Dragon Ball Z "Seasons" On Blu-ray: News & Discussion

[Rukura]

So, I've been thinking about these Blu-rays today, probably more than I should. I've come up with something like a conspiracy theory about this whole fiasco. I know this might sound crazy but hear me out.

FUNimation was probably gonna release these Blu-rays in widescreen anyway, despite the "survey". I put survey in quotes because, well, I think maybe it wasn't really a survey. I think it was already decided that these were gonna be widescreen way before this survey came out. So why even put out a fake survey? So that this time around fans would blame other fans for DBZ being in widescreen instead of FUNimation. FUNimaiton is in the clear, their defense now is it's because it's what the fans want.

So, why even put out a widescreen DBZ release knowing it's not really that popular? Besides knowing it'll sell anyway, they just created another reason to put DBZ on Blu-ray AFTER this release. They can now have this widescreen release come out, make it's sales, run its course and then rest assure that they can put out yet another Blu-ray set of the series a few years later. If they release a 4:3 version now, then a widescreen version later, it wouldn't sell as well because people would have 4:3 DBZ and be like why the fuck do I need widescreen? But now that we're getting widescreen first it creates a demand for 4:3.

::drops mic, walks off stage::

Please keep in mind I'm insane so, feel free to shoot this down if you wish. Thanks.

So, basically, the theory that Mike and Heath talked about on the Orange Brick review podcast, where FUNi made the Orange Bricks to make the money to get the Dragon Boxes.
Watch them announce Dragon Box Z The Blu-rays after Season 9 of this comes out. lol

[Baggie_Saiyan]

Am I the only one that has love for the orange bricks ahha.

[Ajay]

Am I the only one that has love for the orange bricks ahha.

Well, they're a godawful product and I mean just terrible but they do have some worth. They're a cost effective way of viewing the entire series and they contain a track for near enough everyone in the English speaking world: -

-English with the Faulconer soundtrack
-English with the Kikuchi soundtrack
-Japanese w/ Kikuchi

People do like them, they've sold a shit tonne but many owners are blissfully ignorant. They're unaware of the crop, the DNR and the overdone colour...or they have no regard for the show on an artistic level and simply don't care.

[ABED]

As bad as it may be, I do wish they'd have a track without the redub from season 3 and 4.

[Fizzer]

As bad as it may be, I do wish they'd have a track without the redub from season 3 and 4.

Me too, I have a lot of nostalgia for the original dub.

[Baggie_Saiyan]

Am I the only one that has love for the orange bricks ahha.

Well, they're a godawful product and I mean just terrible but they do have some worth. They're a cost effective way of viewing the entire series and they contain a track for near enough everyone in the English speaking world: -

-English with the Faulconer soundtrack
-English with the Kikuchi soundtrack
-Japanese w/ Kikuchi

People do like them, they've sold a shit tonne but many owners are blissfully ignorant. They're unaware of the crop, the DNR and the overdone colour...or they have no regard for the show on an artistic level and simply don't care.

Yes the colour, especially the earlier seasons I have a problem with, I don't mind the cropping and as you sais they are affordable. And I love the Faulconer soundtrack and the fact Dbox's aren't playable in UK and are ridiculously overpriced is why I have Love for Orange Bricks, heck I just finished watching Season 9 lol

[Ajay]

Yes the colour, especially the earlier seasons I have a problem with, I don't mind the cropping and as you sais they are affordable. And I love the Faulconer soundtrack and the fact Dbox's aren't playable in UK and are ridiculously overpriced is why I have Love for Orange Bricks, heck I just finished watching Season 9 lol

Each to their own, I can't stand Faulconer and find them unwatchable. But yes, as they stand, they're the only real option without going on a hunt for better.

[Baggie_Saiyan]

Each to their own, I can't stand Faulconer and find them unwatchable. But yes, as they stand, they're the only real option without going on a hunt for better.

Yeah, Dbox Vol 2. is going for £904.54 on Amazon(uk) It's madaning why so much, I know they are out of print but still!

[Daimo-Rukiri]

Each to their own, I can't stand Faulconer and find them unwatchable. But yes, as they stand, they're the only real option without going on a hunt for better.

Yeah, Dbox Vol 2. is going for £904.54 on Amazon(uk) It's madaning why so much, I know they are out of print but still!

I honestly just need box 7, I keep pushing it off for some reason. but wow box 2 is that much?...

