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

[Daimo-Rukiri]

I just watched the first episode of the new Season 1 blu ray and I noticed one thing right off the bat and I compared it to my level sets to make sure. The 5.1 english track on the new blu rays is much better sounding on my surround sound system then the 5.1 track on the level sets. There is a lot more bass and surround activity. The scene that stood out to me was when Raditz's space pod is flying down to earth the sound effects are much more robust on the new blu ray they have a lot more bass, they're louder and they made much better use of the rear surround speakers. When I popped in my level sets to compare the audio of that particular scene it sounded much weaker and less involving. I would assume that if you where just listening through your tv's speakers you wouldn't notice a difference. I just wanted to give my first impressions of this release at least as far as the audio goes.

I'm currently in the midst of updating my system to 7.2 and the first batch of speakers arrived but not the processor yet. Have you listened to the Japanese track and notice anything different from the level release or previous US releases?

[Hellspawn28]

After reading the Q&A, I'm now convinced FUNimation has no intention of ever listening to what the consumers want.

I think they listen to the casual people on what they want. The hardcore fans would want more DB boxes, but the DB Boxes can be pricey and a lot of casual people don't have the money to buy them. The Blu-Ray seasons are cheaper and more casual people will buy them. I think we will get a complete set of the Blu-Ray Seasons like we did the Orange Bricks. I think we don't have any of the other DB boxes because the DBZ boxes most likely didn't sell well as Funi hope for. Pricey stuff does not sell well at the causal market as they used too. If the DB boxes came out before the financial crisis of 2007–08 then maybe we would have the other DB boxes by now.

[MarcFBR]

Not going to comment on some of the new crazyness and insanity from a few people, but since I noticed the overscan a friend who has the set took a picture of the same frame taken earlier.

The snapshot put up earlier
http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o108 ... G_0100.jpg


New shot from my friend that appears to be the same frame
http://i.imgur.com/SP1Beqb.jpg


Overscan on the guys TV was cutting off a decent amount.

[qjz123]

I'm currently in the midst of updating my system to 7.2 and the first batch of speakers arrived but not the processor yet. Have you listened to the Japanese track and notice anything different from the level release or previous US releases?

I just listened to the Japanese track of the same scene Raditz's space pod flying down to earth on the new season blu rays, the level sets, and the dragon boxes. My initial impressions of the Japanese audio track of the new season blu rays in comparison to the level sets is that similar to the 5.1 english track there is more bass. It is noticeable when the farmer arrives at the crater that Raditz's space pod created when the background music starts playing the Japanese track on the new season blu rays just seems to sound more robust/powerful than the level sets japanese track. The voices however sound pretty similar if not Identical I would have to watch more episodes to be sure. I will say that the difference between the Japanese audio on the new season blu rays and the level sets is smaller than the differences between the 5.1 english tracks. I feel like the 5.1 english track on the new season blu rays is huge improvement over the level sets. So my initial impression's of the Japanese track on the new blu rays is that it is an improvement over the level sets but I'll have to watch more episodes to see how much of an improvement. I would say that both the new season blu rays and the level sets japanese tracks are inferior to the dragon boxes. The Japanese track on the new season blu rays has more bass than the japanese track on the dragon boxes but as far as clarity of the voices is concerned the dragon boxes are clearly superior.

[sangofe]

Not going to comment on some of the new crazyness and insanity from a few people, but since I noticed the overscan a friend who has the set took a picture of the same frame taken earlier.

The snapshot put up earlier
http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o108 ... G_0100.jpg


New shot from my friend that appears to be the same frame
http://i.imgur.com/SP1Beqb.jpg


Overscan on the guys TV was cutting off a decent amount.

Is it possible to make the TV not overscan?

[MarcFBR]

Is it possible to make the TV not overscan?

Depends on the TV (most 1080p TVs don't do overscan, although I know some that do.)

720p Vizio's of that era I don't recall them having overscan settings, can't speak of current ones.

[dbboxkaifan]

Not going to comment on some of the new crazyness and insanity from a few people, but since I noticed the overscan a friend who has the set took a picture of the same frame taken earlier.

The snapshot put up earlier
http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o108 ... G_0100.jpg


New shot from my friend that appears to be the same frame
http://i.imgur.com/SP1Beqb.jpg


Overscan on the guys TV was cutting off a decent amount.

