Selecta Visión Dragon Ball Z Blu-ray

[BlueChi]

Why should we count on TOEI to treat Dragon Ball any better and give it this utopian home release? All this series ever was for them is a vehicle for selling toys and merch, not the great show it is that's worth preserving for the ages. They trashed the original audio masters because the hard work the Japanese cast put in and Kikuchi's incredible score because both had served their purpose and in TOEI's eyes were no longer relevant.

We the fans care about these things, but TOEI have given us no reason to suspect they do.

We somewhat have to count on TOEI because the ball, unfortunately, is on their court when it comes to the potential for a perfect home release. I know that realistically it won't happen because it's DBZ and it will always sell, but that's just the situation the fandom and the property itself is trapped in. Oh, there were also the Level Sets but it's Funimation so you know they won't release the rest, probably just to spite us.These sets for what they are are more than adequate considering they neatly avoid most of the cave-eats that Funi's non-Level Set releases have brought to the table and while I don't think Selecta Vision has the budget in them to produce something akin to the Level Sets, these are still a notable upgrade from their original DB outing.

[Masquerade]

This footage looks to not:
- Have "watercolor" smearyness
- Backgrounds (with severe loss of detail) as sharp as the foreground
- Skin shadows/shading that move around in static shots

This footage does:
- Look about as DNR-ed as Kai, but somehow looks to have a similar level of detail with an added, yet tasteful, amount of sharpening (I'm impressed by whatever AI process they used if they didn't have a film source honestly).
- Have nice color correction. Looks a lot like Kai's except with slightly boosted contrast between exposure highlights and the darkest darks.
- Have its original aspect ratio.
- Give me a sense of visual satisfaction on my Sony Bravia x900f.

Really, short of actually having Toei rescan the entire series in 4K (which they would botch) or having Funimation finish the Level Sets (lol), this is the best I can ask for: A complete way to watch DBZ on a modern flatscreen that doesn’t give me cataracts.






Oh and before anyone goes "UH BUT THE DRAGON BOXEZ BOTHHSS" please shut up b/c that SD shit looks soft and fuzzy as fuck on my TV and I ain't keeping around a heavy ass CRT just to watch Dragon Ball. From the looks of it, this release (and to a lesser extent SV's og DB) keep the benefits of the Dragon Boxes and make them more palatable for modern TV sets (even if I did wish they kept just a little more grain).

[kei17]

- Look about as DNR-ed as Kai, but somehow looks to have a similar level of detail with an added, yet tasteful, amount of sharpening

About as much DNR'ed as Kai? No way. Though Kai 1.0 looked blurry, at least they didn't crush any details with extensive DNR filters and everything looked natural. Kai TFC was more DNR'ed, but it was nothing but the Neat Video type of a temporal DNR filter and it didn't look fake like this. And a tasteful amount of sharpening? You mean this overdone mess with gross haloing?

(I'm impressed by whatever AI process they used if they didn't have a film source honestly).

Like I've already pointed out here last year,
it's obviously Topaz Video Enhance AI that they used for this release. More specifically, it's the AI model named "Proteus - Fine Tune" on that program. I upscaled the DBox footage with this AI model and I got a result that is almost 100% identical to one of the screencaps from this release shared here.

Dragon Box + Topaz Video Enhance AI:


Selecta Visión:

- Have nice color correction. Looks a lot like Kai's except with slightly boosted contrast between exposure highlights and the darkest darks.

I don't even understand what's said there. It's an upscale of the DBox footage that is not color corrected at all. Zero color correction done here. Off-screen photos are automatically white-balanced so they don't represent the actual footage at all.

- Have its original aspect ratio.

Should this be noteworthy in the first place?

Oh and before anyone goes "UH BUT THE DRAGON BOXEZ BOTHHSS" please shut up b/c that SD shit looks soft and fuzzy as fuck on my TV and I ain't keeping around a heavy ass CRT just to watch Dragon Ball. From the looks of it, this release (and to a lesser extent SV's og DB) keep the benefits of the Dragon Boxes and make them more palatable for modern TV sets (even if I did wish they kept just a little more grain).

It's good that you are satisfied at least, but I still don't have any logic that can justify a crappy release with film footage upscaled from a decades-old worn-out SD telecine. If it's not a rescan, then it's shit. That's the absolute factor here.

I will never appreciate or buy any shitty upscales that can be replicated by only tweaking some parameters in a widely available tool.

[BlueChi]

I don't even understand what's said there. It's an upscale of the DBox footage that is not color corrected at all. Zero color correction done here. Off-screen photos are automatically white-balanced so they don't represent the actual footage at all.

The pictures I took align perfectly with what I'm seeing on my TV. Unless you're implying I'm some sort of cyborg with auto-adjustable lenses, which would be pretty metal, I'm afraid to say I'm forced to blow bubble of yours. Color correction does appear to be applied, at least in the more obvious cases, ie: skies and skin tones: Sorry if this affects you in any way.

