I just have my fingers crossed that this thing with these steelbook repackages of the 30th set masters isn't going to be a repeat of what happened the last time FUNi attempted to do a 4:3 release with the Level sets almost a decade ago now, and like that they decide it isn't working out and immediately backslide to having fake widescreen be the de facto and only readily available release on the shelves in stores and yet again leave a lot of fans (especially those who don't already have long OOP sets like the Dragon Boxes or singles in their collections) with no easy or affordable way to get DBZ in the correct aspect ratio.VanceRefrigeration wrote: ↑Tue Nov 17, 2020 11:32 pmTheGreatness25 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 17, 2020 10:57 pm I find it so funny that they somehow correlated the aspect ratio to sales. Never minding that the orange bricks were cheaper, packed more episodes per release, were the only complete release, and were the only alternative to the original singles that were incomplete and fit four episodes per disc max. But they still thought that the aspect ratio was the big tipping point that created the difference between the orange bricks' sales versus the Level Sets? Who conducted this research? LolThe way I see it, they didn't single out DNR and aspect ratio alone, but rather just looked at the Orange Bricks and tried to replicate nearly everything about them, just in HD and with some better tools. They cropped it, just like the Orange Bricks. They removed the grain, just like the Orange Bricks. They made it brighter, just like the Orange Bricks. And they even sold it at a low price-per-episode, just like the Orange Bricks. It seems like they didn't want to take any risks, so they just went all in on copying what the Orange Bricks did. Then, lo and behold, the Season Blu-rays are massively successful and so they likely patted themselves on the back for their decision-making.To credit the aspect ratio and DNR for the sales, is laughable and reeks of an agenda.
We know which factors actually mattered in those releases' success so it's frustrating that they seem to have no insight into this. And now that they're finally allowing for a 4:3 version, how many people are really going to fork over the money for these steelbooks, especially since they're on the same format as the previous release? My fear is that if these steelbooks don't sell that well, then they're going to see two cropped releases that sold well and two 4:3 releases that underperformed, and draw all the wrong conclusions from that once again.
It took almost a decade for them to come around to putting out another 4:3 version of the series, let's hope they stick to that going forward for releases and not start doing cropped ones again.