Dragon Ball Kai vs Dragon Box

Discussion specifically regarding the "refreshed" TV version of DBZ created in Japan for its 20th anniversary, including individual threads for each episode.

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Flamingwindjutsu
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Dragon Ball Kai vs Dragon Box

Post by Flamingwindjutsu » Mon Apr 11, 2011 1:04 am

Does anyone have some side by side screen shots of the same frame from Dragon Ball Kai and the Dragon Boxes?

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Re: Dragon Ball Kai vs Dragon Box

Post by SylentEcho » Mon Apr 11, 2011 8:37 am

Yeah, I'm sure there are some here. I'll make a few and post them here.

Dragon Boxes are far above Kai in terms of clarity and quality. Some of the re-animated scenes and touch ups done in Kai are downright awful!

Edit:

Here are a few:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/43095

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/43099

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/43096

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/43097

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/43098

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Re: Dragon Ball Kai vs Dragon Box

Post by Metalwario64 » Mon Apr 11, 2011 4:38 pm

Those have to be some of the worst comparison images I've ever seen. Were those Kai shots taken from a TV rip? Why is one of the Kai shots twice as big as the Dragon Box? The images are horribly compressed too, and many of them aren't even on the same frame as each other...
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Re: Dragon Ball Kai vs Dragon Box

Post by Tanooki Kuribo » Mon Apr 11, 2011 4:49 pm

Here you go...

Image

I know there is a little more DragonBox in this shot, I was trying to split Freeza in the middle. If I would have done it exactly in the middle it would miss most of Freeza's face.

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Re: Dragon Ball Kai vs Dragon Box

Post by Flamingwindjutsu » Mon Apr 11, 2011 5:06 pm

These are great, thanks a lot everyone. Damn, Dragon Box looks nice.

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Re: Dragon Ball Kai vs Dragon Box

Post by MetalMadness » Mon Apr 11, 2011 7:58 pm

I much prefer Kai's image quality, not only is it in true HD unlike the Dragon Box, but the clean up and color is much nicer in my opinion.

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Re: Dragon Ball Kai vs Dragon Box

Post by BluezaBladeNZ » Mon Apr 11, 2011 9:08 pm

The Dragon Box quality for me is better though for the episodes containing footage from 73-80 (only episodes that used 35mm film) of Z, Kai on Blu-Ray is far better. I've compared shots myself and it's definitely more crisp compared to the Dragon Box episodes, since it was given an HD transfer whereas the Dragon Box was SD.

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Re: Dragon Ball Kai vs Dragon Box

Post by SylentEcho » Tue Apr 12, 2011 8:07 am

Those have to be some of the worst comparison images I've ever seen. Were those Kai shots taken from a TV rip? Why is one of the Kai shots twice as big as the Dragon Box? The images are horribly compressed too, and many of them aren't even on the same frame as each other...
I agree. :( Those aren't TV Rips. I just don't know how to take good screenshots.

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Re: Dragon Ball Kai vs Dragon Box

Post by Ahiru77 » Thu Apr 14, 2011 11:12 am

Yeah, Kai looks way better with the colors. They're really clear and dark.

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Re: Dragon Ball Kai vs Dragon Box

Post by kei17 » Thu Apr 14, 2011 11:34 am

Ahiru77 wrote:Yeah, Kai looks way better with the colors. They're really clear and dark.
The only problem is that they blurred the footage to remove the film grain.

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Re: Dragon Ball Kai vs Dragon Box

Post by SylentEcho » Thu Apr 14, 2011 12:20 pm

Ahiru77 wrote:Yeah, Kai looks way better with the colors. They're really clear and dark.
Have you seen how the Dragon Box looks on your Tele? Watching it on the PC doesn't do justice to it at all.

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Re: Dragon Ball Kai vs Dragon Box

Post by Tanooki Kuribo » Thu Apr 14, 2011 12:22 pm

kei17 wrote:
Ahiru77 wrote:Yeah, Kai looks way better with the colors. They're really clear and dark.
The only problem is that they blurred the footage to remove the film grain.
Yea, and that's why I never came to a conclusion of which one I like better. If anything, I can point out good and bad for each one, it's definitely debatable. Can't I just like both? :lol:

Also out of curiosity, I compared screen shots from the very beginning of the series...

Image

Image

Image

Image

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Re: Dragon Ball Kai vs Dragon Box

Post by Budogenkai » Thu Apr 14, 2011 9:35 pm

Both look great, I really can't decide between the two.
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Re: Dragon Ball Kai vs Dragon Box

Post by obiwan23s » Fri Apr 15, 2011 4:59 am

It really depends on what you want in your Dragon Ball home video collection. Kai looks great and packs the story into fewer episodes. For a remaster of a 20+ year old show, the Dragon Box looks pretty good in its own right. The colors are a little off (refer to kei17's informative threads on the subject) but that's not really a big deal to me. The Boxes look way better than any other master FUNimation has, and I don't care all that much about the colors aging a little bit. I've been buying the Dragon Boxes and personally I'm glad I made that decision what with the Kai music track fiasco. If there is ever a proper release of Kai with the Kikuchi score all the way through, I'll probably buy it. But I'm going with the Boxes for now.

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Re: Dragon Ball Kai vs Dragon Box

Post by Vernichter » Fri Apr 15, 2011 5:48 pm

For me it's going to be the Dragon Box, simply for the fact that it covers the entire span of "Z", whereas Kai in my eyes, is an incomplete failure of a project.

However, I would consider finishing Kai in the future, just to have a way of skipping ahead through some of the slower parts of sagas.

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Re: Dragon Ball Kai vs Dragon Box

Post by TheBlackPaladin » Sat Apr 16, 2011 3:31 am

I'm gonna have to say Kai. The skin colors have an interesting difference...with the Dragon Box, they seem to be way too pink. In Kai, the skin colors seem a lot more natural.

Having said that, yes, many of the re-drawn scenes for Kai look awful, and the Dragon Box wins for pretty much every completely re-drawn scene.
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Re: Dragon Ball Kai vs Dragon Box

Post by Codarik » Sat Apr 16, 2011 10:40 am

Just to throw in my thoughts on this, I like the Dragon Box much more, in my eyes the Kai colors and such look unnatural. Taking 20+ year footage and cleaning it up to make HD isn't right. I hate it when they do this to movies. I don't wanna see The Wizard of Oz in HD, I want to see it in standard definition like it was originally.

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Re: Dragon Ball Kai vs Dragon Box

Post by XanatosVanBadass » Sun Apr 17, 2011 4:16 pm

Codarik wrote:Just to throw in my thoughts on this, I like the Dragon Box much more, in my eyes the Kai colors and such look unnatural. Taking 20+ year footage and cleaning it up to make HD isn't right. I hate it when they do this to movies. I don't wanna see The Wizard of Oz in HD, I want to see it in standard definition like it was originally.
Um . . . you do know that all theatrical films are technically high definition, right? Even as far back as the silent era. We just never had the technology to bring such a high resolution into home video entertainment until recently.

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Post by AnimeMaakuo » Wed Apr 20, 2011 2:10 pm

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Re: Dragon Ball Kai vs Dragon Box

Post by Puto » Wed Apr 20, 2011 4:15 pm

AnimeMaakuo wrote: I choose the Dragon Box, it's what I grew up with.
Unless you're 9 years old, you most definitely did not grow up with the Dragon Boxes.
Blue wrote:I love how Season 2 is so off color even the box managed to be so.

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