Dragon Box Vs. Dragon Ball Z Level 1.1

[enapace]

Last night I went down to london to visit my mate and took my copy of the Dragon Box Volume 1 and he had received the blu-ray couple of days back so we set down and watched the same 13 episodes of both bit. Sad I know but its what happened we decided that it was really down to a matter of opinion if you want something, that is the most complete and collectable plus like NEP defiently the dragon Box but if you want something for the dub music or to look better on a HDTV than get the Blu-rays. You get more with Dragon Boxes we eventually decided because not only do you get the Dragon Book which is amazing and kodos to translations of that as apart from a few minor things it is brilliantly done, but also you get it how it was meant to be watched and like it was shown originally I hope this has helped you I suppose for a full review the entire blu-rays need to be released but for now I think that is a pretty good comparison.

[Takkun]

I don't see a problem with the video quality when up-scaled. Actually it looks pretty good to me. I just want to know how they compare with the new Blu-Ray release.

Lets just put it this way. Whenever I watch my Dragon Boxes on my blu-ray player, it looks worse than VLC. When I watch them on VLC, they are extremely grainy.

Well i will admit it does look grainy, but i don't think it looks bad. Besides, it still looks better than other anime on DVD, such as Cowboy Bebop or Rurouni Kenshin. To me the video is clean despite the grain, especially in the later boxes. And doesn't the Blu-Ray release have a lot of grain too?

[Corpsecreate]

Dragon Box

Pros:

1. Limited Edition Collectors Item with plenty of added goodies.
2. Next Episode Previews/Japanese Title Cards.

Subjective Aspects:

1. Unaltered colours.
2. Less Grain than BDs.

Level Sets

Pros:

1. Full 1080p HD.
2. More visible image area with no black borders.
3. Steady frames that don't jitter.
4. Frame by frame editing that removes most image 'errors'.

Subjective Aspects:

1. More grain.
2. Colours are modified, colours are also darker.
3. You need a Blu-Ray player to watch it.
4. Has optional Funimation Dub + Bruce Faulconer score.

Did I miss anything?

Edit: Upscaling anything will never make it look 'better'. As previously mentioned, what matters is which device is doing the upscaling. If you play 480p content on a 1080p TV, the TV will upscale and display it full screen (with black sidebars if the video is 4:3). TV up scalers usually aren't very good which is why upscaling the video on a computer with a good resizer (Lanczos4 comes to mind) will always give better results. However upscaling will always result in a loss of quality.

Heres an example of bad resizing (Left is original, Right has been upscaled then downscaled):

[bkev]

Are we sure that the Level 1 doesn't have jitter? I've heard it mentioned before....

[gotenx]

At this point, there's almost no way for me to justify shelling out more money for the same content, no matter how much better it looks. If you aren't confident in your ability to manipulate video, by all means, go ahead and buy the new BDs. I've personally reached a point where I'm content with what I have. The Dragon Boxes are more than good enough, and my video set up (ffdshow+madvr with no other wacky 2003 fansub-esque filters enabled to a properly calibrated IPS display) does a very good job and making the Dragon Boxes stay competitive with whatever else FUNimation or Toei tries to throw at me.

[Nadian]

Are we sure that the Level 1 doesn't have jitter? I've heard it mentioned before....

The "Film to Blu-ray" extra feature on the second disc says they're specifically trying to reduce jitter in two ways. They mentioned two processes, I think one is designed to reduce the natural jitter of the film and the second to reduce the jitter of characters in the scene. I imagine this sort of stuff has been done lots of times for previous DBZ releases but this time I suppose It's possible they could miss stuff. They're apparently recapturing straight from film instead of processing currently-existing video? (Or is that already very common in the industry?)

Otherwise, it looks like my TV's feature to smooth-out video to 120hz (or whatever speed it was) is picking up and doing something strange with the static and making it very, very obvious that it's there. (It was also doing really strange things to the subtle static in the low-saturation scene at the beginning of Clannad.) Didn't seem so bad on the computer (which doesn't use it) over the blu-ray player (which does) (both 1080p on the same TV).