- Look about as DNR-ed as Kai, but somehow looks to have a similar level of detail with an added, yet tasteful, amount of sharpening

About as much DNR'ed as Kai? No way. Though Kai 1.0 looked blurry, at least they didn't crush any details with extensive DNR filters and everything looked natural. Kai TFC was more DNR'ed, but it was nothing but the Neat Video type of a temporal DNR filter and it didn't look fake like this. And a tasteful amount of sharpening? You mean this overdone mess with gross haloing?

If we're going to post zoomed in pictures that don't come from the source in order to make a bad faith comparison by all means, allow me to join, too.

[Banduck]

it's obviously Topaz Video Enhance AI that they used for this release. More specifically, it's the AI model named "Proteus - Fine Tune" on that program. I upscaled the DBox footage with this AI model and I got a result that is almost 100% identical to one of the screencaps from this release shared here.

But it is not identical. Topaz always has these strange "artifacts" (or whatever it's called):
https://i.imgur.com/CYluDkY.png
https://i.imgur.com/UCBq60S.png
While the SV upscale has nothing like this in any single frame. At least not to this extreme extent.
Also, with Topaz, a lot of details disappear during movements, while SV retains more detail.

[kei17]

it's obviously Topaz Video Enhance AI that they used for this release. More specifically, it's the AI model named "Proteus - Fine Tune" on that program. I upscaled the DBox footage with this AI model and I got a result that is almost 100% identical to one of the screencaps from this release shared here.

But it is not identical. Topaz always has these strange "artifacts" (or whatever it's called):
https://i.imgur.com/CYluDkY.png
https://i.imgur.com/UCBq60S.png
While the SV upscale has nothing like this in any single frame. At least not to this extreme extent.
Also, with Topaz, a lot of details disappear during movements, while SV retains more detail.

I thought someone would point that out. My understanding is that the AI picks up artefacts caused by video compression as false details. So it happens more with the heavily compressed DVD footage we have. Selecta Visión have access to the DigiBeta masters which are still compressed in a way but far less than DVDs. Also denoising footage beforehand can reduce this kind of false details. I tried upscaling other scenes too and they were all close enough to the screencaps to conclude that they used Topaz for this release.

Dragon Box / Selecta Visión Blu-ray / Dragon Box + Topaz AI + boosted contrast


As you can see, Selecta Visión's upscale does have this sort of oil painting-like reconstructed details that strongly resemble those in Topaz AI's upscale. Again, they're not truly 100% identical due to video compression and you can nitpick dozens of minor differences in them, but their ways the details are emphasized are similar enough for you to assume they were processed with the same AI model.

[Banduck]

Selecta Visión have access to the DigiBeta masters which are still compressed in a way but far less than DVDs.

Well, that's probably the reason for the differences. I wasn't sure at first because I have also tried Topaz before, but never achieved the same result as SV.
I wonder if SV used Topaz from the beginning. The first 92 episodes of DB look quite different, from episode 93 it started to look like this new DBZ upscale.
Or maybe they just switched to a different model.

[lansing]

Dragon Box / Selecta Visión Blu-ray / Dragon Box + Topaz AI + boosted contrast

Spoiler:

As you can see, Selecta Visión's upscale does have this sort of oil painting-like reconstructed details that strongly resemble those in Topaz AI's upscale. Again, they're not truly 100% identical due to video compression and you can nitpick dozens of minor differences in them, but their ways the details are emphasized are similar enough for you to assume they were processed with the same AI model.

Dude you just prove in your own examples that it's not the same as Topaz AI, how are you still arguing???

[kei17]

Well, someone pointed out that SV's upscale doesn't have Topaz-like artefacts so I proved it does, and also showed how you can almost replicate it single-handedly, which although may differ from the actual release to a certain extent, it's very likely to be caused by the difference in quality of the sources. If that's still not enough to convince you, then go ahead and believe whatever you want to believe.

But I suggest that you should stop thinking that official distributors are always thoughtful and have access to some sort of magic that you can never fathom.

[Robo4900]

But I suggest that you should stop thinking that official distributors are always thoughtful and have access to some sort of magic that you can never fathom.

This.

And, using your thoughts as a jumping-off point to add my own thoughts on this line:
It's entirely possible for an official distributor to achieve something better than any fans could achieve because they may have the money to throw around for, say, a nice HD transfer of a show's film masters in the manner of Funimation's Level sets (and the base transfer underneath the shitty filtering applied to the two flavours of the Season Blu-rays and the black bricks), but the only real advantage they have here is having the money to pay people to take the time to do manual cleanup, which people can do on their own time if they have a scan of a film print, it's just not something the average fan tends to have access to or time to work on.

