What are the odds of us getting 4:3 Blu-rays of the Bardock/Trunks specials?

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What are the odds of us getting 4:3 Blu-rays of the Bardock/Trunks specials?

Post by johnboy1 » Wed Jan 27, 2021 1:02 pm

With DBZ being released on 4:3 Blu-ray at long last, that would leave the two TV specials as the odd men out, what with being cropped to widescreen for the "movie" line of releases. Will we see a proper rerelease, or will they just sort of fall through the cracks?
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Re: What are the odds of us getting 4:3 Blu-rays of the Bardock/Trunks specials

Post by SuperSaiyaManZ94 » Wed Jan 27, 2021 1:07 pm

Hoping they do release a new edition of the specials in 4:3, as even though i've got the old singles it would be nice to have better quality versions with the eyecatches and such that the former lack.
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Re: What are the odds of us getting 4:3 Blu-rays of the Bardock/Trunks specials?

Post by johnboy1 » Wed Jan 27, 2021 1:09 pm

And something I forgot about because I almost never watch them: We still need the four animated DB films in widescreen. The DVDs are 4:3. But frankly, the fact that we don't have DB or GT on Blu-ray at all is pretty good indication that a movie rerelease is out of the question.
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Re: What are the odds of us getting 4:3 Blu-rays of the Bardock/Trunks specials?

Post by Robo4900 » Wed Jan 27, 2021 1:11 pm

It took them 13 years to actually release the series in 4:3 after the Orange Bricks, and they still had the ugly filtering that made the visuals look even worse than your average YouTube "remastered 4K 60fps" video. I have zero hopes for Funimation ever doing the TV specials in 4:3.

Toei do have a nice 4:3 HD version of the two specials, but thus far, they've only aired on TV and streaming, no home video, and I'm guessing Funimation wouldn't bother to import those masters.
johnboy1 wrote: Wed Jan 27, 2021 1:09 pm And something I forgot about because I almost never watch them: We still need the four animated DB films in widescreen. The DVDs are 4:3. But frankly, the fact that we don't have DB or GT on Blu-ray at all is a bigger concern.
Be careful what you wish for.

I'd rather DB and GT stay in watchable quality on DVD than have Funimation butcher them on Blu-ray like they have for Z.

That said, I heard Funi junked their film masters of DB sometime in the past 12 years, so even if Funi were interested in doing a good job, they couldn't do DB anymore, unless they transferred all their masters in HD back in 2007-2013 when they transferred Z and the movies.

They never had film of GT in the first place, in fact no one except for Toei ever has, so that's firmly off the table.
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Re: What are the odds of us getting 4:3 Blu-rays of the Bardock/Trunks specials?

Post by SuperSaiyaManZ94 » Wed Jan 27, 2021 1:13 pm

johnboy1 wrote: Wed Jan 27, 2021 1:09 pm And something I forgot about because I almost never watch them: We still need the four animated DB films in widescreen. The DVDs are 4:3. But frankly, the fact that we don't have DB or GT on Blu-ray at all is a bigger concern.
That and they really need to fix the frame issue with Sleeping Princess in Devil's Castle, as that's the biggest flaw which completely ruins the film visually when everything moves (particularly panning and fast motion shots) at half of what it should. I resorted to buying the old single disc separate from the movie box because there's no way i was going to settle for the botched fps on the four pack version.
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Re: What are the odds of us getting 4:3 Blu-rays of the Bardock/Trunks specials?

Post by johnboy1 » Wed Jan 27, 2021 1:13 pm

On a similar note: We ain't ever seein' the DBK Buu arc again in any ratio, so we're stuck with the cropped version.
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Re: What are the odds of us getting 4:3 Blu-rays of the Bardock/Trunks specials?

Post by Dragon Ball Ireland » Wed Jan 27, 2021 1:32 pm

Very unlikely. The specials are treated as movies in the western world, so whatever Funimation does with them will be separate from the series.

That said, I do wonder what would happen to the specials if Funimation imports the TOEI movie masters? The specials could theoretically go out of print if the new movie remasters and by extension the boxsets they are a part of replaces the Double Features as Z's 30th remaster seems to be slowly phasing out the 2013/14 Z Blu-Rays (currently on sale for $153.01 on Amazon but I've seen them cheaper).
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Re: What are the odds of us getting 4:3 Blu-rays of the Bardock/Trunks specials?