I do appreciate the return of the Marathon feature and am glad to see the full 4x3 video. Very, very briefly comparing to the Orange Brick video some of it might not be as vibrant... this could be a result of the "true color" stuff mentioned before. I've gone a little back and forth on it, wondering if I prefer super-processed video or the more accurate one, but I guess given the number of DBZ releases I already have I think I'll enjoy collecting this.

[Daimakku]

I watch my Dragonboxes in an old CRT 480i TV with a cheap DVD player. It looks great. I tried it with my 61" HDTV and it definitely shows more of its flaws.
I say its better to just watch it on an old school CRT TV.. That's really how DBZ was meant to be seen. That bullshit about DBZ being meant to be seen in HD is just that, bullshit. Were they really keeping HD in mind when they started the show in 1989? I don't think so.

I'm content with my Dragonboxes and I couldn't be happier with them.

[Daimo-Rukiri]

I watch my Dragonboxes in an old CRT 480i TV with a cheap DVD player. It looks great. I tried it with my 61" HDTV and it definitely shows more of its flaws.
I say its better to just watch it on an old school CRT TV.. That's really how DBZ was meant to be seen. That bullshit about DBZ being meant to be seen in HD is just that, bullshit. Were they really keeping HD in mind when they started the show in 1989? I don't think so.

I'm content with my Dragonboxes and I couldn't be happier with them.

The same should be said about star wars, I mean how many times has that film been touched?

[Krycek7o2]

I watch my Dragonboxes in an old CRT 480i TV with a cheap DVD player. It looks great. I tried it with my 61" HDTV and it definitely shows more of its flaws.
I say its better to just watch it on an old school CRT TV.. That's really how DBZ was meant to be seen. That bullshit about DBZ being meant to be seen in HD is just that, bullshit. Were they really keeping HD in mind when they started the show in 1989? I don't think so.

I'm content with my Dragonboxes and I couldn't be happier with them.

The same should be said about star wars, I mean how many times has that film been touched?

At this time, Star Wars is just a battered house-wife. I'm so glad for having the originals in HD thanks to Harmy!

[Pokewhiz7]

I watch my Dragonboxes in an old CRT 480i TV with a cheap DVD player. It looks great. I tried it with my 61" HDTV and it definitely shows more of its flaws.
I say its better to just watch it on an old school CRT TV.. That's really how DBZ was meant to be seen. That bullshit about DBZ being meant to be seen in HD is just that, bullshit. Were they really keeping HD in mind when they started the show in 1989? I don't think so.

I'm content with my Dragonboxes and I couldn't be happier with them.

It was not meant to be viewed on home video at all. The anime was only created to sell merchandise.

[TheBlackPaladin]

I watch my Dragonboxes in an old CRT 480i TV with a cheap DVD player. It looks great. I tried it with my 61" HDTV and it definitely shows more of its flaws.
I say its better to just watch it on an old school CRT TV.. That's really how DBZ was meant to be seen. That bullshit about DBZ being meant to be seen in HD is just that, bullshit. Were they really keeping HD in mind when they started the show in 1989? I don't think so.

I'm content with my Dragonboxes and I couldn't be happier with them.

It was not meant to be viewed on home video at all. The anime was only created to sell merchandise.

Indeed. Like Mike addressed on a podcast (the exact one escapes me), over here in North America it's one of those weird situations where the show actually became more popular than the merchandise.

[AgitoZ]

Indeed. Like Mike addressed on a podcast (the exact one escapes me), over here in North America it's one of those weird situations where the show actually became more popular than the merchandise.

More like, the show became the product, instead of the stuff being advertised.

[Gozar]

Pros:

1. Full 1080p HD.
2. More visible image area with no black borders.
3. Steady frames that don't jitter.
4. Frame by frame editing that removes most image 'errors'.

The Dragon Box had #4 as well.