[Baggie_Saiyan]

Each to their own, I can't stand Faulconer and find them unwatchable. But yes, as they stand, they're the only real option without going on a hunt for better.

Yeah, Dbox Vol 2. is going for £904.54 on Amazon(uk) It's madaning why so much, I know they are out of print but still!

I honestly just need box 7, I keep pushing it off for some reason. but wow box 2 is that much?...

yeah dude,
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B002 ... ttom_links

[Taku128]

FUNimation was probably gonna release these Blu-rays in widescreen anyway, despite the "survey". I put survey in quotes because, well, I think maybe it wasn't really a survey. I think it was already decided that these were gonna be widescreen way before this survey came out. So why even put out a fake survey? So that this time around fans would blame other fans for DBZ being in widescreen instead of FUNimation. FUNimaiton is in the clear, their defense now is it's because it's what the fans want.

I think this is true too honestly, but with a different end goal. Everyone in this topic has been talking about how the casual fan doesn't care or prefers widescreen, but the casual fan isn't voting in online surveys that are only spread around in the hardcore circles. If the results of that poll actually affected the product these sets would be 4:3, because the only people finding these surveys in the first place are the people who know how the hell aspect ratios work and why cropping is a bad thing. I don't think it was a way for FUNimation to shift the blame so much as them collecting data though. They had a box for you to explain why you chose 4:3 or 16:9, so I think they just wanted to see how the "hardcore" fan would react. As others have said the casual fan won't care as long as the release is cheap enough, so putting out a survey like that would be useless. I wouldn't be surprised if they're only going to use that data to help them decide how to market it and how much to play up or try to hide the widescreen aspect.

[Kojiro Sasaki]

FUNimation was probably gonna release these Blu-rays in widescreen anyway, despite the "survey". I put survey in quotes because, well, I think maybe it wasn't really a survey. I think it was already decided that these were gonna be widescreen way before this survey came out. So why even put out a fake survey? So that this time around fans would blame other fans for DBZ being in widescreen instead of FUNimation. FUNimaiton is in the clear, their defense now is it's because it's what the fans want.

As I've said earlier eliminating 20% footage over a 291 episode count will save them a tremendous amount of money

This is exactly what I think. I'm really curious how the fans voted in this survey...

1. Remastered footage offers the best picture quality to date
Footage remastered by FUNimation offers the worst picture quality to date - but with our great ideas and modern mastering techniques we will be able to make it even worse!

2. Converted to a modern, 16:9 aspect ratio using pan & scan technology to ensure a frame-by-frame, optimal viewing experience
Converted for a modern, totally ignorant and uneducated masses mostly to make the remastering* process cheaper and to ensure a half of the frame-by-half of the frame, optimal image destroying experience.

This is only a pseudo-technical and promotional babble. Everybody who is interested in photography or movie making knows that "optimal viewing experience" is just showing the footage AS IT MEANT TO BE.

3. Exclusive, never-before-seen artwork is being created specifically for the packaging of all Dragon Ball Z (Blu-ray) releases
"Exclusive", "never-before-seen", "created specifically" - Does such description really works for promotion? As far as it goes for me, every artwork that is produced without use of the original production cels and logos looks crappy.

"By using modern techniques <and here you can write any kind of complete nonsense, because people will always believe when they will see the word "modern">".

1440x1080 is already too much for 16 mm film. The picture looks blurry and grainy. Imagine what will happen when they will crop and stretch it to match 1920x1080.

There will be no quality gain at all! I would say that it will be worse. The picture will be so grainy that it would make them to overuse DVNR. "Brighter & Crisper" is probably their well known and commonly used "modern mastering technique" - blurry, heavily DVNR'ed footage with crushed blacks, too much contrast and oversaturated colors - but let's wait for some screenshots.

Is someone interested in making some nice marketing campaign for this release?

* - remastering means "mastering again". I think that it allows to make some changes. Levels sets were "Digitally restored" - that's why the footage looks almost as the original.

[Daimo-Rukiri]

Who said they would go to 1080p? 16mm film. The sweet spot would be 1280x720 but that's just me.
Picture wise I don't think it'll be any different from the level sets, but as I said 20%/291 = $$$$
$$$$$$

What they save may actually be enough to fund half a season, or FUNi is going to pull a "you believed we'd released in widescreen again?" and release it in 4x3, no formal announcement was officially made or even the cover box itself. Now if they would just drop the broadcast audio track it would save plenty of room for better bit rates.