Post by johnboy1 » Wed Jan 27, 2021 2:13 pm

Robo4900 wrote: Wed Jan 27, 2021 1:11 pm That said, I heard Funi junked their film masters of DB sometime in the past 12 years, so even if Funi were interested in doing a good job, they couldn't do DB anymore, unless they transferred all their masters in HD back in 2007-2013 when they transferred Z and the movies.

They never had film of GT in the first place, in fact no one except for Toei ever has, so that's firmly off the table.
Junked them? Why? That seems like a resource they would want to hold onto.

And if they never had film of GT, what did they have? DigiBeta?
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Re: What are the odds of us getting 4:3 Blu-rays of the Bardock/Trunks specials?

Post by SuperSaiyaManZ94 » Wed Jan 27, 2021 2:29 pm

johnboy1 wrote: Wed Jan 27, 2021 2:13 pm
Robo4900 wrote: Wed Jan 27, 2021 1:11 pm That said, I heard Funi junked their film masters of DB sometime in the past 12 years, so even if Funi were interested in doing a good job, they couldn't do DB anymore, unless they transferred all their masters in HD back in 2007-2013 when they transferred Z and the movies.

They never had film of GT in the first place, in fact no one except for Toei ever has, so that's firmly off the table.
Junked them? Why? That seems like a resource they would want to hold onto.

And if they never had film of GT, what did they have? DigiBeta?
The copies of GT that FUNi has are basically early/intermediate digibeta transfers of the film masters that Toei used for the Dragon Box before the cleanup and such was done later.
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Re: What are the odds of us getting 4:3 Blu-rays of the Bardock/Trunks specials?

Post by Robo4900 » Wed Jan 27, 2021 7:20 pm

johnboy1 wrote: Wed Jan 27, 2021 2:13 pm Junked them? Why? That seems like a resource they would want to hold onto.
Not really. Either they didn't feel it necessary to transfer it all in 2007-2013, or they already transferred it all in HD back then; either way, the end result was they didn't think they'd ever need to transfer it ever again, so -- seeing no value in keeping 153+ reels of film around -- they junked it all and only kept whatever transfers of them they've made over the past 27 years.

Granted, "Junked" was probably a poor choice of words, since it implies the film was physically destroyed; "Disposed of" is more accurate. I don't think they literally destroyed the film, more likely it was sold off.
johnboy1 wrote: Wed Jan 27, 2021 2:13 pm And if they never had film of GT, what did they have? DigiBeta?
Toei switched to a new process for giving video out for GT.
For DB and Z, their process was to create the film negative, and then make copies of that, which would be copied to create the release prints sent to TV and distributors such as Funimation
For GT, Toei would instead transfer a copy of their negatives to videotape (using a really badly-set-up telecine machine that created massive blurring and blending between frames) and send that to TV stations, then foreign distributors. The transfer was horrible, so the picture quality is awful, but it was way cheaper than doing it on film, and there was no noticeable difference for Japanese viewers.

In the early '00s, when Toei had Pony Canyon transfer all their film negatives to make the Dragon Boxes, they switched to using Pony Canyon's transfer as the primary video master for GT, so anyone who got GT from Toei from 2003 onward got the new master.

Funimation got an interesting manifestation of this; like everyone who got GT prior to 2003, Funi were initially given tapes of the old, shitty TV master of GT, but like everyone who got GT from 2003 onwards, they were also given the raw Pony Canyon/Dragon Box transfers (prior to the cleanup, filtering, etc., as SuperSaiyaManZ94 notes). Funi used the "new" master as the primary basis for all their distribution of GT, though they didn't get the good footage of the second half of the series until after they assembled the "Step Into The Grand Tour" OP/ED, so a lot of shots in that use the old master (in fact, all of the ED footage uses the old master), even though there's not a frame of the actual show that uses the old master on their releases.

