Love my new Dragon Box 1 but... FUNi's Blu-ray future?

dbzj14 · Post by **dbzj14** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 2:12 pm

I just received my season1 Dragon Box set and I must say I love them. Far better treatment then anything else I’ve owned for DBZ. I’m just extremely annoyed/scared to continue purchasing these though. I never collected the Z series, and thank god I didn’t, until the Orange bricks came out. Like other people I’m sure, I wanted a complete standard released series and seeing advertisements for the Orange bricks seemed like what I was looking for. Wasn’t until I came to this site and read their extremely well done in-depth review of them that I realized that they were crap. But with hearing about these new Dragon Box release it seems like I had nothing to worry about. Don’t get me wrong I am VERY happy with the Dragon Box collection so far, but I already wasted so much money on the Orange bricks that I don’t want to do the same thing again just to have Funimation come out and say that they’re releasing the complete Z saga on BlueRay.

What are the chances that Funimation is going to release Z once again on BlueRay after the Dragon Box collection is done? Really in the end, is a BlueRay release going to be that much better then the Dragon Box collection? This just seems like a never ending cycle to me.

Big Momma · Post by **Big Momma** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 2:15 pm

I don't see it not happening.

But if so, not for a long time.

Kingdom Heartless · Post by **Kingdom Heartless** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 2:21 pm

I'd say the only reason Funimation would switch them to Blu Ray is if they thought keeping them in regular DVD form would stop them from selling. Since Dragon Box is selling so well, I can't see that happening at any time in this release.

Sebastian (SB) · Post by **Sebastian (SB)** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 2:31 pm

I'd say just collect them on regular DVDs. If, and when, FUNimation does decide to do Blu-ray releases, I'm pinning my hopes on Dragon Ball Kai if they ever decide to release it.

Post by **VegettoEX** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 2:36 pm

For the record, the official spelling is "Blu-ray". I had someone correct me on the capitalization of the "r" once, so don't feel too bad

.

It's been pretty heavily discussed before, but here's a rundown of all the necessary information to put it all in perspective:

(1) The resolution of the Dragon Box masters
As near as we can tell, the Dragon Box masters were created and scanned at a 480p resolution. Short of going through the entire remastering process again and scanning in at a higher, more-future-proof resolution, that's simply all there is.

(2) Upscaling
The upscaling that your own video hardware (either the DVD player, Blu-ray player, receiver, TV...) does to 480p material would be arguably better than encoding an upscaled version (480p -> 1080p) directly on a Blu-ray disc. In this respect, it is pointless to release a Blu-ray release of upscaled SD material, since you gain no benefits from the additional bitrates and frame size. I think the common example being thrown around right now is FUNimation's Blu-ray release of Samurai Champloo, which was done at 480 to begin with (and apparently has heavy DVNR applied to it, which sucks).

(3) Disc space / episode counts
One of the only benefits to releasing a Blu-ray version of the Dragon Box masters would be if you include episodes on there as actual 480p encodes, thereby freeing up even more disc space to cram on more episodes without the compromise of extraneous compression. You don't have to encode things on HD discs at HD footage; a lot of extras for movies, for example, are actually just 480p encodes on the Blu-ray. Really we're just talking about less shelf space being taken up. I think godofchaos ran some math a while back with how many 480p episodes you could cram onto a Blu-ray with nice encodes.

(4) Audio quality
Pretty negligible, since the audio begins its origins in the 1980s

. You'll hear minimal difference between the Dragon Box DVD audio encodes and a lossless encode that might be on a Blu-ray. It's so old and dated, it's just not worth the extra space. Modern 5.1+ surround encodes? Sure, lossless is cool. Old mono shiz? Doesn't really matter.

(5) Backwards compatibility
Your Blu-ray players will play your DVDs perfectly fine, and as noted, probably do a better job upscaling the footage than the company's own on-disc upscale would be.

(6) Kai
There is one version of the show that's natively HD: Kai. It doesn't seem logical to flood the HD disc market with the old version of Z when (a) the DVD encodes are more than sufficient, and (b) there's an HD re-edit that's more suited for it.

SHINOBI-03 · Post by **SHINOBI-03** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 2:37 pm

I say wait for Dragon Ball Kai, because it's the real HD verion of the show.

dbzj14 · Post by **dbzj14** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 3:03 pm

Lol thanks I’ll remember that next time. Thank you for the run down, looks like the Dragon Box collection won’t be a waste of money like the Orange bricks I purchased. I just wished I read this site’s review before I bought all of the Orange bricks, I was ready to murder someone after reading the article and finding out about the Dragon Box collection coming out lol. Sold them all to a local store for an amount of money I’m embarrassed to say, but I was able to get the first Dragon Box set with it haha.

Big Momma · Post by **Big Momma** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 3:15 pm

Crap, I completely forgot about Kai.

Yeah, definitely just wait for that.