In this case, it seems to be a budget release so they just had some computers to run Topaz on the whole show's uncompressed Dragon Box masters. Something anyone could do with sufficient computing power.

[eledoremassis02]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmsHM2K4BlI

Selecta Vision still using the "you wouldn't steal a car" anti piracy ad (0.52)...I need this now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmsHM2K4BlI

[lansing]

Well, someone pointed out that SV's upscale doesn't have Topaz-like artefacts so I proved it does, and also showed how you can almost replicate it single-handedly, which although may differ from the actual release to a certain extent, it's very likely to be caused by the difference in quality of the sources. If that's still not enough to convince you, then go ahead and believe whatever you want to believe.

The main point in Banduck's argument was that Topaz AI was wiping out details on motion scenes while SV's does not. That should be the defining evidence to prove that they are not the same. No matter the differences in quality between the two sources, given both run under the same AI model, there should be no way for one result to look normal while the other with details wipe out. The fact that the result of Topaz AI looks bad is because the software is bad.

I tried it out on my non-HD live recording video, it turned it into a water painting crap.

[BlueChi]

I hope this isn't considered necro'ing, but going through the boxes I had been buying, I think that the upscale has been steadily improving and, from Box 3 onwards, stepped into "genuinely good release" territory. Thought it'd be neat to show it here, and maybe gauge reactions.

Of particular note to me was Episode 120, in which they seemed to have used a different treatment for the grain.
Something that you can only see in motion, but the episode stuck out as being really good looking, imo.

I'll attach some pictures of the latest episode I've watched, and some of Episode 120, and feel free to let me know if I'm imagining things or if the release has actually gotten as good as I think it has.

Episode 199

Spoiler:

Episode 120

Spoiler:

[Shintoki]

I hope this isn't considered necro'ing, but going through the boxes I had been buying, I think that the upscale has been steadily improving and, from Box 3 onwards, stepped into "genuinely good release" territory. Thought it'd be neat to show it here, and maybe gauge reactions.

Of particular note to me was Episode 120, in which they seemed to have used a different treatment for the grain.
Something that you can only see in motion, but the episode stuck out as being really good looking, imo.

I'll attach some pictures of the latest episode I've watched, and some of Episode 120, and feel free to let me know if I'm imagining things or if the release has actually gotten as good as I think it has.

Episode 199

Spoiler:

Episode 120

Spoiler:

i do notice a definite improvement over the 30th funi edition, tho it's a better than bottom of the barrel like others have said.

[theoriginalbilis]

Thanks for sharing! I can see some actual film grain left in. Glad to hear it's not all filtered and smoothed within an inch of its life like the FUNi 30th Anniversary transfer.

[PowerPhantom245]

It's really baffling that Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, and Dragon Ball GT, hasn't got a Blu-ray release in Japan.
Movies has been available on Blu-ray, despite some editing on certain movies, but not the TV series.
Pretty much almost every major anime has gotten Blu-ray (HD remastered or SD-upscale), but not Dragon Ball.
It's also baffling that proper Blu-ray (with CORRECT ASPECT RATIO) has gotten a release outside of Japan.
Any chance that there will be Japanese Blu-ray box (Dragon Box Blu-ray) set announced this year, as part of 40th anniversary?
Maybe 2026, anime 40th anniversary, might not be out of question.

[MasenkoHA]

It's really baffling that Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, and Dragon Ball GT, hasn't got a Blu-ray release in Japan.
Movies has been available on Blu-ray, despite some editing on certain movies, but not the TV series.
Pretty much almost every major anime has gotten Blu-ray (HD remastered or SD-upscale), but not Dragon Ball.
It's also baffling that proper Blu-ray (with CORRECT ASPECT RATIO) has gotten a release outside of Japan.
Any chance that there will be Japanese Blu-ray box (Dragon Box Blu-ray) set announced this year, as part of 40th anniversary?
Maybe 2026, anime 40th anniversary, might not be out of question.

How many of Toei's older shows have gotten a blu ray remaster? They just don't seem interested. I think Kai getting a blu ray release was considered "good enough" for Z.

And "insert joke here about Toei forgetting there was an entire series before Raditz landed on earth and murdered a farmer"

[sangofe]

It's really baffling that Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, and Dragon Ball GT, hasn't got a Blu-ray release in Japan.
Movies has been available on Blu-ray, despite some editing on certain movies, but not the TV series.
Pretty much almost every major anime has gotten Blu-ray (HD remastered or SD-upscale), but not Dragon Ball.
It's also baffling that proper Blu-ray (with CORRECT ASPECT RATIO) has gotten a release outside of Japan.
Any chance that there will be Japanese Blu-ray box (Dragon Box Blu-ray) set announced this year, as part of 40th anniversary?
Maybe 2026, anime 40th anniversary, might not be out of question.

You never know. I don't think any fans are really thinking it will happen... But it is indeed strange Toei hasn't even lazily released the SV or Funi releases.