This does also mean that every single release of GT is either based off the old videotape master, or the Dragon Box transfer, so you can usually rely on pre-2003 releases of GT looking kinda shitty and post-2003 releases looking pretty damn good.
Of course, Funimation fucked this up with their "Season" box sets which use the nice Dragon Box transfer, but with heavy blurring that completely ruins the picture; there's no filmic look, the picture definition is shit, and despite their eagerness to filter the shit out of it, they didn't bother to fix the colours. (And for some reason, they didn't use the superior audio from the old tapes despite evidently having them)

And one oddity in all this is the GT special, which either Toei lost the film for, or Pony Canyon neglected to transfer it from film, so every single release of the GT special that there has ever been has been sourced from the original, shitty videotape master.
(Further sidenote: Because Ocean got their masters for DB and GT from AB Groupe, who received their masters from Toei in the '90s, the Westwood Media dub of GT, which aired in the UK, Canada, Holland, and a few other places, used the old videotape master)

TL;DR: Funi used proto-Dragon Box masters of GT, though their Season DVDs add some overly-aggressive DNR on top of that for no good reason at all.
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Re: What are the odds of us getting 4:3 Blu-rays of the Bardock/Trunks specials?

Post by SuperSaiyaManZ94 » Wed Jan 27, 2021 7:32 pm

That's why the singles are overall the superior release presentation wise over the Green Bricks, aside from the high amount of compression/artifacting given FUNi's encoding circa 2002/2003 wasn't exactly the best. Of course you don't have the dub opening and closings on the former but even then the dub is still really crappy but you do get a fairly good presentation of the Japanese version being from a proto Dragon Box source.
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Re: What are the odds of us getting 4:3 Blu-rays of the Bardock/Trunks specials?

Post by Robo4900 » Wed Jan 27, 2021 7:37 pm

SuperSaiyaManZ94 wrote: Wed Jan 27, 2021 7:32 pm That's why the singles are the superior release presentation wise over the Green Bricks, aside from the high amount of compression/artifacting given FUNi's encoding circa 2002/2003 wasn't exactly the best. Of course you don't have the dub openings and closings on the former but even then the dub is still really crappy but you do get a fairly good presentation of the Japanese version being from a proto Dragon Box source.
Well, presumably if you care enough to watch the singles instead of the Seasons, you'll be watching in Japanese anyway, in which case not only will you have the superior proto Dragon Box footage, but you'll also get the full Japanese OPs/EDs, title cards, and I believe the next episode previews. On the Seasons, they did away with multi-angle footage and didn't even try to do branching, so none of those are present; the OPs/EDs are the poor-quality textless footage with Funimation's own credits on top, the title cards are Funi's own dub title cards, and for seemingly no reason at all, the previews are cut entirely.

The only benefit on the seasons is the dub + Japanese score track, which doesn't even remotely work and is akin to polishing a turd (or perhaps attempting to season it with fine herbs and spices; yes, you're adding good ingredients, but the dish itself is still shit), and the dubbed OP/ED songs, which are quite well done, but are only a small gain, and if you're watching in Japanese anyway, it wouldn't make any difference.
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Re: What are the odds of us getting 4:3 Blu-rays of the Bardock/Trunks specials?

Post by SuperSaiyaManZ94 » Wed Jan 27, 2021 7:45 pm

Robo4900 wrote: Wed Jan 27, 2021 7:37 pm
SuperSaiyaManZ94 wrote: Wed Jan 27, 2021 7:32 pm That's why the singles are the superior release presentation wise over the Green Bricks, aside from the high amount of compression/artifacting given FUNi's encoding circa 2002/2003 wasn't exactly the best. Of course you don't have the dub openings and closings on the former but even then the dub is still really crappy but you do get a fairly good presentation of the Japanese version being from a proto Dragon Box source.
Well, presumably if you care enough to watch the singles instead of the Seasons, you'll be watching in Japanese anyway, in which case not only will you have the superior proto Dragon Box footage, but you'll also get the full Japanese OPs/EDs, title cards, and I believe the next episode previews. On the Seasons, they did away with multi-angle footage and didn't even try to do branching, so none of those are present; the OPs/EDs are the poor-quality textless footage with Funimation's own credits on top, the title cards are Funi's own dub title cards, and the previews are cut entirely.

