Funimation's 30th anniversary collectible home video release

[KBABZ]

I mean they're all in spoilers, so I don't know how that affects your mobile data. Just don't open it. Unless it still somehow loads the images without opening up the spoiler tabs, in which case... sorry.

I remember VegettoEX saying that the images are loaded even within Spoiler tags.

Although IMO, you'd have to be crazy to use a forum on mobile over PC.

[PacificOceanDub]

I honestly never really took the time to admire and appreciate screenshots from the Level Sets until now. Holy crap, those shots look amazing... Now I know why everyone wishes they hadn’t been cancelled. I’m not saying I totally hate the 30th anniversary set, but I am disappointed by the art book, and if the image quality was that of the Level sets, it would totally have made up for all of the packaging woes that I have about the 30th.

[Brangeta]

Clicking those dozens of spoiler tags was driving me insane, so if anybody wants to see TheGreatness25's awesome screenshots just in 1 all-encompassing spoiler tag, click my modified version below in the quote. (I must admit, I am posting this primarily so I can do just that...).

Spoiler:

EPISODE 1

30th Anniversary Set

Level Sets

Season Set

Kai

Japanese Dragon Box

Funimation's Dragon Box

Orange Bricks

Ultimate Uncut

Pioneer Singles

Rock the Dragon



EPISODE 2

30th Anniversary Set

Level Sets

Season Set

Kai

Japanese Dragon Box

Funimation's Dragon Box

Orange Bricks

Ultimate Uncut

Pioneer Singles

Rock the Dragon



EPISODE 5

30th Anniversary Set

Level Sets

Season Set

Kai

Japanese Dragon Box

Funimation's Dragon Box

Orange Bricks

Ultimate Uncut

Pioneer Singles

Rock the Dragon



EPISODE 18

30th Anniversary Set

Level Sets

Season Set

Kai

Japanese Dragon Box

Funimation's Dragon Box

Orange Bricks

Ultimate Uncut

Pioneer Singles

Rock the Dragon



EPISODE 22

30th Anniversary Set

Level Sets

Season Set

Kai

Japanese Dragon Box

Funimation's Dragon Box

Orange Bricks

Ultimate Uncut

Pioneer Singles

Rock the Dragon



EPISODE 30

30th Anniversary Set

Level Sets

Season Set

Kai

Japanese Dragon Box

Funimation's Dragon Box

Orange Bricks

Pioneer Singles

Rock the Dragon

[lansing]

Oh god not 60+ png files on the same page, rip mobile data users, this is costly

I mean they're all in spoilers, so I don't know how that affects your mobile data. Just don't open it. Unless it still somehow loads the images without opening up the spoiler tabs, in which case... sorry.

Don't get me wrong, I'm perfectly fine not doing any more. Just thought people wanted to see these screenshots as opposed to Youtube videos or the same image floating around of hunched over Piccolo.

You need to upload them in jpg or link a thumbnail, not full size images right on the page. Loading 170MB is crazy.

[Robo4900]

Put your comparisons in Slowpics links, for god's sake.

[KBABZ]

You need to upload them in jpg or link a thumbnail, not full size images right on the page. Loading 170MB is crazy.

Since when was 170MB a crazy amount of data? Outside of 1997, I mean.

[TheGreatness25]

Noted. The next batch will just be links.

[Tylerman29]

Oh god not 60+ png files on the same page, rip mobile data users, this is costly

I mean they're all in spoilers, so I don't know how that affects your mobile data. Just don't open it. Unless it still somehow loads the images without opening up the spoiler tabs, in which case... sorry.

Don't get me wrong, I'm perfectly fine not doing any more. Just thought people wanted to see these screenshots as opposed to Youtube videos or the same image floating around of hunched over Piccolo.

No you did great, thanks! Feel free to share more.

I want to feel optimistic about a better release down the line, but after all these bad releases I feel kinda defeated. I fear this will be the last release for a looong time.

[Char Aznable]

If the quality was up to that of the Level Sets, let’s just say I would have been desperately pushing for a disc exchange rather than a refund. I got this just wanting the show on Blu-ray in 4:3, but I was pretty lukewarm on it going in. I have the Dragon Boxes, but Blu-ray is more of a durable format than DVD. However, if you’re going to send me a shitty cash grab cardboard sleeve mess with 54% of it scratched up, that defeats the whole purpose of me getting it.

Yesterday they sent me my return label, and this thing is going back. I’m glad everybody else that got this is happy, but when I got it, flipped through the lazy art book and saw the cardboard sleeves, I felt scammed. The scratched discs gave me all I needed to get my money back.

