Dragon Box: The Movies - FUNimation Release Still Possible?

[Spike_86]

WHOA ! That's some news right out of left field, Funimation always making odd decisions. As for what release I went for ..... DB ....... Now hopefully they will just release it in one giant boxset

[bkev]

Please vote for the original DB! The zooming on the season sets is pretty atrocious, as is the color balance. It's akin to the old movie singles in quality... only of course the season sets are progressive. I think that needs it the most.

[Metalwario64]

The zooming on the season sets is pretty atrocious

I really think people are blowing this out of proportion. I've even seen claims that they're nearly as zoomed as the Z sets.

They really aren't zoomed that much:



That's a good example, though this one's worse:


Part of the problem is when it's framed more towards one side of the frame. When it's centered and zoomed a little less than the above example, you get this:


Which is nowhere near as bad as this:


With the Z movies, you have things like this.

[kei17]

If you ask me, the blue bricks have the superior color balance. Regardless of the image quality, the colors aren't washed out, unlike the DBox (man, look at the sky in the first comparison image metalwario64 posted). Also there's no significant difference in the audio quality. FUNi's movie releases always suffer from the bad-sounding Japanese audio, so I find more value in the DBox movies.

[bkev]

I don't really see how you can think the color are better on the season sets, Kei. Sure, they're not red-shifted the way the dragonbox tends to be, but for where it isn't it's really yellow. I've always thought Goku's gi was red in dragonball, not this odd orange color that's on the season sets. Am I mistaken?

[kei17]

I don't really see how you can think the color are better on the season sets, Kei. Sure, they're not red-shifted the way the dragonbox tends to be, but for where it isn't it's really yellow. I've always thought Goku's gi was red in dragonball, not this odd orange color that's on the season sets. Am I mistaken?

Yes, Goku's dougi (I dislike the word "gi" cause there's no such word in Japanese) isn't orange in DB, but it's not magenta, either, and you should not decide by that single fact. Besides it, there's no significant flaws in terms of colors. Instead, the DBox dragon ball has more flaws, like the cyan sky, pinkish skin, some episodes (in the Piccolo Daimao arc IIRC) being bleached as hell. FYI, in addition, episode 51 has a major flaw in in the process of telecine (the bottom of the footage being shown on the top), and as I said many times, the audio is off-sync throughout the series. All of these flaws don't exist on the Blue Bricks. They're not bad that you immediately need an alternative release, unlike the infamous orange ones.

In contrast, FUNi's remastered movie releases have terrible colors/sound, and the DBox movies is superior in terms of everything except for the resolution. Movies should preferentially get a DBox release.

[Metalwario64]

some episodes (in the Piccolo Daimao arc IIRC) being bleached as hell.

When watching my Dragon Box 7 set, I noticed a Boo-arc episode that was extremely bright. It was so bright that the lighter areas of the clouds and the horizon were crushed white (well, close, there's a cyan color cast making it "crushed cyan" if such a thing can exist).



Is it as bad, or worse than that?

Really makes me wonder if Pony Canyon or Toei tampered with those episodes or not. I don't think film is supposed to look like that.

[bkev]

My apologies for the word "gi" then. I don't speak Japanese and just picked the first word that came to mind. The issue I have with FUNimation's blue bricks is much the same as people had with the blu-ray sets, albeit to a much greater extent: the crushed blacks. Seriously, whenever I watch them I typically have to set my TV to something ludicrous so that blue is not black. I suppose I could just be being picky, especially given that the shot of Goku vs. Tenshinhan's color balance seems much better than the one of him vs. Piccolo just above that Metalwario64 provided. The episodes immediately following Daimao's defeat didn't look too good to me, but to each his/her own. I just picked the dougi as a primary example of things about the colors that bother me.

edit: anyway, I'm going to stop here because I'm pretty much failing at being articulate and this is a thread about the movies and not the actual survey thread.

[Cipher]

My wallet just cried. And thoughts of finally buying Kai on Blu-ray just became even more distant.

I voted for GT, because it would probably be a single, affordable release and I kind of have a raging hard-on for that series (I know, blasphemy). But honestly, I'd be okay with any of them.

I'd seriously recommend people vote for either of the other two series rather than the movies though. I had doubts before, but it looks like we'll eventually get the movies. In the meantime, the double-feature releases are very, very good looking, to the point I'm not sure I'd instantly double up and buy the Dragon Box versions.

[Pokewhiz7]

I'd seriously recommend people vote for either of the other two series rather than the movies though. I had doubts before, but it looks like we'll eventually get the movies. In the meantime, the double-feature releases are very, very good looking, to the point I'm not sure I'd instantly double up and buy the Dragon Box versions.

Some of them do. Others, not so much. On some of them (off the top of my head, 1, 8, 10, and especially 6), they were so over-brightened to the point of levels of shading being lost. There's also detail in darker areas lost, and movies 8 and 10 have very excessive noise reduction. All of them have some frame damage every now and then, although that is very minor. Overall, I agree that you should vote on one of the other two. They look better than the singles, but I wouldn't say they look great. They'll suffice for now.

[Metalwario64]

Overall they look better than the singles, but I wouldn't say they look great.

I agree for the most part (from what I've seen. I only own the first 3 double features), with the exception of the ones you listed as having problems, and maybe movie 3 as well. Even movie 5 has some issues with an overly blue push in certain scenes, resulting in lavender skin tones.

