Funimation's 30th anniversary collectible home video release

[Vegard Aune]

All things considered, if this release does indeed use the same film prints and we have to deal with some darker detail being lost... Yeah that would be a bit of a shame but I don't think it would be a dealbreaker. While I haven't looked super close at how the Levels looked, overall what I've seen indicates that they are the best the show has ever looked. And it would certainly be an immense improvement over anything else FUNi has released. Again, if we get the whole show looking more or less like that... we will finally have a consistent, easily available version of the show that isn't an outright insult to the product. Which is a super low bar, to be sure... but honestly a Level style remaster for the entire show would put us way, way above it.

[JohnnyCashKami]

easily available version of the show

Well, for the lucky 3k pre-order customers at least.

[KBABZ]

easily available version of the show

Well, for the lucky 3k pre-order customers at least.

To be clear, none of the signatures or emails are for pre-orders, they're for expressions of interest. Nobody is guaranteed a copy yet.

[Forte224]

easily available version of the show

Well, for the lucky 3k pre-order customers at least.

To be clear, none of the signatures or emails are for pre-orders, they're for expressions of interest. Nobody is guaranteed a copy yet.

3000 is also the number of pre-orders they will need once those go live. But that's simply a minimum pre-order number, there's nothing indicating that's all that will be available.

[ect5150]

All things considered, if this release does indeed use the same film prints and we have to deal with some darker detail being lost... Yeah that would be a bit of a shame but I don't think it would be a dealbreaker.

I agree here... especially when I see those green sky pics from the Vegeta fight again from the DBox. I believe it was green during the Kai remaster too, correct?

As someone who first saw that battle on VHS fansub copies from Japan (multiple gen copy I'm sure) - that sky wasn't green. I feel the levels set was closer to the original broadcast.

[KBABZ]

Well, for the lucky 3k pre-order customers at least.

To be clear, none of the signatures or emails are for pre-orders, they're for expressions of interest. Nobody is guaranteed a copy yet.

3000 is also the number of pre-orders they will need once those go live. But that's simply a minimum pre-order number, there's nothing indicating that's all that will be available.

I wouldn't call them pre-orders as such...

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

All things considered, if this release does indeed use the same film prints and we have to deal with some darker detail being lost... Yeah that would be a bit of a shame but I don't think it would be a dealbreaker.

I agree here... especially when I see those green sky pics from the Vegeta fight again from the DBox. I believe it was green during the Kai remaster too, correct?

As someone who first saw that battle on VHS fansub copies from Japan (multiple gen copy I'm sure) - that sky wasn't green. I feel the levels set was closer to the original broadcast.

Yeah, and that has to do primarily with the slight degradation of the film's colors and such from when it was originally processed for the TV broadcast to when Toei and Pony Canyon went back and restored the film as best as they possibly could at the time to create the masters for the Dragon Boxes in 2002/2003.

[Forte224]

To be clear, none of the signatures or emails are for pre-orders, they're for expressions of interest. Nobody is guaranteed a copy yet.

3000 is also the number of pre-orders they will need once those go live. But that's simply a minimum pre-order number, there's nothing indicating that's all that will be available.

I wouldn't call them pre-orders as such...

There will be pre-orders eventually, and 3000 will be required. It's a separate thing.

[superrayman3]

Could someone upload the level version of the infamous crater shot from episode 1?

[SqueakyBoots]

If the new remasters resembled the level sets but covered the entire series, I'd be happy. Yeah it'd be better if they use Toei's original film negatives instead of the copied over ones Funimation has (Would probably also make the remastering process easier if they had the originals, I'd imagine.) but either way is a huge upgrade compared to what we've gotten in the past.

I mean look at this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQUioljjGcU I don't think a better looking version of this scene exists. I can tell the team behind this remaster wanted to respect the show's age instead of trying to make it look modern like other remasters tend to do and it looks all the better for it. Only criticism I have is that maybe the colors could be a hair brighter.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

If the new remasters resembled the level sets but covered the entire series, I'd be happy. Yeah it'd be better if they use Toei's original film negatives instead of the copied over ones Funimation has (Would probably also make the remastering process easier if they had the originals, I'd imagine.) but either way is a huge upgrade compared to what we've gotten in the past.

I mean look at this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQUioljjGcU I don't think a better looking version of this scene exists. I can tell the team behind this remaster wanted to respect the show's age instead of trying to make it look modern like other remasters tend to do and it looks all the better for it.

Yeah, the Level sets were pretty good quality releases themselves even if not complete package wise like Toei's first generation master prints are. If the new BD set is using the same or a similar type of process to those, but this time around for the entirety of the series then i see this being a damn near almost perfect and definitive release about like how the Levels were intended to be before they unfortunately went belly up.

[KBABZ]

3000 is also the number of pre-orders they will need once those go live. But that's simply a minimum pre-order number, there's nothing indicating that's all that will be available.

I wouldn't call them pre-orders as such...

There will be pre-orders eventually, and 3000 will be required. It's a separate thing.

First I've heard of it.

[Robo4900]

Could someone upload the level version of the infamous crater shot from episode 1?