So that crappy "Vizio" TV brand did the overscan? I never liked the brand nor any other of the budget brands because if I'm going to spend money on an LED/LCD then I'd rather pay a bit more for a Samsung or LG.

[PhoenixEX]

Not going to comment on some of the new crazyness and insanity from a few people, but since I noticed the overscan a friend who has the set took a picture of the same frame taken earlier.

The snapshot put up earlier
http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o108 ... G_0100.jpg


New shot from my friend that appears to be the same frame
http://i.imgur.com/SP1Beqb.jpg


Overscan on the guys TV was cutting off a decent amount.

So that crappy "Vizio" TV brand did the overscan? I never liked the brand nor any other of the budget brands because if I'm going to spend money on an LED/LCD then I'd rather pay a bit more for a Samsung or LG.

I went with a Plasma Panasonic Viera and i've never looked back. Fast movements are just more fluid and natural than those from an LED TV.
I'll most likely end up getting one of those new 4K TV's though, once the price isn't so outrageously high of course.

[Kojiro Sasaki]

Well, here ya' go! Happy New Year!

http://www.kanzenshuu.com/2013/12/31/fu ... questions/

This is what I wanted to hear. Now I have the politics of the company right before my face. Situation looks the same like with other things. Spend less on production, more on promotion and it will give better sales and more money. It was quite obvious after following the discussion here, but I wanted to hear it from FUNimation. The only thing that still concerns me is why they decided to produce a release like the Level sets. With all the knowledge and market statistics, they decided to do an expensive restoration of the original film prints and tried to be as honest to the original source material as possible. Why they decided to change their approach to the matter so drastically? Maybe the "Level sets project" was revised and they figured out that they can make more money on changing "honest to the original material" to "modern experience"? It gives them less production costs and bigger audience. But still.. why they didn't do that in 2011? Why they decided to do "too expensive" restoration? If I remember correctly, Level 1.1 price was ~18$ at some point of time...

So what I'm trying to say: We cannot be sure if the restoration process was really too expensive. They said that:

(..) sales were not a factor in its decision to discontinue production on the Dragon Ball Z Blu-rays.

the cost incurred to restore these shows has outweighed the suggested retail price we were able to pass along to our fans.

Why they noticed this after two sets released and two sets in production? (39 episodes fully restored)

Situation looks like it looks and these are the facts: We will not get "as close to the original source material as possible" release from FUNimation anytime soon. We are to small and too weak (too lazy?) to make them pay attention to us.

When Joe Dumbass Consumer is subscribing to that idea, you just have to follow his lead if you want to make money.

The more stupid Joe becomes, the better consumer he will be. Corporations care about "proper" education of people like him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e02rn2FJe9o#t=271
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDW_Hj2K0wo

[theoriginalbilis]

Not going to comment on some of the new crazyness and insanity from a few people, but since I noticed the overscan a friend who has the set took a picture of the same frame taken earlier.

The snapshot put up earlier
http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o108 ... G_0100.jpg


New shot from my friend that appears to be the same frame
http://i.imgur.com/SP1Beqb.jpg


Overscan on the guys TV was cutting off a decent amount.

Ah, thanks for pointing that out! I forget how some older models of HDTVs still have a decent amount of overscan built in. And yes, my Vizio is a 2008 model.

As for information regarding the Blu-Ray itself, I'm noticing that only for select episodes/select shots, they move the frame via pan-and-scan during the scene in an effort to get all of the action into the 16:9 framing. This is most evident in episode 4 "Piccolo's Plan" on disc 1.

[Ajay]

As for information regarding the Blu-Ray itself, I'm noticing that only for select episodes/select shots, they move the frame via pan-and-scan during the scene in an effort to get all of the action into the 16:9 framing. This is most evident in episode 4 "Piccolo's Plan" on disc 1.

As in...the framing literally slides up and down during the show?!

[theoriginalbilis]

As for information regarding the Blu-Ray itself, I'm noticing that only for select episodes/select shots, they move the frame via pan-and-scan during the scene in an effort to get all of the action into the 16:9 framing. This is most evident in episode 4 "Piccolo's Plan" on disc 1.

As in...the framing literally slides up and down during the show?!

During certain shots, yes. When Goku and Piccolo are double-blasted by Raditz (where Piccolo loses his arm,) the shots of the two falling as the blasts destroy mountains in the background, there's a noticeble pan upward. Also, when Gohan bursts out of Raditz's space pod, they pan-and-scan upward to follow Gohan. It doesn't look like a natural camera pan though, it looks like a digital pan.