We should be seeing some release announcement in October, as I believe November is the release month.

[Ashura]

They will do 1080p since that's a shiny fact for the box and a selling point. Very rarely is there 720p content on a blu. Even if it's native 720p, they'll upscale it.

[Ajay]

1440x1080 is already too much for 16 mm film.

I'm sorry but that's simply not true. 16mm film is blown up onto huge theater screens all the time. You see it with indie films plenty (e.g. Bronson, Martha Marcy May Marlene), so the only reason you'll ever end up with blurred picture would be down to the source material - whether that be through degradation or through bad focus on the original film shot.

With Dragon Ball, it tends to be the latter. Plenty of Kai shots were out of focus where their Dragon Box counterparts simply weren't. It's an unfortunate side effect of film but there's plenty of shots where it's still absolutely fine. It depends so heavily on the master they use.

If it's a good master, the quality will be fine regardless of how large they scan.

[MarcFBR]

1440x1080 is already too much for 16 mm film.

I'm sorry but that's simply not true. 16mm film is blown up onto huge theater screens all the time. You see it with indie films plenty (e.g. Bronson, Martha Marcy May Marlene), so the only reason you'll ever end up with blurred picture would be down to the source material - whether that be through degradation or through bad focus on the original film shot.

With Dragon Ball, it tends to be the latter. Plenty of Kai shots were out of focus where their Dragon Box counterparts simply weren't. It's an unfortunate side effect of film but there's plenty of shots where it's still absolutely fine. It depends so heavily on the master they use.

If it's a good master, the quality will be fine regardless of how large they scan.

Eh.... 'waggles hand back and forth'

If I remember my numbers correctly, 16mm is 'roughly' what we would call equivalent to 1080p. 1080p actually looks decent in theaters because of distance to the screen (and more than a few movies are shown in theaters at resolutions roughly close to 1080p.)

DBZ largely won't look great at that size/resolution because it was simply produced as low cost week to week animation and simply won't hold up under scrutiny at those resolutions.

And that says nothing for the fact that even if we say 16mm is 'equivalent' to 1080p, it won't look as good as going off 35mm or 70mm stock (if everything is done properly that is.)

[Ringworm128]

Ok here's all the things I could see happening from best to worst.

1: The 16:9 thing was just an error and these will be 4:3, more Dragonboxes are released, BOG is subbed and dubbed and Norio Wakamoto invites everyone to his moon mansion for a huge party.


2: These are the level sets only in 16:9 meaning there won't be as much detail loss and since the level sets were zoomed out the cropping won't take away as much footage as the OB's.

3: They will do slight grain removal and filtering making it something similar to the double features or blue bricks.

4: The orange bricks on Blu Ray.

[Marcus Carr]

No cropping!

Did they take a survey before releasing the "Level" sets?

[Ajay]

It's frustrating because there are many scenes that aren't totally ruined by a crop but the whole point is to not screw with the original design.

I felt like the survey was very biased. It almost advertised 16:9 as being the better product by using one example that happened to work fine with a crop.

If there had been a balanced argument in the survey that accurately showed the pros and cons then perhaps it would have resulted in a more accurate outcome.

They should show examples like this:

vs.

[ect5150]

Eh.... 'waggles hand back and forth'
If I remember my numbers correctly, 16mm is 'roughly' what we would call equivalent to 1080p.

I'll back this up. I've seen this comparison several times on other sites (like the Doom9 forums). Anything above 1080P tends to not increase visual detail seen for 16mm film. Eitherway, I don't think it adds anything to the discussion since it's being released on Bluray - which must be 1080P - like it or not.

2: These are the level sets only in 16:9 meaning there won't be as much detail loss and since the level sets were zoomed out the cropping won't take away as much footage as the OB's

I'm hoping for this as well. I think both sets (Orange Bricks and Level sets) are based on the Steve Franko transfer. They are probably cropping it again to not have to restore the the tops and bottoms of the images since that is where most of the damage is. They'll more than likely run generic grain removal, noise reduction, dirt removal, scratch removal, stabilizers, etc... over the rest of the film since it can somewhat be done en masse. If they don't overdo it with the filters it might be okay. If they can pull off the grain levels and sharpness of the Kai releases, that is fine, but I just don't have faith.