I don't have it on hand, but it's a bad shot to measure the overall quality by; the first couple of Z episodes have always looked poor on releases other than DBox and Kai; I think the film stock they were using at the time was just awful, and tended to crush much more heavily than the kind of stuff Toei used for a lot of the rest of the run. The early episodes look significantly better on the Dragon Boxes, since they're not two or three generations down like the TV prints Funi are using, or that the DigiBetas were struck from, but even 20 episodes in, it looks significantly better compared to episode 1, particularly on a print-sourced master like the Levels.

I mean look at this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQUioljjGcU I don't think a better looking version of this scene exists. I can tell the team behind this remaster wanted to respect the show's age instead of trying to make it look modern like other remasters tend to do and it looks all the better for it. Only criticism I have is that maybe the colors could be a hair brighter.

It's worth noting that video does no justice to how beautiful the scene looks; the Level BDs were very high-bitrate, and had grain everywhere. The way YouTube compresses that down is not flattering to the original look. So, watching it from the original BD, it would look even better!

[Forte224]

I wouldn't call them pre-orders as such...

There will be pre-orders eventually, and 3000 will be required. It's a separate thing.

First I've heard of it.

"In the coming weeks, we’ll reveal full details of the set and open a reservation period for fans to reserve their copy of this must-have collector’s edition. And while we’d like to just wish it into creation with the Dragon Balls, we’re going to need at least 3,000 of you super fans to help make this happen!

We’ll have full details and artwork to reveal soon—and you won’t want to miss out! Be sure to keep up-to-date by signing up for emails"

Seems pretty clear to me.

[KBABZ]

"In the coming weeks, we’ll reveal full details of the set and open a reservation period for fans to reserve their copy of this must-have collector’s edition. And while we’d like to just wish it into creation with the Dragon Balls, we’re going to need at least 3,000 of you super fans to help make this happen!

We’ll have full details and artwork to reveal soon—and you won’t want to miss out! Be sure to keep up-to-date by signing up for emails"

Seems pretty clear to me.

Rebuttal: my memory's shit, don't hate me!

[Forte224]

"In the coming weeks, we’ll reveal full details of the set and open a reservation period for fans to reserve their copy of this must-have collector’s edition. And while we’d like to just wish it into creation with the Dragon Balls, we’re going to need at least 3,000 of you super fans to help make this happen!

We’ll have full details and artwork to reveal soon—and you won’t want to miss out! Be sure to keep up-to-date by signing up for emails"

Seems pretty clear to me.

Rebuttal: my memory's shit, don't hate me!

Haha, it's cool. Just wanted to make the distinction clear as it is a bit confusing.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Could someone upload the level version of the infamous crater shot from episode 1?

I don't have it on hand, but it's a bad shot to measure the overall quality by; the first couple of Z episodes have always looked poor on releases other than DBox and Kai; I think the film stock they were using at the time was just awful, and tended to crush much more heavily than the kind of stuff Toei used for a lot of the rest of the run. The early episodes look significantly better on the Dragon Boxes, since they're not two or three generations down like the TV prints Funi are using, or that the DigiBetas were struck from, but even 20 episodes in, it looks significantly better compared to episode 1, particularly on a print-sourced master like the Levels.

I mean look at this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQUioljjGcU I don't think a better looking version of this scene exists. I can tell the team behind this remaster wanted to respect the show's age instead of trying to make it look modern like other remasters tend to do and it looks all the better for it. Only criticism I have is that maybe the colors could be a hair brighter.

It's worth noting that video does no justice to how beautiful the scene looks; the Level BDs were very high-bitrate, and had grain everywhere. The way YouTube compresses that down is not flattering to the original look. So, watching it from the original BD, it would look even better!

I think shots like the one below show the poor image quality of the multi generational masters that FUNimation has of the series really shows, here's a comparison of a shot of Goku in episode 1 which in particular is the worst looking out of them on FUNi's releases with a capture off my Dragon Box of the exact same scene.

FUNi: (I capped this years ago from the copy of the first UUE single that i used to have but no longer own)



Dragon Box:

[linkdude20002001]

Ooh, nice comparison. Anyone got that in Levels quality?

It's worth noting that video does no justice to how beautiful the scene looks; the Level BDs were very high-bitrate, and had grain everywhere. The way YouTube compresses that down is not flattering to the original look. So, watching it from the original BD, it would look even better!

Yeah, I was just gonna say... It looks like garbage, so that's not a very good exampel for how good they look. YouTube killd the video with compression.

[KBABZ]

I think shots like the one below show the poor image quality of the multi generational masters that FUNimation has of the series really shows, here's a comparison of a shot of Goku in episode 1 which in particular is the worst looking out of them on FUNi's releases with the Dragon Box version of the exact same scene.

FUNi: (I capped this years ago from the copy of the first UUE single that i used to own but no longer have)

Spoiler:

Dragon Box:

Personally I think that's more down to the colour grading. The "crush the blacks" approach to Goku's hair results in a loss of detail in the shaded parts of the trees, and the blue of Goku's undershirt is severely dark and undersaturated, much like the greens in the Blue Bricks:

[jjgp1112]

Well one thing is that Funi's version of episode 1, for whatever reason, is in ESPECIALLY worse condition than all of the other episodes. I remember Mike commenting on that in his review of Level 1.1 and it being a consistent thing across all of their releases, and I think even a rep confirmed it.