been released in this state, but given the only other (non piracy) options, I feel that it is the lesser evil.

(Here are a few other screenshots of pre-season 6 episodes I thought looked pretty good):

Spoiler:

One last thing I remembered, is that I recall seeing and reading that in season 5 of the BDs, the footage starts looking out of focus, and I think that issue persists for the rest of the sets. Ironically, that's where the bricks start making improvements.

All fair points.

But the OBs and BDs are ultimately shit. And even though there's better contrast on some of the early bricks than on their single counterparts, the singles are ultimately still a superior master. They're 4:3, for one thing. For another, the dub audio hasn't been fucked up.

If only the single masters (with some touching up for better encoding and video quality) had been what FUNi put on the OB's back in 2007 instead of the cropped and smeared to hell version that actually was, then it would actually be an acceptable release i would be ok with owning.

Yep.

It honestly baffles me that they didn't.

The only thing I can figure is that they legitimately thought they could get a great master out of the film prints, but they ended up doing it so cheaply, and being so misguided, and so utterly stupid about it, they just couldn't stop fucking it up at every turn.
The OBs should've been a one-off embarassment that the Funi guys self-deprecatingly joke about at cons. Instead, they've continually doubled down, and it's just... Well, depressing, really.

[Metalwario64]

I still wonder if things would have been better if instead of the limited edition Dragon Boxes, we just got full-screen season set DVDs with their raw master scans. Those would surely not have that "limited edition" stipulation, and would likely still be available for everyone to purchase.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Spoiler:

All fair points.

But the OBs and BDs are ultimately shit. And even though there's better contrast on some of the early bricks than on their single counterparts, the singles are ultimately still a superior master. They're 4:3, for one thing. For another, the dub audio hasn't been fucked up.

If only the single masters (with some touching up for better encoding and video quality) had been what FUNi put on the OB's back in 2007 instead of the cropped and smeared to hell version that actually was, then it would actually be an acceptable release i would be ok with owning.

Yep.

It honestly baffles me that they didn't.

The only thing I can figure is that they legitimately thought they could get a great master out of the film prints, but they ended up doing it so cheaply, and being so misguided, and so utterly stupid about it, they just couldn't stop fucking it up at every turn.

Unfortunately, they just keep putting out bottom of the barrel garbage editions and not giving fans who want the show with it's proper aspect ratio an easy option to do so. I mean seriously, they have the means by which to give us a good legit remastered version but instead put out the most crappiest, laziest releases and have been doing so pretty much ever since the Orange Bricks came out and the only times they have done even remotely acceptable releases in the last decade plus are the Dragon Boxes and Level sets. Sadly, the latter went belly up because FUNi chose about the worst possible time and style of release in which to do it. If only they had waited a couple more years and put them out in larger sets a la the Season BD's, then we would have a proper HD release of the entire series in 4:3 available right now and not in some limited form like the former had been though they didn't mention that detail until near the end of their run.

I'm certainly glad to have the Dragon Boxes (with exception of Vol.4) despite their flaws because i simply don't have a lot of hope at this point that FUNi will get it together and do a proper non fake widescreen cropped, non DNR'ed to oblivion release. They've let us down way too many times and the 30th BD set is just the latest example of this because they don't seem to have a clue that we simply want an easily purchasable, good quality release in 4:3.

[Robo4900]

I still wonder if things would have been better if instead of the limited edition Dragon Boxes, we just got full-screen season set DVDs with their raw master scans. Those would surely not have that "limited edition" stipulation, and would likely still be available for everyone to purchase.

Funfact: There is literally zero reason for the Dragon Boxes to have been limited edition. This was most definitely something Funimation decided on, and that the fans at large just haven't cottoned onto being a weird, manipulative marketing strategy.

Not only have most countries imported the DBox masters and used those as their main video master, but Funimation even used DBox as the basis for GT, and as their master for one of the DVD singles of Z in about 2004/2005.

I've never seen anything to suggest Funi couldn't have, rather than getting film of Z in 2006 for the Orange Bricks, simply got the Dragon Box masters of DB, Z, and the movies, and used those -- as well as their Dragon Box masters of GT -- as the basis for their "Season" DVDs, without applying the stupid DNR filtering.

Unfortunately, they just keep putting out bottom of the barrel garbage editions and not giving fans who want the show with it's proper aspect ratio an easy option to do so. I mean seriously, they have the means by which to give us a good remastered edition but instead put out the most crappiest, laziest releases and have been doing so pretty much since the Orange Bricks came out and the only times they have done even remotely acceptable releases in the last decade plus are the Dragon Boxes and Level sets. Sadly, the latter went belly up because FUNi chose about the worst possible time and style of release in which to do it. If only they had waited a couple more years and put them out in larger sets a la the Season BD's, then we would have a proper HD release of the entire series in 4:3 available right now and not in some limited form like the former had been though they didn't mention that detail until near the end of their run.

I'm glad to have the Dragon Boxes (with exception of Vol.4) despite their flaws because i'm simply not hopeful at this point that FUNi will get it together and do a proper non fake widescreen cropped, non DNR'ed to oblivion release.

Here's the thing: There's nothing lazy about Funi's shitty releases. It's all incompetence and probably a strong dose of deliberate fucking-up.

For one, remember that the OBs required them to purchase film from Toei, and get it all scanned and everything; they had to go far beyond the simply call of duty of just re-pressing their existing masters to DVD. Similarly, they could have just put their dub on the new DVDs in its original form, maybe try to go back to the musicless voice track to create a Kikuchi-scored track to go along with it, though not many people were really crying out for this...
But they chose to redub parts of Z 68-291 and remix all of Z, they chose to purchase, scan, and clean up film, and they did every part of all of this wrong. Not because they were lazy, but because they approached every part of it with ill-conceived ideas of how to do it.
They approached the redub, just like with the 2005 redub of 1-67, with the attitude of "let's make it slightly more consistent". Rather than taking the opportuntiy to re-adapt the scripts (they had Steve Simmons' accurate translations for all 291 episodes at this point...) and re-record the Z dub, but do it properly this time, they instead chose to redub about half the dialogue and remix the whole thing without properly referencing the original, so wrong takes were constantly used, vocal filters were constantly missed, etc. etc. And they scanned the film and chose to do it widescreen, ruining the original intention, they chose to DNR it so it's all blurry, and they chose to do an auto-cleanup because it was a bit cheaper.
As a result, the partial redub has never been something anyone's talked about particularly positively, and the "remastering" has always been a sore subject.

For two, the Levels did not need to be that expensive. As I laid out earlier, the Season BDs underwent a remastering process just as rigorous, so just like when Funi imposed a limited status and a high price on the Dragon Boxes, there was no reason for it other than to assign a perception of 4:3 honest presentation being high-priced collectors' stuff for the hardcore fans...
And of course, with the Season BDs requiring a rigorous cleanup, they were not lazy in the slightest. Just incompetent.

For three, and most damning of all, they put out the 30th sets and still completely fucked it up. There's zero reason they couldn't have made the 30th sets basically a slightly better, actually complete version of the Levels. But they chose not to do this.

Funimation's home releases are a lot of things, but lazy is not one.