Armymanis · Post by **Armymanis** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 3:58 pm

I know a lot of people are really going to get annoyed with me saying this, but why is blu-ray so popular? After working at a Hollywood video rental store for 2 years, I still don't know why blu-ray is so popular? I would guess its because of the clearer picture, but what justice does it do for a Cartoon show?

I mean wouldn't it look the same for a cartoon show as it does on regular DVD format? I know with real-life movies you can see all of the actors zits and pores and stuff if your really into that sort of thing. Sorry for jacking the thread.

johnboy1 · Post by **johnboy1** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 4:03 pm

Big Momma wrote:Crap, I completely forgot about Kai.

Yeah, definitely just wait for that.

Hold on there, tiger! Yes, Kai will be in HD, but it will also chop out 2/3 of the show. Granted, everything cut will be filler, but it's still part of the show. I see Kai as an interesting experiment in cinematic fat-trimming, but I would NEVER use it as a replacement for Z.

As for a Blu-ray release of Z, weren't the masters for the Orange Bricks scanned at 1080p? You think FUNimation would have the gall to release them again on Blu-ray?

Armymanis wrote:I mean wouldn't it look the same for a cartoon show as it does on regular DVD format? I know with real-life movies you can see all of the actors zits and pores and stuff if your really into that sort of thing. Sorry for jacking the thread.

Yes, cartoons will not benefit from the 16-fold increase in detail as much as live action will, but they WILL benefit. If they were printed on film, that almost automatically means that there IS detail beyond what a DVD can show.

ect5150 · Post by **ect5150** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 8:32 pm

VegettoEX wrote: (1) The resolution of the Dragon Box masters
As near as we can tell, the Dragon Box masters were created and scanned at a 480p resolution. Short of going through the entire remastering process again and scanning in at a higher, more-future-proof resolution, that's simply all there is.

I keep reading this, but I have yet to see someone quote a source on this (and I've asked before). So I'll ask it again, how is it we KNOW this?

Back on topic, I think Kai will be released before a Blu-ray version of the DBox (assuming it is possible to do a proper 1080P release of it). I kind of hope they do released a 1080P Dbox though, it would be a way to slightly improve the resolution and get rid any encoding issues (the new Blu-ray discs have far superior encoding to any DVDs can hope to get close to)

Post by **VegettoEX** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 8:56 pm

ect5150 wrote:I keep reading this, but I have yet to see someone quote a source on this (and I've asked before). So I'll ask it again, how is it we KNOW this?

Thus the "as near as we can tell" statement

.

The main reason for that assumption is that we have not been led to believe otherwise, and other remastered releases around the same time were explicitly done in the same fashion (480p remasters from film sources).

ect5150 · Post by **ect5150** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 9:22 pm

VegettoEX wrote:
ect5150 wrote:I keep reading this, but I have yet to see someone quote a source on this (and I've asked before). So I'll ask it again, how is it we KNOW this?
Thus the "as near as we can tell" statement .

The main reason for that assumption is that we have not been led to believe otherwise, and other remastered releases around the same time were explicitly done in the same fashion (480p remasters from film sources).

Out of curiosity, what are the "other remastered releases?" Reason I ask is the R2 DBox was released in '03 but I remember getting the Akira remastered release in '01 (I remember because it was right before 9/11) and the remaster team claimed they did the restoration in 1080P on the bonus disc. This is why I'm hesitant to believe this particular claim. Although, if you guys know of other remasters from Japan than are known to be done in 480P around that time period, that would convince me more. I do believe the remastered Akira was done in the US, so maybe the standard practices were different at that time period for each country/company.

Also, if only 480 lines of resolution were only available, wouldn't that mean the FUNI version should be identical to the R2 version? but when we look at the screen shots, haven't the shots been shifted down ever so slightly? Wouldn't the vertical portion of the picture be identical? I will say that all the comparisons have that black bar at the top though, so maybe FUNI just added that up top (for some stupid reason)

After all, we were sure FUNI would never release a domestic release of the DBox, right? I just don't like coming to conclusions with so few facts.

Post by **VegettoEX** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 9:40 pm

ect5150 wrote:Out of curiosity, what are the "other remastered releases?" Reason I ask is the R2 DBox was released in '03 but I remember getting the Akira remastered release in '01 (I remember because it was right before 9/11) and the remaster team claimed they did the restoration in 1080P on the bonus disc. This is why I'm hesitant to believe this particular claim. Although, if you guys know of other remasters from Japan than are known to be done in 480P around that time period, that would convince me more. I do believe the remastered Akira was done in the US, so maybe the standard practices were different at that time period for each country/company.

Also, if only 480 lines of resolution were only available, wouldn't that mean the FUNI version should be identical to the R2 version? but when we look at the screen shots, haven't the shots been shifted down ever so slightly? Wouldn't the vertical portion of the picture be identical? I will say that all the comparisons have that black bar at the top though, so maybe FUNI just added that up top (for some stupid reason)

After all, we were sure FUNI would never release a domestic release of the DBox, right? I just don't like coming to conclusions with so few facts.