Here's an example:

Single:

DF:


Here are shots that I think look way better in the singles:

Movie 6 Single (Nicktoons braodcast):

Movie 6 DF:


Movie 3 Single:

Movie 3 DF:


The entire horizon becoming crushed white, eliminating details, and dirt having the lightest portions becoming crushed white are anything but an improvement to me. Movie 6 has many moments that are damn near "season two" levels of brightness.

Also, movie 1 is sharper, has more visible layers of colors (due to not being over-brightened), and doesn't have the usual edge enhancement and rainbowing. Its only flaw is that the bitrate isn't too great, but to me that single problem is preferable to the slew of problems the DF version of the film brings to the table.

Even if later films are better than the singles, I'm a bit OCD about consistency, so I'd rather get all of the singles, rather than getting some singles, and some double features.

[jpdbzrulz4sure]

Instead, the DBox dragon ball has more flaws, like the cyan sky, pinkish skin, some episodes (in the Piccolo Daimao arc IIRC) being bleached as hell.

^ I've got this stuff covered (click the link in my sig ).

...episode 51 has a major flaw in in the process of telecine (the bottom of the footage being shown on the top)...

Are you sure? I just looked at the screencaps (which are from the DBox) in Kanzentai's entry of DB episode 51, and didn't see anything like that.

[Metalwario64]

I just wanna throw in a request for a moderator to move the relevant posts from this thread into the dedicated survey thread so people won't miss posts relating to the subject because they only viewed one thread discussing the subject.

[jpdbzrulz4sure]

I just wanna throw in a request for a moderator to move the relevant posts from this thread into the dedicated survey thread so people won't miss posts relating to the subject because they only viewed one thread discussing the subject.

Good idea.

[Krycek7o2]

...episode 51 has a major flaw in in the process of telecine (the bottom of the footage being shown on the top)...

Are you sure? I just looked at the screencaps (which are from the DBox) in Kanzentai's entry of DB episode 51, and didn't see anything like that.

Oh its there, I just checked it out.

[Pokewhiz7]

Also, movie 1 is sharper, has more visible layers of colors (due to not being over-brightened), and doesn't have the usual edge enhancement and rainbowing. Its only flaw is that the bitrate isn't too great, but to me that single problem is preferable to the slew of problems the DF version of the film brings to the table.

Hmm, what about movies two and three? (The ultimate uncuts and not the Pioneers, obviously.)
Also, the grass at the bottom of the last shot seems to have more detail in the DF.

[Metalwario64]

Also, movie 1 is sharper, has more visible layers of colors (due to not being over-brightened), and doesn't have the usual edge enhancement and rainbowing. Its only flaw is that the bitrate isn't too great, but to me that single problem is preferable to the slew of problems the DF version of the film brings to the table.

Hmm, what about movies two and three? (The ultimate uncuts and not the Pioneers, obviously.)

They look more like lower quality digibetas with more composite artifacts such as rainbowing, and as such, they aren't as good as 1, but like 1, they are the same masters as the Pioneer releases, just encoded much better.

And yeah, the grass is more visible, but I think the single shot looks overall more balanced. Also, there are other scenes from the same film that are darker than the single as well.

These shots show the quality difference off pretty well:

Movie 1 UUE single:

Movie 3 UUE single:

[Sshadow5001]

Voted movies of course and I'll spread this survey to as many places as I can.

[Ashura]

I don't really see how you can think the color are better on the season sets, Kei. Sure, they're not red-shifted the way the dragonbox tends to be, but for where it isn't it's really yellow. I've always thought Goku's gi was red in dragonball, not this odd orange color that's on the season sets. Am I mistaken?

Yes, Goku's dougi (I dislike the word "gi" cause there's no such word in Japanese) isn't orange in DB, but it's not magenta, either, and you should not decide by that single fact. Besides it, there's no significant flaws in terms of colors. Instead, the DBox dragon ball has more flaws, like the cyan sky, pinkish skin, some episodes (in the Piccolo Daimao arc IIRC) being bleached as hell.

Yeah... In terms of the original Dragon Ball, you've pretty much got to balance what you want. Both releases, Dragonbox + Blue Bricks are neither bad. They both have pluses and minuses. The Dragonbox definitely has better detail, but the colors are better on the Blue Bricks even if they're washed out/a bit bleached.

I would say for Dragonbox the Movies, the DVDs look really good EXCEPT the colors are off on those as well.

I would also say that a lot of the problems with the Dragon Box stem from Toei /not doing anything/ to the colors instead of them actually messing with them. They didn't really do anything to correct the colors from what I can tell, and the weird colorations we see are mostly due to film age.

It's pretty sad, because it's not too hard to get good results even on a consumer level:

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/106910

The delayed audio, I'm actually curious about Kei. How exactly is the Dragonbox audio delayed? Is there math you can apply to correct them (knowing specific milliseconds)?

[kei17]

...episode 51 has a major flaw in in the process of telecine (the bottom of the footage being shown on the top)...

Are you sure? I just looked at the screencaps (which are from the DBox) in Kanzentai's entry of DB episode 51, and didn't see anything like that.

My bad, it was the opposite. The top of the image is displayed on the bottom. It doesn't constantly happen throughout the entire episode, but it's often visible in many shots.