FUNimation's Dragon Boxes have indeed been discontinued

[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)

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.

lol for some reason I forgot the Z boxes have about 40 not 30.

[Kurillin-Sama]

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!

Eww gross, how would that even fit on a shelf? I'll take FUNi's version thank you very much.

[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!

Eww gross, how would that even fit on a shelf? I'll take FUNi's version thank you very much.

I don't know how it's gross, but they fit perfectly fine! The boxes' paper stock are higher quality than FUNimation's. They don't tend to peel. I do wish that the Dragon Books were hardcover though.

[son veku]

Are you trying to make us cry Krycek *pun...Cue-Laugh track

Showing of damn glorious DBoxes

[Krycek7o2]

Are you trying to make us cry Krycek *pun...Cue-Laugh track

Showing of damn glorious DBoxes

LOL! Nah! Hopefully FUNi does release replicas of these. The whole Japanese release deserves to be enjoyed by every fan. Despite their shortcomings, these are a fine way of watching the series.

[Fizzer]

If I ever have enough money, I plan to buy them, and learn Japanese

I've heard that some people here bought the Japanese Dragon Boxes and "applied subtitles to them". Does that mean they actually changed the content of the discs? That sounds like a definite improvement to me, as an English speaker, but surely it's nothing short of sinful to write to a Dragon Box disc?

[SSJToreto]

If I ever have enough money, I plan to buy them, and learn Japanese

I've heard that some people here bought the Japanese Dragon Boxes and "applied subtitles to them". Does that mean they actually changed the content of the discs? That sounds like a definite improvement to me, as an English speaker, but surely it's nothing short of sinful to write to a Dragon Box disc?

You can't write the subs onto the Dragon Box discs themselves. What some of the Dragon Box owners did (including myself) was to to somehow obtain each individual subtitle file for each episode, and then by using special software burning the dbox disc image + sub files onto an empty DVD disc.

This has proved to be a veeery long and tedious process. Not worth it when you can get funi's boxes already subbed.
(Also, good luck getting the menu animations working on your freshly burned DBox DVD's).

[Krycek7o2]

If I ever have enough money, I plan to buy them, and learn Japanese

I've heard that some people here bought the Japanese Dragon Boxes and "applied subtitles to them". Does that mean they actually changed the content of the discs? That sounds like a definite improvement to me, as an English speaker, but surely it's nothing short of sinful to write to a Dragon Box disc?

You customize it. By that I mean, you rip the DVD to your computer and you add the subtitles to that. Once you've done that you burn a new copy.
You never alter in anyway your original disc. Though nowadays, it's easier to just rip your episodes via MakeMKV and mux in the subtitles to the MKV. You get the original DVD file as an MKV with no alterations with subtitles. No need to spend money on dual-layered discs. I've recently did this with my Dragon Ball customs. I watch them through a media player (Boxee Box) on my TV. I avoid the ugly subtitle fonts on DVD's with nicer looking fonts.

[Ashura]

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!

Oops, I over-estimated! I should've said the US ones turned on their side, probably. Thanks for the comparison my friend!

[Krycek7o2]

Oops, I over-estimated! I should've said the US ones turned on their side, probably. Thanks for the comparison my friend!

In either case, they are gigantic. Like everything Japan makes, these are meant more as display pieces than actual DVD boxes.

[Krycek7o2]

This has proved to be a veeery long and tedious process. Not worth it when you can get funi's boxes already subbed.
(Also, good luck getting the menu animations working on your freshly burned DBox DVD's).

What did you do to mess up the menus? On my customs, they are 1:1 copies except without region codes and subtitles. Everything works exactly the same.

[SSJToreto]

This has proved to be a veeery long and tedious process. Not worth it when you can get funi's boxes already subbed.
(Also, good luck getting the menu animations working on your freshly burned DBox DVD's).

What did you do to mess up the menus? On my customs, they are 1:1 copies except without region codes and subtitles. Everything works exactly the same.

I don't actually remember what the problem was, it was a couple of years ago... It didn't work 100% is all I can recall. Ironically, throughout the years it was a much better time investment to actually learn the Japanese language than to re-burn every single DVD with subs lol.

Nowadays, I no longer have to watch my anime subbed, so I'm passed that problem.

[eledoremassis02]

This has proved to be a veeery long and tedious process. Not worth it when you can get funi's boxes already subbed.
(Also, good luck getting the menu animations working on your freshly burned DBox DVD's).

What did you do to mess up the menus? On my customs, they are 1:1 copies except without region codes and subtitles. Everything works exactly the same.

I dont dont if you can share this with us (if its against the rules or anything)...but how do you do add the subtitles? Also do you use duel layer disks??

[Krycek7o2]

I dont dont if you can share this with us (if its against the rules or anything)...but how do you do add the subtitles? Also do you use duel layer disks??

We're slowly going off topic. PM and I can help you out.

[eledoremassis02]

good point lol. PM sent

I'm waiting for Dragon Box 2 to restock!!

[dbboxkaifan]

The FUNimation Dragon Box Z boxes did not come with the TV-Specials, OVA or the Extras (one of them was a comparison of the dubs from around the world).

Back then when Dragon Box Z Vol. 3 was still to be released I thought they'd include the TV-Specials on this box, but as the pamphlet states; the complete 291 episodes. Well, DBGT NEP #01 was featured in Dragon Box Z Vol. 7 so this was really cool since I've never seen it before, except on YouTube but the quality was far better!

[Kurillin-Sama]

The FUNimation Dragon Box Z boxes did not come with the TV-Specials, OVA or the Extras (one of them was a comparison of the dubs from around the world).

Back then when Dragon Box Z Vol. 3 was still to be released I thought they'd include the TV-Specials on this box, but as the pamphlet states; the complete 291 episodes. Well, DBGT NEP #01 was featured in Dragon Box Z Vol. 7 so this was really cool since I've never seen it before, except on YouTube but the quality was far better!

It's a shame we couldn't get the best of both worlds.

With the American Dragon Box, you don't have the specials. With the Japanese Dragon Box, you have no subtitles and you have that clunky oversized packaging.

[SSJToreto]

With the Japanese Dragon Box, you have that flawless packaging, which is not oversized at all!

fixed

[LettuceJUMP]

I've been able to track them all down on ebay, these sets are the best!

I found a top seller selling a whole bunch of different dragon boxes:

http://www.ebay.com/sch/wellwhatdoicare ... 4340.l2562

[Corpsecreate]

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.

I know for certain they did NOT re-encode the Japanese dragon boxes. The reason I know this is two-fold:

1. The Japanese Dragon Boxes suffer detail loss on movement involving dark scenes. This can be seen on Raditz's chestplate in episode 2. The US dragon box does not have this problem probably due to different encode settings.

2. The US Dragon Boxes have extra frames (about 5-10, its different for each episode) on the previous episode previews compared with the Japanese versions.

So it is impossible for them to have simply re-encoded the Japanese version, it would also be completely stupid. FUNimation most likely received a lossless digital copy of the film that Toei scanned and they encoded that without cropping off the extra frames in the previous episode preview like the Japanese did. Another minor difference that most people dont know is that the eyecatch on the US version always lasts 300 frames for episodes 1-200 and 312 frames for 201-291. On the Japanese Dbox they each go for a variable length of time.