[Ajay]

At what point do they go 'perhaps this isn't actually worth all the work'?

Digital panning and tilting...jeez.

[Rukura]

At what point do they go 'perhaps this isn't actually worth all the work'?

Last time they had to put their own work into frames, it took them a couple of sets until the cancelled it. Let's see how long it takes until people start pointing out that it's back to being a plain center crop.

[dbboxkaifan]

Last time they had to put their own work into frames, it took them a couple of sets until the cancelled it. Let's see how long it takes until people start pointing out that it's back to being a plain center crop.

Aside from the fake-reviews on Amazon.com, people are giving it 5's (6), 4's (2) and one 3's (OriginalBillis) these are the only reviews that really count since they own the product so in general they're happy with it and that's what matters as far as FUNimation's concerned.

http://www.amazon.com/Dragon-Ball-Blu-r ... O7086FCSRV

[qjz123]

Here are some examples of selective cropping in episode 1.
Orange bricks
http://imageshack.us/a/img15/4021/f9cl.png
Season 1 blu rays
http://imageshack.us/a/img69/3079/jmo6.png
Orange bricks
http://imageshack.us/a/img22/3766/9kzi.png
Season 1 blu rays
http://imageshack.us/a/img89/1170/1cck.png
Orange bricks
http://imageshack.us/a/img801/1084/7e2f.png
Season 1 blu rays
http://imageshack.us/a/img20/8377/hqty.png
Orange bricks
http://imageshack.us/a/img198/6498/bv4b.png
Season 1 blu rays
http://imageshack.us/a/img833/1729/qvmo.png
Orange bricks
http://imageshack.us/a/img839/5871/ar90.png
Season 1 blu rays
http://imageshack.us/a/img542/8417/gey5.png

[Ajay]

Aside from the fake-reviews on Amazon.com

Will you stop referring to them as 'fake'. They're legitimate reviews. You don't have to own the sets to be fully aware of their contents and have the ability to make a sound opinion.

Five stars: *****

Minus one star: Cropped ****
Minus another star: Heavy denoising process ***
Minus yet another star: Overblown colours and brightness **

The product is at max a two star release.

If you want to finicky about it, you could take off even more for no NEPs too.

'Fake' or useless reviews are more along the lines of people buying a product and then giving it a one star because they unfortunately received a broken item.

[Black_Anime_Fan]

Aside from the fake-reviews on Amazon.com, people are giving it 5's (6), 4's (2) and one 3's (OriginalBillis) these are the only reviews that really count since they own the product so in general they're happy with it and that's what matters as far as FUNimation's concerned.

http://www.amazon.com/Dragon-Ball-Blu-r ... O7086FCSRV

Right....what does that have to do with FUNimation putting work and effort into frames?

[dbboxkaifan]

Will you stop referring to them as 'fake'. They're legitimate reviews. You don't have to own the sets to be fully aware of their contents and have the ability to make a sound opinion.

Five stars: *****

Minus one star: Cropped ****
Minus another star: Heavy denoising process ***
Minus yet another star: Overblown colours and brightness **

The product is at max a two star release.

If you want to finicky about it, you could take off even more for no NEPs too.

'Fake' or useless reviews are more along the lines of people buying a product and then giving it a one star because they unfortunately received a broken item.

Do they own the product? No.
Do you own the product to say how many stars it's worth it? No.

The only legitimate reviews there are those who have the product in possession the others are just spam/bullshit.

For those that don't own the product but still want to discuss it there's a section for them: It's called the forums.

Right....what does that have to do with FUNimation putting work and effort into frames?

People are satisfied and so it'll continue to be profitable.

[Ajay]

Do they own the product? No.
Do you own the product to say how many stars it's worth it? No.

The only legitimate reviews there are those who have the product in possession the others are just spam/bullshit.

Your logic makes zero sense.

We have the facts laid out. We have the screenshots RIGHT here. Lossless .tiff images that accurately display how this set looks.

It's not like this is just opinions formed on zero evidence. I don't need to own the damn sets to see exactly what their flaws are.

It's not like we're reviewing the quality of a movie. We all know exactly what the show is like. We're reviewing the way they've handled the product and that is evidently clear.

You can take one look at Disney's Blu-ray of The Sword in the Stone and notice how garbage it looks and how it's been denoised to shit. Do I need the disc right in front of me to see that?

Of course not. What a stupid assertion. The same applies right here.