The only benefit on the seasons is the dub + Japanese score track, which doesn't even remotely work and is akin to polishing a turd (or perhaps attempting to season it with fine herbs and spices; yes, you're adding good ingredients, but the dish itself is still shit), and the dubbed OP/ED songs, which are quite well done, but are only a small gain, and if you're watching in Japanese anyway, it wouldn't make any difference.
Indeed, the singles are by far the best option given GT's dub is garbage so watching exclusively in Japanese is the way to go there and yeah the dub covers of the OP and four ED songs and the dub with Japanese track really aren't much of an improvement same as with the Orange Brick redub audio track. Overall the season sets are effectively a downgrade in all the ways you mention there with doing away with the alternate angles and removing the NEP's which before the domestic Z Boxes was the only release of any Dragon Ball series over here to have them included in full.

My thinking in collecting them is that if you are wanting to watch the series especially in Japanese, definitely go for the singles or the box sets of them because the presentation of them is worth it.
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Re: What are the odds of us getting 4:3 Blu-rays of the Bardock/Trunks specials?

Post by Javaki » Thu Jan 28, 2021 7:47 am

Robo4900 wrote: Wed Jan 27, 2021 7:20 pm And one oddity in all this is the GT special, which either Toei lost the film for, or Pony Canyon neglected to transfer it from film, so every single release of the GT special that there has ever been has been sourced from the original, shitty videotape master.
Well, Kazé Germany at least claims they will use new masters for their upcoming German Blu-ray release of the two Z specials and the GT special. (ETA - according to Amazon - is 15 April 2021). I wonder if they really got their hands on a HD transfer of the GT special :?:

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Re: What are the odds of us getting 4:3 Blu-rays of the Bardock/Trunks specials?

Post by Dragon Ball Ireland » Thu Jan 28, 2021 9:00 am

SuperSaiyaManZ94 wrote: Wed Jan 27, 2021 7:45 pmMy thinking in collecting them is that if you are wanting to watch the series especially in Japanese, definitely go for the singles or the box sets of them because the presentation of them is worth it.
As someone who owns the green Season sets I can say I bought them because I wanted to support the UK release, and they were cheap. Although, I am still tempted to get the GT singles at some point for all the aforementioned extras (which should be on every release anyway as they are part of the experience) and I've been in contact with someone whose done beautiful custom covers in the interest of placing the discs in fat cases and saving shelf space. I've been holding out on buying GT again until it gets a Blu-Ray, but even then there's no guarantee it would have all that content, or as Robo4900 said that it would be any better than the existing DVDs.
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Re: What are the odds of us getting 4:3 Blu-rays of the Bardock/Trunks specials?

Post by Big Boss » Thu Jan 28, 2021 12:00 pm

Unless Funimation's hands are forced, probably zero.

Is there that big of a market for the TV specials in general? Doubtful. I think it's highly unlikely we'll see any release at all of the TV specials any time soon, regardless of aspect ratio. Logic would dictate that if they WERE to release the specials again they SHOULD be 4:3 given how much of a fuss they were making about the Blu-Ray's of the main series finally being in their original format. To do a 180 and go back to their old cropping ways would be weirdly contradictory, but this is Funimation. The only excuse I could see is if they try and spin the TV specials as "movies" and claim they are best seen in 16:9 or some other nonsense. That way they could simply re-release their old cropped products on Blu-Ray/streaming services.

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Re: What are the odds of us getting 4:3 Blu-rays of the Bardock/Trunks specials?

Post by Forte224 » Thu Jan 28, 2021 4:47 pm

johnboy1 wrote: Wed Jan 27, 2021 2:13 pm
Robo4900 wrote: Wed Jan 27, 2021 1:11 pm That said, I heard Funi junked their film masters of DB sometime in the past 12 years, so even if Funi were interested in doing a good job, they couldn't do DB anymore, unless they transferred all their masters in HD back in 2007-2013 when they transferred Z and the movies.

They never had film of GT in the first place, in fact no one except for Toei ever has, so that's firmly off the table.
Junked them? Why? That seems like a resource they would want to hold onto.
I tend not to put much stock into any statement that begins with "I heard".

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Re: What are the odds of us getting 4:3 Blu-rays of the Bardock/Trunks specials?

