FUNimation's Dragon Boxes have indeed been discontinued

[Fizzer]

Wait, they made more of Box 4? I paid over like £100 for that

[dbboxkaifan]

This is the "problem" with Dragon Box Z Volume Seven:



I wish FUNimation would have been more professional when glueing the paper to the boxes and stuff.

[eledoremassis02]

I bought my 7 a few months ago and it doesn't have the problem. So it might be fixed.

I also agree with the paper.

Also are the U.S dragon boxes made from the same grade cardboard as the Japanese boxes? I see a lot of dented boxes from shipping. My 5 box is dented from from what looks like storage at a warehouse. They seem sturdy but also kinda flimsy.

[dbboxkaifan]

The cardboard feels great but as for the glueing, I wonder if they hired kids to do the work and so it turned out crappy.

I think my Kai Part 5 or 6 slipcover the cover and rear were improperly glued and so it doesn't match the heigh correctly, FUNimation, come on.

Btw, who seriously would pay $200 for a FUNimation Dragon Box Z? It's inferior to the Japanese Dragon Box Z and despite the quality difference, it's not worth so much money.

[samuraix123]

The cardboard feels great but as for the glueing, I wonder if they hired kids to do the work and so it turned out crappy.

I think my Kai Part 5 or 6 slipcover the cover and rear were improperly glued and so it doesn't match the heigh correctly, FUNimation, come on.

Btw, who seriously would pay $200 for a FUNimation Dragon Box Z? It's inferior to the Japanese Dragon Box Z and despite the quality difference, it's not worth so much money.

What? What's the difference between Funimation's Z box and the Japanese Z box? I know there might be a slight difference in the quality, but I don't believe that it's that good that it renders Funi's product inferior. how's Funimation's Dragon-box inferior?

This isn't even a real big problem. at-least not to me but would I pay 200 dollars for a Dragon-box? Heck no!

[Krycek7o2]

What? What's the difference between Funimation's Z box and the Japanese Z box? I know there might be a slight difference in the quality, but I don't believe that it's that good that it renders Funi's product inferior. how's Funimation's Dragon-box inferior?
This isn't even a real big problem. at-least not to me but would I pay 200 dollars for a Dragon-box? Heck no!

I wouldn't call the FUNimation DBox inferior by any means. It is a very high quality product and they were using the Dragon Box masters from Japan.

No matter what, the audio sounds like crap. The colors are all over the place and so on. That's a horse that's been beat to death by now, but the FUNi box did have minor issues with the video quality. On various volumes there were scenes where the video did take a hit. The bitrate took a dip and so macroblocking reared its ugly head. These were not present (unlike the Nappa error from the original and various others) It's nothing major, especially if many don't own a decent sized TV. I've guessed that it had to do with the extra episode tacked on. But even then, that could have been avoided with proper encoding. The Japanese discs had no adverts(unless you call the intro to the disc an advert) and six episodes. Though the audio, while it's nice that its 448kbps faux-stereo, was a complete waste of space. Of course, these are some nitpicks since neither version is perfect!

And no, I wouldn't pay that much for a single Dragon Box Volume. I paid 50 bucks less than that to buy the Dragon Box GT set.

[superrayman3]

What? What's the difference between Funimation's Z box and the Japanese Z box? I know there might be a slight difference in the quality, but I don't believe that it's that good that it renders Funi's product inferior. how's Funimation's Dragon-box inferior?

The bigest differance between FUNi's Z box and the Japanese Z box is FUNi's box has more episodes crammed on a single disk when compared to its Japanese counterpart (when you add all 7 volumes together FUNi's Z box only has 42 disks as opposed to the original 49 disks found in the Japanese Z box, and I just noticed something interesting 49-42=7 now if FUNi crammed more episodes per disk that they managed ti end up with 42 disks in total, then this would mean that FUNi purposely got rid of 1 disk per DBOX), the reason I'm pointing this difference of disk numbers out is because in order to fit more episodes per disk FUNi had to take and re-encode each episode with a lower bitrate than what the original DBOX uses making each episode have lower quality than the original source, so in the long run FUNi's DBOX's are indeed inferior to the Japanese DBOX's but it's still a great release nonetheless.

[VegettoEX]

Just to play semantics a little bit, I don't know that it's fair to call FUNimation's release a "re-encode". I highly doubt they literally received Japanese Dragon Boxes, ripped them to computers, and re-encoded episodes from there. It's far more likely that they received some sort of digital, master copy from which to make their DVD encodes. Lower bitrate, sure. Re-encode? Not so much.

[samuraix123]

Can someone host up an image of the Japanese Dragon-box vs Funimation's?

[VegettoEX]

http://www.kanzenshuu.com/reviews/funim ... v-volume-1

http://www.kanzenshuu.com/reviews/funim ... v-volume-2

[superrayman3]

Just to play semantics a little bit, I don't know that it's fair to call FUNimation's release a "re-encode". I highly doubt they literally received Japanese Dragon Boxes, ripped them to computers, and re-encoded episodes from there. It's far more likely that they received some sort of digital, master copy from which to make their DVD encodes. Lower bitrate, sure. Re-encode? Not so much.

