FUNimation "DBZ on Blu-Ray" Survey

[kei17]

To me, asking about the aspect ratio itself feels strongly disrespectful.

[Marcus Carr]

"There are two screen size formats for dragon ball z."

This is a bit misleading. They would't be trying to influence the answers, would they? Nah...

I made sure to mention in the survey that I wouldn't by the cropped version.

[Kojiro Sasaki]

To me, asking about the aspect ratio itself feels strongly disrespectful.

I wrote this in my explanation I said that "we as a fans and you as company are too small to decide about such things"

[kei17]

Maybe they're thinking that aspect ratio was one of the reasons why Kai and the Level sets didn't sell well compared to the orange bricks, and they want unthoughtful morons' opinions to justify their cropping on future releases. I know I'm being too skeptic here, but I have a really bad feeling about this.

[TonyTheTiger]

Thats just baised, and I take offence to that.

Even though I voted for 4:3, some fans who own widescreen HDTVS will want it to full their screen. Its not like DVDS where you could just do this.

Nearly every single TV you can buy today has zooming as a basic function. You can quite literally crop it from 4:3 to 16:9, very often by hitting a single button.

This isn't necessarily true. It actually depends on how they crop it. If they actually frame each shot as opposed to automatically chopping off the top and bottom equally throughout then a zoom feature wouldn't reproduce the effect. But isn't this moot anyway? Doesn't Blu-ray actually support multiple aspect ratios? If they feel like a widescreen edition or whatever is important enough couldn't it just be a menu option?

Whatever, I don't care that they're asking and I''m certainly not offended by the poll. It's not like they're pulling shenanigans here. They're outright stating that cropping will occur and providing visual examples for both 16:9 and 4:3 TVs. If anything, it's biased in favor of 4:3 which we all know is going to win. Anyone thinking otherwise is just being paranoid.

In fact, the part that bothers me the most about the poll is the possibility that there won't be any more Dragon Boxes. Every day that passes makes DVD that much more obsolete. Sure, it would be great to get a fully restored consistent Blu-ray release but it seems like until Toei gets involved we're going to be playing the same "which version is better" game that we've been playing with DVD for the last decade. And I, frankly, do not have the energy for that bullshit again. At this point, FUNimation and Toei really need to unite their efforts and release a proper Blu-ray set and be done with it if I'm ever going to buy another release. Either give me the rest of the Dragon Boxes or a proper Blu-ray set that won't be rendered obsolete in a year or two. Those are the only two things that will get me to spend any more money on the series.

As for the superior audio fidelity from the VHS recordings, while it is certainly a longshot, no harm can come from letting the people "in charge" know they exist and the story behind them. Crazier things have happened.

[Kakarot88]

I think it'd be cool if they could some how transfer the footage and give it a 3D remake like they did for Jurassic park!

[MuffinButton]

I think it'd be cool if they could some how transfer the footage and give it a 3D remake like they did for Jurassic park!

No. Never. Get that out of your head. 3D is a stupid gimmick and needs to die a slow and painful death.

[Ajay]

I think it'd be cool if they could some how transfer the footage and give it a 3D remake like they did for Jurassic park!

No. Never. Get that out of your head. 3D is a stupid gimmick and needs to die a slow and painful death.

Agreed. Retrofitted 3D already makes characters in live action films look like cutouts. It would look fucking awful in a 2D animation. And yes, like you said, it's terrible gimmick.

[MuffinButton]

If anything, we should be pushing for an IMAX release of future Dragon Ball animation. That's a gimmick that actually adds to the viewing experience.

[Ajay]

If anything, we should be pushing for an IMAX release of future Dragon Ball animation. That's a gimmick that actually adds to the viewing experience.

IMAX isn't a gimmick if something was shot in the IMAX format. Dragon Ball wasn't so it would just a high resolution scan blown up onto a big screen.

[Metalwario64]

Why do I get the feeling that they're asking about cropping so that if it wins, they can simply release Blu-rays of their season set footage?...

[KiddoCabbusses]

Maybe they're thinking that aspect ratio was one of the reasons why Kai and the Level sets didn't sell well compared to the orange bricks, and they want unthoughtful morons' opinions to justify their cropping on future releases. I know I'm being too skeptic here, but I have a really bad feeling about this.

I don't really know if I grasp the full picture here but IIRC, Kai wasn't well-received by classic Z casuals because the dub was altered, whereas the Levels simply cost too much to produce. In the latter case, it probably wasn't so much that no one bought it so much as it is the "AAA Budget Video Game" dilenma, where, for a rather infamous example, Square-Enix was unhappy with the new Tomb Raider's 3.4 MILLION sales because it didn't break the budget.

Why do I get the feeling that they're asking about cropping so that if it wins, they can simply release Blu-rays of their season set footage?...

I think it's really obvious that they want to cut costs for the next remastering attempt, and cropping the screen would be a very substantial cost reduction benefit for them. I, on the other hand, would say that if they want to cut costs, just drop the whole "frame-by-frame remaster" aspect and release the raw footage, or only tweak specific scenes. Someone who cares about video quality would prefer the video be tampered less, than tampered more. And that'd probably be even less costly than a cropped remastering treatment anyway.

[DragonBalllKaiHD]

Done doing the survey. Told FUNimation that I'd rather them to continue the Level sets and that it would be far better than Dragon Box if they consider adding some extras.