Post by Robo4900 » Thu Jan 28, 2021 6:13 pm

Javaki wrote: Thu Jan 28, 2021 7:47 am
Robo4900 wrote: Wed Jan 27, 2021 7:20 pm And one oddity in all this is the GT special, which either Toei lost the film for, or Pony Canyon neglected to transfer it from film, so every single release of the GT special that there has ever been has been sourced from the original, shitty videotape master.
Well, Kazé Germany at least claims they will use new masters for their upcoming German Blu-ray release of the two Z specials and the GT special. (ETA - according to Amazon - is 15 April 2021). I wonder if they really got their hands on a HD transfer of the GT special :?:
Definitely not. It will be exactly what we got with the Spanish Blu-ray of DB; a shitty upscale of the Dragon Box master that, because it's had this filtering applied, they are calling a "New master" even though it's just the old master with some filters.
Forte224 wrote: Thu Jan 28, 2021 4:47 pm
johnboy1 wrote: Wed Jan 27, 2021 2:13 pm
Robo4900 wrote: Wed Jan 27, 2021 1:11 pm That said, I heard Funi junked their film masters of DB sometime in the past 12 years, so even if Funi were interested in doing a good job, they couldn't do DB anymore, unless they transferred all their masters in HD back in 2007-2013 when they transferred Z and the movies.

They never had film of GT in the first place, in fact no one except for Toei ever has, so that's firmly off the table.
Junked them? Why? That seems like a resource they would want to hold onto.
I tend not to put much stock into any statement that begins with "I heard".
Yeah, take it with a pinch of salt, I don't exactly have hard evidence.

To throw in an additional wrinkle: As I recall, the Blue Bricks start out as a fresh transfer of Funi's film of DB (a shitty transfer with loads of DNR, though), but the later episodes are just the same masters as the singles with added smearing/blurring to remove the grain. So it's possible they didn't have film of everything at that stage, and what I heard was in reference to them junking some of their film a very long time ago rather than it being a relatively recent thing.
Though, this is going off memory, I may be thinking of something else.
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Re: What are the odds of us getting 4:3 Blu-rays of the Bardock/Trunks specials?

Post by SuperSaiyaManZ94 » Thu Jan 28, 2021 6:21 pm

Robo4900 wrote: Thu Jan 28, 2021 6:13 pm
Javaki wrote: Thu Jan 28, 2021 7:47 am
Robo4900 wrote: Wed Jan 27, 2021 7:20 pm And one oddity in all this is the GT special, which either Toei lost the film for, or Pony Canyon neglected to transfer it from film, so every single release of the GT special that there has ever been has been sourced from the original, shitty videotape master.
Well, Kazé Germany at least claims they will use new masters for their upcoming German Blu-ray release of the two Z specials and the GT special. (ETA - according to Amazon - is 15 April 2021). I wonder if they really got their hands on a HD transfer of the GT special :?:
Definitely not. It will be exactly what we got with the Spanish Blu-ray of DB; a shitty upscale of the Dragon Box master that, because it's had this filtering applied, they are calling a "New master" even though it's just the old master with some filters.
Forte224 wrote: Thu Jan 28, 2021 4:47 pm
johnboy1 wrote: Wed Jan 27, 2021 2:13 pm
Junked them? Why? That seems like a resource they would want to hold onto.
I tend not to put much stock into any statement that begins with "I heard".
Yeah, take it with a pinch of salt, I don't exactly have hard evidence.

To throw in an additional wrinkle: As I recall, the Blue Bricks start out as a fresh transfer of Funi's film of DB (a shitty transfer with loads of DNR, though), but the later episodes are just the same masters as the singles with added smearing/blurring to remove the grain. So it's possible they didn't have film of everything at that stage, and what I heard was in reference to them junking some of their film a very long time ago rather than it being a relatively recent thing.
Though, this is going off memory, I may be thinking of something else.
I believe in terms of OG DB that FUNi only has (or had) film masters of the first twenty or so episodes then after that point with the rest of the series it's the old digibeta tape transfers they've had since the early 2000's.
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Re: What are the odds of us getting 4:3 Blu-rays of the Bardock/Trunks specials?

Post by Robo4900 » Fri Jan 29, 2021 1:56 pm

SuperSaiyaManZ94 wrote: Thu Jan 28, 2021 6:21 pm
I believe in terms of OG DB that FUNi only has (or had) film masters of the first twenty or so episodes then after that point with the rest of the series it's the old digibeta tape transfers they've had since the early 2000's.
Where do you think those old digibeta masters came from? Certainly Toei didn't make them.