Never again, FUNimation. The company that brought us Dragon Boxes in 2008 to atone for the Dragon Boxes is clearly dead.

[Robo4900]

Noted. The next batch will just be links.

If you want, you can PM me your images and I'll resize them etc. to all line up nicely as I've done with my previous comparisons.

[KBABZ]

Never again, FUNimation. The company that brought us Dragon Boxes in 2008 to atone for the Dragon Boxes is clearly dead.

Orange Bricks, methinks.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Well, judging by those screen caps it seems the 30th BD's are quite a good deal better looking than the Orange Bricks and Season BD's in addition to the mostly correct 4:3. Even as nice as those things are the overzealous use of the DNR and overly washed out colors still make it not nearly as wonderful a set as it could be, now if it were a Level set style release for the entire series then it would be no question the best HD release available. I'm quite happy having most of the Dragon Boxes but still they definitely dropped the ball as far as giving a great 4:3 release so this isn't the absolute worst that's come from them but still a good ways removed from being a truly outstanding high def archival version of the series.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Never again, FUNimation. The company that brought us Dragon Boxes in 2008 to atone for the Dragon Boxes is clearly dead.

Orange Bricks, methinks.

It really makes me wish they hadn't jumped the gun on the Levels back in 2011 and prematurely rushed them out the door crammed in between a bunch of other releases coming out at the same when they did, because those showed it was in fact possible to make their multi generation masters look really good without a bunch of god awful needless DNR that makes the picture look like a total smear fest.

If only they had just waited a couple more years, then we wouldn't have this mess right now.

[lansing]

You need to upload them in jpg or link a thumbnail, not full size images right on the page. Loading 170MB is crazy.

Since when was 170MB a crazy amount of data? Outside of 1997, I mean.

$10 for 1GB mobile data right here in New York, so yeah loading just that page cost around $2.

[TheGreatness25]

I'll be honest with you -- I think I continue to get all of Funimation's releases for the sole purpose of doing comparisons (mostly for myself, but if others like it, then I'm happy). To be completely honest, I watched about three arcs of the singles, the first orange brick, and the US Dragon Box all the way through. Everything else Z-related that I have is basically window dressing; I never watched most of them through (maybe checked out an episode here or there from each). So from that standpoint, I was always going to get them. I do feel for everyone who is holding out for a good release, but I also feel like Funimation gave that to us with the Dragon Boxes, so at least they put something out that someone wanted.

If there are other versions out there where they look great, sound great, and are done better than Funimation puts out, then first of all, I'd love to know where I can get it, and second of all, the fans deserve it.

Look, I'm not gonna lie -- I've never gotten anything unofficial (except for the Westwood/Blue Water dubs) and I've given everyone all the money that I could give (even more than they deserved). Funimation clearly doesn't understand its fans or simply doesn't care. So Funi, don't get mad at fans who find alternate routes to get their hands on the type of product that they're consistently asking you to put out.

Man, I'm super pissed about this packaging. it's so bad. You know it's bad when the envelope that the certificate comes in, is more fancy-looking than this tiny, little black brick.

[Xell]

Sad thing is, I actually remember certain people bad mouthing the Level sets on this forum when they were released.

I really think Funi has reached the point of ‘damned if we do, damned if we don’t’.

With the stuff Funi do, I don’t think I’ll ever own DB on a physical release. I’ve always held off for that perfect release and never found it. Levels was there, but I wanted them to finish it before committing to it due to their previous track record with the UUE. Glad I did.

[jaisonas]

I color corrected these when Funi did their silly blog post with the raw images, can you post the same scene from the bluray? Cant remember which episode they are from unfortunately.

Spoiler:

Thats about how i'd like the blurays to look

[Brangeta]

Thanks for making all those screenshots TheGreatness25!

I still maintain my opinion, that as far as colors are concerned, I like the 30th anni set best and I'm thankful to own it. The Level sets leave the show looking like the 90s cartoon it deserves to look like, but until we get Funimation to finish what they started back then, the 30th Anni set is (in my opinion) the best thing we can get currently.

The Season set (16:9) looks just as terrible as what limited chance I gave it back when it first came out (and I nearly immediately resold season 1 after getting it). It actually looks worse than the orange bricks in most of these shots. The contrast is way too high, and even though the orange bricks are blurry in areas the season sets aren't, the high contrast of the season set kills the appearance to me. By keeping the 30th anni set 4:3, the amount of detail getting blown out by DNR isn't as great, so the end result looks a lot better. They also reduced the contrast and saturation for the 30th anni set.