Well I guess when you put it like that it does make more sense for FUNi to do that, but the fact that FUNi was able to completely eliminate 7 disks from their DBOX release is interesting because FUNi could've released each DBOX with 7 disks and the grand total of disks would've been exactly the same as the Japanese DBOX.

[samuraix123]

Yeah, I can tell and kinda see the difference now. some of the shots are hard for me to see. but I still wouldn't call Funi's release inferior. thanks for the links VegettoEX

I also would like to add that I hope if Funimation releases the original Dragonball, we get boxes like this

Will Funimation release the entire run of the original in 1 big box? I highly doubt it, in fact I'm almost positive they won't.

But to try and get back on topic Dragon-box 3 is still in stock at walmart
http://www.walmart.com/ip/14311871

[Fizzer]

I am wondering how they'll manage to split the box up though, because the DVD's of the Dragon Ball DBox are split up into seven DVD books, each with one of the Dragon Balls on it. Seven is a prime number, so there's really no way they can split them up without having unevenly sized sets, so they might have to redesign the packaging quite a lot.

[son veku]

I'm almost completely sure there will be five.
They could put 30 eps in each box with the last one having 33, and have 5 boxes.
(close to Z's boxes)

[Pafupafu]

Just to play semantics a little bit, I don't know that it's fair to call FUNimation's release a "re-encode". I highly doubt they literally received Japanese Dragon Boxes, ripped them to computers, and re-encoded episodes from there. It's far more likely that they received some sort of digital, master copy from which to make their DVD encodes. Lower bitrate, sure. Re-encode? Not so much.

The company I work owns plenty of distribution for television shows and films in the US and we are literally shipped a "master" DVD which has to be ripped for most titles. We literally have people dedicated to ripping discs 24/7. I would certainly not find it too surprising if FUNimation receives something of that nature from Toei.

[Ashura]

They likely received digibetas or something similar like HD-CAM. Either the company will completely rip a Japanese release's encode (like Media Blasters has done a couple times I believe, and I believe a few Bandai Gundam disks happened this way) without re-encode, or they'll encode direct from the raw master materials. There is no way looking at these that Funimation ripped the R2 Japanese DVDs and just re-encoded them.

Receiving masters on DVD in MPEG2 is sort of abnormal, too. Most anime is mastered on HD-CAM right now... though I think the earthquake last year started pushing them more toward looking into doing things more digitally and tapeless.

http://www.kanzenshuu.com/reviews/funim ... v-volume-1

http://www.kanzenshuu.com/reviews/funim ... v-volume-2

One thing I would like to note that the pictures alone don't convey (though maybe the text does), is that the Japanese Dragonboxes are FREAKING GIGANTIC compared to the US ones packaging wise. Imagine they're like, two of the US ones stacked on top of each other; that's how tall they are.

[DBZGTKOSDH]

Well I guess when you put it like that it does make more sense for FUNi to do that, but the fact that FUNi was able to completely eliminate 7 disks from their DBOX release is interesting because FUNi could've released each DBOX with 7 disks and the grand total of disks would've been exactly the same as the Japanese DBOX.

Well, it's 4 discs, since the last disk of Vol. 1 & the last 2 of Vol. 2 weren't in the FUNi DBoxes. They were the ones that contained the 2 TV Specials, the 2-part OVA & other extras.

[Fizzer]

I'm almost completely sure there will be five.
They could put 30 eps in each box with the last one having 33, and have 5 boxes.
(close to Z's boxes)

Though really 4 boxes would bring them closer to the same size as the Z ones, they'd have 38 episodes each with one 39. Personally, I think three boxes of exactly 51 each would be great, because that would be completely consistence, and the last episode of the second box would be the first episode of the Piccolo Daimao arc, which would be cool. That seems unlikely, but I don't see why they'd stretch it to five.

[Zestanor]

Boxes 1-5 did have slightly inferior video quality to the R2 Dragon Boxes, but box 6 and 7 were spot on.
Here are some samples from the earlier DBoxes:




Here is a comparison between the same shots between box 5, and box 6: (open them in tabs and switch between them)
http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Zestanor ... ycomp2.png
http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Zestanor ... ality2.png
http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Zestanor ... ycomp3.png
http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Zestanor ... ality3.png
http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Zestanor ... ycomp5.png
http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Zestanor ... ality5.png
http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Zestanor ... ycomp6.png
http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Zestanor ... ality6.png

And here are some awesome shots from boxes 6 and 7:







Notice how the three top lines on boxes 6 and 7 are solid black, but on the earlier boxes those lines bleed into the top of the picture. Also notice that boxes 6 and 7 have sharper grain, and thinner outlines.

[Krycek7o2]

One thing I would like to note that the pictures alone don't convey (though maybe the text does), is that the Japanese Dragonboxes are FREAKING GIGANTIC compared to the US ones packaging wise. Imagine they're like, two of the US ones stacked on top of each other; that's how tall they are.

For those that are curious, here's what Ashura meant!