desirecampbell wrote:I meant 'visually' loslessly. While there is a loss in total data (and thus the format suffers from generational loss), the first generation visual image is exactly the same.
Fair enough, I thought you were trying to argue that the JPEG would be an exact bit-for-bit reproduction of the original image. Yes, they can show a valid facimilie, but the variables involved mean that I almost never trust a JPEG as a valid comparision unless I encoded it myself.
Again, your opinion is that sharpness isn't that important. Someone else's opinion might be that sharpness is the most important.
They may say that. It's important to realize the origin of sharpness controls and what they do exactly. Sharpness (in this context) was originally concieved to combat signal degradation on older TV's, and by it's very nature adds information
that is not there to an image. It's obsolete for DVD's. All sources I've read agree that this is a bad thing, and any television calibration material agrees that a proper calibration for reference level is having no information added to the image at all. It only serves to add artificating and highlight macroblocking (something which the FUNi releases have plenty of).
Statements like 'the Dragonbox is better that the Funi discs' lends itself to opinion. You can't say 'one is better than another' simply with fact. 'Better' means opinion.
You're right, they're statements of opinion. So, here's a factual statement that no one can contest:
The DragonBoxes represent the anime series as Toei's animation teams intended them to be presented, with accurate color representation and brightness/contrast. They have been created from new masters and also feature higher bitrates and progressive streams, allowing for no macroblocking even when upscaled to 720p with the proper scaling equipment. Technologically, they are superior in every single aspect to any U.S. releases of the series.
Better?
And I'm not taking this personally, I just wanna try and solve any confusion. I think a lot of this could be resolved for most by a good viewing side-by-side of the two products.
-Corey