I decided to make some 99% (because I am having to eyeball this in Photoshop using difference layers) identical scaled and cropped-to-the-smallest-edge versions of the most important versions (as I see it), and I was surprised to discover that the Funimation Dragon Box (which has more art on the left and right than the Japanese version) is actually more cropped on the left and right in this scene than the Level set or 30th anni (which were pretty much cropped identically). Since some might want to nitpick, I did the math. The Funimation Dragon Box is missing 1.48% on the left and right compared to the 30th anni and the Level Set in this scene. How much is that REALLY though? Well, it's enough that if 1.48% were missing from just the right side, Vegeta would be missing almost an entire segment of his shoulder armor.

And for reference, the Funimation Dragon Box is actually LESS cropped than the Japanese one on the left and right, but slightly MORE cropped on the height [at least in this scene, I'm not checking multiple ones]. The Funimation version has 7 more pixels on the left and 6 pixels more on the right. While the Japanese version has 5 pixels more on the bottom (technically 4 pixels if you respect that Funimation's has an extra pixel at the top). Said another way, the Japanese Dragon Box is missing 1.8% of the width while it has 0.9% more height. So you actually see a slightly greater amount of art on the Funimation version. Minor stuff, but when we're talking about 720x540 here, it's a little notable if you're looking for the biggest picture possible.

There's also some interesting distortion to both versions of the Dragon Box on this scene. The bottom left corner of the footage has been pulled outward and the same can be said for the top right corner, resulting in a noticeable twist. You can notice it if you look at what I made. I aligned the scene to Vegeta's shoulder, and you'll note Goku is a bit lower than the other versions and the mountain behind him is distorted.

Anyway, here's my "all things being equal" crop and comparison of what I consider the most important versions of the show. It would take too much time to put every single version on this.

It's worth noting that the blu-ray versions are substantially higher resolution than the DVD versions, so all of the blu-ray versions are scaled down to fit what I created. If you have a monitor or TV larger than these images appear right now (on whatever you're looking at these pics on right now)...(and unless you're using a computer from 1995 or looking at this on your phone... you do have a monitor or TV larger than this) then you are going to be seeing blown up versions of this art on your monitor/tv. If you think something looks blurry at this size, it's going to look a lot more blurry at a larger size.

The versions of the show I compared using TheGreatness25's screenshots are:

Japanese Dragon Box DVD in 4:3 ratio
Funimation's Dragon Box DVD in 4:3 ratio
Funimation's "Orange Brick" season set DVD in 16:9 ratio
Funimation's Season Set Blu-Ray in 16:9 ratio
Funimation's 30th Anniversary Blu-Ray in 4:3 ratio
Funimation's Level Set Blu-Ray in 4:3 ratio*
*this set was canceled after only 2 volumes were released in 2011

There's two ways to look at what I've created. On Facebook you can flip through each individual screenshot, but Facebook will have compressed each image.

https://www.facebook.com/dbf.official/p ... 2028673676

Or you can see them all lined up vertically below with very little (if any) additional compression.

[Masquerade]

I've been seeing the clips that one dude put on YouTube and...it's not too bad?

The edge enhancements when it comes to some of the highlights and overall smeariness is worse earlier on, but the clips I've seen from Cell/Buu I think look pretty nice (maybe because there was less grain for later in the series to deal with?):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRXRkYVYRE8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqLZIr_5uWM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atY6gQ6bLJ0

Now I'm not one of those "don't touch a single grain" kinda people who'd have liked the raws as are, but a little bit more grain retention would've been nice. Still compared to most earlier (uncancelled) releases I'll take it.

[eledoremassis02]

I've been seeing the clips that one dude put on YouTube and...it's not too bad?

The edge enhancements when it comes to some of the highlights and overall smeariness is worse earlier on, but the clips I've seen from Cell/Buu I think look pretty nice (maybe because there was less grain for later in the series to deal with?):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRXRkYVYRE8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqLZIr_5uWM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atY6gQ6bLJ0

Now I'm not one of those "don't touch a single grain" kinda people who'd have liked the raws as are, but a little bit more grain retention would've been nice. Still compared to most earlier (uncancelled) releases I'll take it.

It seems to be something with FUNi's masters where they're really harsh and then even out nicely near the middle-to end. Could also be a reflection on the age of the film? Orange Bricks all the way to this new set all seem to have a great improvement in the Cell-Buu saga.

It also looks like the grain they laid over is the same grain filter they used on the level sets title cards.