The truth is that, as of 1998 or 1999, (video title is wrong, and the watermarks and such are either misleading or incorrect; clips of the Namek saga play, they talk about it being about to air on Cartoon Network, the website has the "Store" button which, according to the Wayback Machine, wasn't added until late '98, etc.) Funimation's process had always been to acquire film prints from Toei, transfer them in Dallas, and then work from these digibeta transfers of the film. This would mean Funi acquired film of about 26 episodes of DB (the episodes immediately after #13 show clear signs they were film transfers done at the same time as the first 13, and Funi's initial order for DB was 26 episodes even though they cancelled it after 13, so 26 is the most likely number), and about 67 episodes of Z (which would be cut up into 53 broadcast episodes for Saban) as well as the first three movies of each series.
This makes sense, because Toei's standard method of giving video masters of DB and Z was from film prints; until the Dragon Box, that never changed, and so far, I've never seen any evidence that the alleged Latin American videotape master was ever actually used in Latin America prior to Funimation's own home video releases (which would often be imported into Latin America with the audio and subtitle tracks changed out).

So, why does the first episode of Z (much like the DB movies, the first Z movie, and the first ~20 episodes of DB) look so much better, so much more filmic, than any of the other post-1995 stuff Funi put out prior to the Dragon Box DVDs if we know Funi had film prints of the first 67 episodes?
It's fairly clear that Funi simply switched to cheaper transfer methods, likely involving composite videotape equipment, which introduced the composite video artefacts that you can so plainly see on their Single masters of DB past about episode twenty-something, past Z episode 1 (in fact, in the Saban dub, the switch-over happens mid-episode), and the movies past Z movie 1.

So the alleged Latin American tape master may be entirely a fabrication, assumed by fans and never confirmed by any facts. We do know that Funi acquired video materials from Latin America, Chris Sabat has said that in the past, but it's entirely possible this was in the form of buying up all the film prints that had previously been the basis of the Latin American distribution of the show, and getting their M&E tracks along with it.
It is possible Funi switched to getting tapes from Latin America starting from the move in-house in 1999, but this is simply not known, and since Funi clearly had film masters of all of Z and all the movies in 2008, it would logically make a lot of sense if these weren't new acquisitions, but instead were materials they had lying around from the early days.

I also recall that, in one of the Funi behind-the-scenes of their "Remastering" process on their home video (I think the one on the Season BDs; if someone could check that for me, I'd appreciate it. It should be on the 30th sets as well), the physical film print used as an example of film material is from the latter end of OG DB, which would suggest Funi had film of late DB even though they pretty certainly didn't acquire that material for use before 1999, and yet 1999 seems to be the cutoff of them using film, if they stopped at any point prior to GT.
So, the truth is, we know that Funi had film of the first ~25 episodes of DB, the first three DB movies, the first three Z movies, and the first 67 episodes of Z, and I'm fairly sure they have late DB episodes too, and there's no reason to doubt that they had film of anything else (except for GT). Whether they still have any of that film material remains a complete unknown, but I'm fairly sure at some point around 2008-2014, they had all of this material safely in their vault.

My conclusion is that Funi always used film of DB and Z when they originally got the shows, and they only disposed of it after Steve Franko did the transfer of Z that was used as the basis of the Levels, the Season BDs, and the 30th anniversary sets, but there's no hard evidence of it, it's just what I think is the most likely explanation for my understanding of things. Don't assume I'm right, I certainly don't, but this seems the most likely explanation to me at this time, so I choose to believe it for now.
If I don't sound very confident in this, that's because I'm not. This view of mine is open to change the moment any new evidence appears.

So...

TL;DR: Funi definitely has film of the first ~26 episodes of DB, the first 67 episodes of Z, and the first three movies from each series, but there's no reason to believe they don't have more, and the assertion that Funi switched to Latin American videotapes in 1999 doesn't seem to have any basis in facts as far as I've been able to determine, but the best I can really offer to counter it is a somewhat-well-reasoned series of assumptions in which I would put far more stock than conventional wisdom, given how often Dragon Ball-related conventional wisdom tends to be wrong. (Though, granted, it's hard to find something with less cred than general DB fan assumptions)
The point of Dragon Ball is to enjoy it. Never lose sight of that.

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