I'm pretty sure the Gundam Wing remastered release was done in the same way, and was confirmed as being done at 480p. It doesn't surprise me that Akira was done better, since that was a single release, and a large-budget theatrical movie.

Whatever masters FUNimation received could have been ever-so-slightly altered in the transfer process (plopped over to a new medium), so it's very possible, even LIKELY, that some shifting occurred, especially if transferred in an analog way. It's not like they dumped it on a hard drive and gave it to FUNimation.

Big Momma · Post by **Big Momma** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 9:42 pm

VegettoEX wrote:It's not like they dumped it on a hard drive and gave it to FUNimation.

I'm not gonna lie, the idea of that is completely awesome and hilarious.

MarcFBR · Post by **MarcFBR** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 9:50 pm

ect5150 wrote:I do believe the remastered Akira was done in the US, so maybe the standard practices were different at that time period for each country/company.

Also, if only 480 lines of resolution were only available, wouldn't that mean the FUNI version should be identical to the R2 version? but when we look at the screen shots, haven't the shots been shifted down ever so slightly? Wouldn't the vertical portion of the picture be identical? I will say that all the comparisons have that black bar at the top though, so maybe FUNI just added that up top (for some stupid reason)

You're ignoring a few specific things.

1- Akira is a film, and was also given a few screenings theatrically, so a remaster past 480 was necessary.

2- As for Funi's version being shifted slightly, we don't know what step Funi's masters came from, or the exact source of these masters. There are a number of possibilities that includes someone at Toei tweaking things. Another example of this is Right Stuf's release of To Heart. With To Heart the original masters were apparently lost, and all that was available were the same masters used for the Japanese R2s, which had numerous problems (the video was so shaky it could actually cause significant motion sickness in people.) Our DVDs using the same masters don't have this problem, because a very large amount of time was spent reframing and playing with settings.

Short answer... it is most likely 480p. It's possible their digital masters are a smidge higher to allow for error correction or other issues.

1080p remasters just traditionally weren't done then except in rare cases.

But let's go ahead and theorize what Toei MIGHT have done. If we are simply theorizing, 1080i would have been the max.

But 1080i in this case just wasn't realistic for that many episodes back then, to expensive, to time consuming, etc.

MarcFBR · Post by **MarcFBR** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 9:53 pm

VegettoEX wrote: I'm pretty sure the Gundam Wing remastered release was done in the same way, and was confirmed as being done at 480p.

The recent Gundam Wing remaster was done at 1080p, downscaled for 480p.

The last 2 or 3 years Bandai Japan has been slowly remastering old content, especially high sales stuff like Gundam.

The 'remastered DVDs' are basically how they are funding the remasters, which will be used to do BDs in the future.

Of course, I can't say for 100% fact it was done in 1080p, I don't read Japanese to go through pages to look, but they even stamp 'HD Remaster' on the DVD boxes, which traditionally means as far as anime releases go, it is based off a new remastered print at 1080p.

MajinVejitaXV · Post by **MajinVejitaXV** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 11:11 pm

VegettoEX wrote:(2) Upscaling
[...]In this respect, it is pointless to release a Blu-ray release of upscaled SD material, since you gain no benefits from the additional bitrates and frame size.

This is the only aspect of your post that I'll counter. While animation can be very difficult to encode with MPEG-2, the newer codecs used for Blu-ray (H.264, VC-1) can handle it much better. So, while some titles marcoblock no matter what you do because of MPEG-2's limitations within the DVD-Video specification (FLCL's manga scenes jump to mind), in theory the newer codecs and higher bitrates that BD allows would allow for a noticeable improvement.

Of course, if you knock out detail with DVNR like the Champloo release, any benefits are basically completely negated.

-Corey

Post by **VegettoEX** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 11:18 pm

MajinVejitaXV wrote:This is the only aspect of your post that I'll counter. While animation can be very difficult to encode with MPEG-2, the newer codecs used for Blu-ray (H.264, VC-1) can handle it much better. So, while some titles marcoblock no matter what you do because of MPEG-2's limitations within the DVD-Video specification (FLCL's manga scenes jump to mind), in theory the newer codecs and higher bitrates that BD allows would allow for a noticeable improvement.

Fair point. I don't think it would be widely noticeable by the general viewership if the DVD was done very well, but it's (to steal your phrase) at least a placebo effect for those of us squirming for the best that we can get

.

Also, I guess I'm schooled on the Gundam Wing releases. Then again, that's Gundam. I'm curious about Sailormoon, as well, since that was also Toei ("also" being "also, just like DBZ, not Gundam").

MajinVejitaXV · Post by **MajinVejitaXV** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 11:28 pm

VegettoEX wrote:Fair point. I don't think it would be widely noticeable by the general viewership if the DVD was done very well, but it's (to steal your phrase) at least a placebo effect for those of us squirming for the best that we can get .

Oh yeah, don't get me wrong. A well-encoded, well-authored DVD will probably not have any noticeable difference and will probably look better being upscaled by a decent chipset than an upscaled BD. I was just playing Devil's Advocate.

-Corey