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

[qjz123]

Just drummed up a little side by side comparison in Photoshop. It's obvious that the frame has been shifted. There is a little extra space on the sides, but it would in no way result in a shift like this.
http://gyazo.com/15d033fd00a36665e6fb141390625c35.png

Thank you that proves my point that it isn't just a center crop.

[Dalesy]

Just drummed up a little side by side comparison in Photoshop. It's obvious that the frame has been shifted. There is a little extra space on the sides, but it would in no way result in a shift like this.
http://gyazo.com/15d033fd00a36665e6fb141390625c35.png

Thank you that proves my point that it isn't just a center crop.

That's not to say that it's selective cropping, however. It may have just been that they shifted the frame for the rescan. We would need to compare more frames to see if this is actually selective cropping.

[Daimo-Rukiri]

Cropping aside, I actually think Seasons 8 and 9 look better than the corresponding Dragon box episodes.

I feel the same way. I still really like the colors on those sets. The Dragon Boxes' colors were all over the place in those episodes, and the inside Boo episodes were ridiculously bright, while the Kid Boo episodes had a very strong green tint.

That's one thing I didn't like about the Dragon Boxes, the Gohan shot here actually looks pretty awesome minus missing gran and blurred backgrounds..

[Black_Anime_Fan]

That's one thing I didn't like about the Dragon Boxes, the Gohan shot here actually looks pretty awesome minus missing gran and blurred backgrounds..

Those backgrounds look rather more blasphemized than blurred.

[Ringworm128]

Here is the shot compared to the Level Set:

Click to enlarge--


Someone feel free to make a downscaled version of each and "crop" the Level Set so we can see what that would look like

EDIT: Did my best here--

Click to enlarge--


I might not have grabbed the exact same frame as there are rocks flying the background.

Some of you might like this... it's a nice website for screenshot comparisons.

Dear Kami the difference is like night and day.

[Black_Anime_Fan]

Does anybody have that same Nappa shot from Kai?

[BluezaBladeNZ]

Does anybody have that same Nappa shot from Kai?

Yep...
(Click on image for full size)

[PhoenixEX]

Man you gotta love Kai.

[LordCrumb]

Kai is ok for the compression of the story, but it's way softer than I like. Level sets still have the win. I just like the grain.. helps make it feel like film.

[Kingdom Heartless]

From the screenshots, my impression seems to be that there's are not as good as I would have hoped, but a lot better than I expected.

[dbboxkaifan]

I know most of the Kanzenshuu users feel like these Season sets are too "clean," as there's literally no grain remaining in the picture due to FUNimation's remastering. But if done right, no grain doesn't inherently mean no detail. Look at animation cels. They are basically the original source, before anything is even put onto film.

The Orange Bricks were a failed attempt at cleaning the footage to look like cel-quality, modern footage. It was awful and we all know it. This Blu-ray "Season" release, on the other hand, is, for the most part, gorgeous, if you can get past the widescreen aspect ratio and lack of grain. This type of remastering is probably the closest we'll ever get to a cel re-scan of the show.

I can say this (as my opinion, obviously) as I own the set and have watched the first 15 episodes. Shots that have diverse color palettes look fantastic and characters and important objects are usually well defined and sharp; definitely worthy of high definition Blu-ray.

My biggest beef(s) with the remastering happens when colors of certain brightness' are too close to each other. For example, when black is next to dark blue or dark green. Occurring particularly during nighttime scenes, the darker of the dark colors sometimes results in details not being visible. This was worst during some of Gohan's wilderness survival episodes. Similarly (though far less often) some of the brightest colors, if set next to white, looks far too white. Fortunately, this seemed most apparent during Kame House scenes of the first few episodes and hasn't been noticeable since.

To be honest, I'm okay with the set's only negatives. They are issues, but they're ones that could easily be fixed in future sets, since it'd only require a simple adjusting of the contrast setting (or saturation? I don't know.)

Anyway, I just think people are complaining a whole lot when they haven't seen the footage in motion (outside of YouTube videos, which truly does not do the footage justice) which I understand is their opinion, but it's just difficult to see their perspective when most haven't given it any sort of a chance. In truth, I was like them before seeing the first screenshots. I was 100% prepared to hate this release, but upon seeing the vast improvement over the Orange Bricks, I've completely changed sides. I still see the negatives that exist (yes, I acknowledge that it's not a perfect release ((there's no such thing))), but the positives FAR outweight them in my opinion.

Finally someone that owns it actually reviewed it, aside from the Blu-ray.com user. Thanks, Sumpter360!

Yep...
(Click on image for full size)

This looks so blurry and bland, it reminds me, Disney's Pinocchio HD remaster looks far better than this so-called "HD remaster" that Toei Animation did for Dragon Ball Kai.

[LeprikanGT]

Wait, Do people have this already? I remember pre-ordering it but never received it.

[dbboxkaifan]

Wait, Do people have this already? I remember pre-ordering it but never received it.

Yeah some people have it already.

Here's an unboxing video, well, two if you want:

1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PkLAAliCoQ
2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt62ozeT9xk

For those that have a Blu-ray Player on your PC and own this would it be possible to know how many gigabytes disc 1 has?

[TheAldella]

Oh man I forgot how much I loved the hard look of the level sets! JDJISNFILSNIFU

[dbboxkaifan]

Is the Japanese audio as muffled as in the Dragonboxes Z?

[Metalwario64]

This looks so blurry and bland, it reminds me, Disney's Pinocchio HD remaster looks far better than this so-called "HD remaster" that Toei Animation did for Dragon Ball Kai.

...

You're comparing a low budget television show on 16mm film to a huge budget Disney film?

[dbboxkaifan]

...

You're comparing a low budget television show on 16mm film to a huge budget Disney film?

And yet FUNimation's DBZ Levels look better than Toei Animation's Kai. I wonder why people praise Toei Animation for doing a sucky job.

FUNimation's DBZ Levels:

Toei Animation's Kai:

[Metalwario64]

Q-TEC remastered Kai, and they get tons of flack.

I often see complaints of Kai's remastering due to noise reduction, but it did a hell of a better job at it than FUNi's new Blu-ray remastering. For what it's worth, Kai's remastering has fantastic dark detail compared to all of FUNimation's remasterings having crushed dark levels.

[kei17]

This looks so blurry and bland, it reminds me, Disney's Pinocchio HD remaster looks far better than this so-called "HD remaster" that Toei Animation did for Dragon Ball Kai.

...

You're comparing a low budget television show on 16mm film to a huge budget Disney film?

Yeah, there is absolutely NO point in comparing them. In addition, if you compare DBZ with Disney's Pinocchio, this release IS what's far inferior to Pinocchio.

And yet FUNimation's DBZ Levels look better than Toei Animation's Kai. I wonder why people praise Toei Animation for doing a sucky job.

We are talking about the stuff this time and that has nothing to do with it. I wonder why you keep bashing Kai in spite of your username in defense of the Season blu-rays. There's very little point in it. Kai was meant to be a new show and it's not the old original show which this release features.

[UltimateHammerBro]

Neither do the Spanish Dragon Boxes even though they're called "Dragon Box".

They do contain them, as extras, in DBZ. In DB and DBGT; they're included.