Also explained, like most of you had already said, that 4:3 is the correct aspect ratio, not 16:9 and why it was a bad idea to crop the picture.

[OmegaRockman]

Even if Funimation COULD use it, Toei WOULD care because they wouldn't want America to have a product that is in any way superior to the Japanese product. Our box sets may be cheaper, but the video quality sucks. Even the old singles are inferior to the single DVDs in Japan because they have Dragon Box quality. But if we all of a sudden got an HD release with video quality that ranges from only slightly below to on par with the Dragon Box with the best audio quality ever officially released in the world AND for an amazingly low price, all hell would break loose for Toei. Toei doesn't want a product just as good as theirs, let alone better, to be on any market, domestic or foreign, in fear of the Japanese fanbase reverse-importing stuff from America, especially when it's likely to be cheaper to buy the American release. Too much incentive to import there.

You know, reading all this I can only think of FUNi's recent One Piece DVDs. Sure, they're missing the fourteenth ending-sequence. Sure, their attempt at integrating their revised logo into the original animation looks utterly horrendous, but these two issues rather pale in comparison to one simple fact: The TV-series changed to being produced in 16:9 720p at episode 207. The Japanese DVD-release remained in 4:3 for another 20 episodes after that before switching over. FUNi's DVDs switched to the correct aspect-ratio right away. Not to mention I believe the Japanese One Piece DVDs are still interlaced, whereas FUNi's are in progressive scan starting with Season 4 (aka episode 206 and on). That, plus the fact that their collections are infinitely cheaper than the Japanese boxsets that Toei has been releasing.
Bottom-line is, the American DVD-release of One Piece is by now an infinitely better deal than the Japanese release of the same episodes. So if Toei was okay with this for One Piece, it does seem a bit weird that "all hell would break loose for Toei" if the same happened with Dragon Ball.

You do raise a good point, but One Piece has a two things going for it that DBZ doesn't: 1.) The Japanese DVDs have been on the market for a lot longer than the American DVDs. 2.) The American DVDs are a lot further behind than the Japanese DVDs with a difference of approximately three hundred episodes, give or take, plus ALL of the movies and specials released thus far. Most Japanese fans have probably already bought all the episodes up to the last episode contained on Funi's most recent release on Toei's DVDs years ago when they first hit the Japanese market, so what's the point of rebuying the same episodes on a product from America that has problems, even if it IS cheap? Wouldn't they want to focus on the more recent episodes that Toei is releasing right now? Maybe someone who is just now wanting to buy the series might consider the American DVDs, but Toei has still made their dollar on those episodes several years ago. Even then, wouldn't that fan rather go after the sets whose latest release is much, much farther in the series than the American release that they can walk into the store and buy right now? It's different with DBZ because it's a series that's been over for years both in Japan AND in America, so no matter where you buy it from, you'll always get the same 291 episodes, beginning to end, with the Japanese audio. That means if a superior product comes out in America then Japanese fans will have a reason to stop buying Toei's DVDs and start buying the new Funi release, especially if one of the perks is original broadcast quality audio. That would be HUGE. I suppose I was exaggerating when I said that all hell would break loose if Funi got a better release, so I apologize for that, but there would still most likely be a noticeable drop in profits if it turned out that the release by the company who MADE THE SHOW has worse Japanese audio than the release from some company stationed in Texas. Not only would it cause them to lose money, but it would also be embarrassing. To put it simply, Toei wants the best possible release of DBZ to be their own release.

[OmegaRockman]

Sorry for a double post and being slightly off topic, but has anyone seen this?!

http://www.amazon.com/Dragon-Ball-Level ... +z+blu+ray

[superrayman3]

Sorry for a double post and being slightly off topic, but has anyone seen this?!

http://www.amazon.com/Dragon-Ball-Level ... +z+blu+ray

That's probably a hoax just like the KAI OST IV that was listed on Amazon Japan a while back, hell their description says it's a DVD not Blu-ray so that should be a tell all right there.

[VegettoEX]

Those aren't "hoaxes". They were legitimate products legitimately planned by legitimate companies. They just happened to be canceled before their actual release.

[Ajay]

Sorry for a double post and being slightly off topic, but has anyone seen this?!

http://www.amazon.com/Dragon-Ball-Level ... +z+blu+ray

Oh god, the review on that page. I don't even. http://www.amazon.com/review/R2T57XQ4CA ... hisHelpful

[superrayman3]

Those aren't "hoaxes". They were legitimate products legitimately planned by legitimate companies. They just happened to be canceled before their actual release.

I know these are legit products that were canceled before they were released, what I meant by hoax is the seller purposely posted the listing just to see how many people would be stupid enough to believe that the seller actually has something that they really don't, remember when Kei inquired about the Kai OST IV and almost immediately the listing disappeared and Kei never received a reply from the seller? I have a feeling this is the same thing hence why I'm take this listing with a grain of salt.

[MuffinButton]

Amazon customer review:

By Matthew R. Auman
All the new remastered levels of DBZ are great but why even make it in blu ray if the ratio is not 16:9. Hardly anyone has tube televisions anymore so thats almost in a way what you are watching. Even the remastered dvd versions are in 16:9. It just doesnt make any sense. Its like an oxymoron. You get it in bluray but you also are looking a picture that should be on a tube television.

Thanks,

Big DBZ Fan

^ THIS, is why they're polling on 16:9 vs 4:3. Because people are idiots. And they need the idiots to BUY BUY BUY to make their DBZ flood viable.