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

[Fizzer]

The Dragon Boxes drop to a B for me because of the discolouration. The Levels beat them with an A-.

[Baggie_Saiyan]

I'd rank the releases like this:
Kai-A- (4:3 AR prevents it from being perfect)
Season BD's- A+ (literally everything I was hoping for).
Dragon Boxes and Level Sets- A (again 4:3 ar and grain preventing them from being perfect).
OB's- D. (Although later seasons I'd give a B too).

[Ajay]

I'd rank the releases like this:
Kai-A- (4:3 AR prevents it from being perfect)
Season BD's- A+ (literally everything I was hoping for).
Dragon Boxes and Level Sets- A (again 4:3 ar and grain preventing them from being perfect).
OB's- D. (Although later seasons I'd give a B too).

Possibly the most backwards thing I've read today.

-

Kai's Blu-Rays - A-
Very nicely remastered but can be quite soft at times, as though the cel is out of focus. Adding some minute sharpening tends to fix the issue. Mostly very, very good excluding the reanimated scenes.

New Season Blu-Rays - D-
Cropped from the original aspect ratio with relatively poor selective cropping. Very poor DNR that results in flickering clouds and wobbly shading. Kai showed that you can DNR the show and not have it look like garbage, there's zero excuses for this. Colours are overblown and too yellow at times as well. They do have relatively nice Japanese audio though.

Dragon Box [JPN/ENG] - A [A- for US release]
They look great considering the resolution and the bitrate limitations. However, the colour casts are a pretty big issues throughout a lot of the episodes so it was very tempting to give this a high B. The lowered bitrate on the US release does cause some macroblocking so it receives a slightly lower score as a result.

Level Sets - A-
So close to being perfect but the crushed blacks due to their masters result in some overly inky looking backgrounds that detract from the show. Some might argue it's just that fraction too grainy due to not using the original masters but that's never been a massive issue for me. Colours are balanced well but are perhaps a little saturated at times.

Orange Bricks - Worthless
Not a lot to say. Straight center crop resulting in butchered framing. Heavy use of DNR that was monitored well at all, resulting in lines totally vanishing. Colours are horrendously over-saturated and contrasted and look about as bad the YouTube 'remasters' you see around. Later seasons were better but not redeeming enough to even warrant a score.

[TheGmGoken]

I'd rank the releases like this:
Kai-A- (4:3 AR prevents it from being perfect)
Season BD's- A+ (literally everything I was hoping for).
Dragon Boxes and Level Sets- A (again 4:3 ar and grain preventing them from being perfect).
OB's- D. (Although later seasons I'd give a B too).

Db and Dbz(I think Gt also) are a 4:3 anime. Why is being 4:3 for a 4:3 anime bad...

[Metalwario64]

Db and Dbz(I think Gt also) are a 4:3 anime. Why is being 4:3 for a 4:3 anime bad...

'Cuz it's 2014, get with the times yo! Can't have old stuff looking old, because newer is always better!

(Can't stand that mindset, especially in regards to music and movies)

[Pokewhiz7]

I'd rank the releases like this:
Kai-A- (4:3 AR prevents it from being perfect)
Season BD's- A+ (literally everything I was hoping for).
Dragon Boxes and Level Sets- A (again 4:3 ar and grain preventing them from being perfect).
OB's- D. (Although later seasons I'd give a B too).

Possibly the most backwards thing I've read today.

I suppose you could make a purist argument for Kai that because it aired on TV in 16:9, the home releases should also be in 16:9.

As for myself:

Dragon Boxes: A (colors are the only real issue)
Level Sets: A- (definitely sharper looking and probably more enjoyable to me to watch than the Dragon Boxes in terms of video quality, but because of crushed blacks and lost detail, I can't really give it an A)
Kai DVDs: C- (way too blurry for my tastes, plus in 4:3 and not 16:9)
Kai BDs: C (same as DVDs, just a tad bit better)
Orange Bricks: D- (almost everything)
Season Blu-rays: E (even worse than the orange bricks)
Singles: C+ (bad compression)

[rs_chaosmaster]

How in the heck are the orange bricks better than the season sets that is definitely an opinion based statement because the OBs are awful beyond words

[Baggie_Saiyan]

Db and Dbz(I think Gt also) are a 4:3 anime. Why is being 4:3 for a 4:3 anime bad...

'Cuz it's 2014, get with the times yo! Can't have old stuff looking old, because newer is always better!

(Can't stand that mindset, especially in regards to music and movies)

I know your being incredibly sarcastic but that's how I honestly feel.

Anything that is 4:3 I end up cropping it on VLC. I don't really care if I'm losing picture. That's just how I am.

[TheGmGoken]

Db and Dbz(I think Gt also) are a 4:3 anime. Why is being 4:3 for a 4:3 anime bad...

'Cuz it's 2014, get with the times yo! Can't have old stuff looking old, because newer is always better!

(Can't stand that mindset, especially in regards to music and movies)

I know your being incredibly sarcastic but that's how I honestly feel.

Anything that is 4:3 I end up cropping it on VLC. I don't really care if I'm losing picture. That's just how I am.

Some stuff are still 4:3 though. Also why crop? If it bothers you just stretch the thing. What's wrong with 4:3 in 2014? People still read newspapers despite television and the internet

[ABED]

It also assumes new is always better. I know Barney would have us believe so, but the Star Wars prequels pop a hole in that theory.

[Baggie_Saiyan]

Some stuff are still 4:3 though. Also why crop? If it bothers you just stretch the thing. What's wrong with 4:3 in 2014? People still read newspapers despite television and the internet

Stretching is horrible. I'm much more content with cropping.

[kei17]

Some people seem to have their families killed by black bars.

[Metalwario64]

I know your being incredibly sarcastic but that's how I honestly feel.

Anything that is 4:3 I end up cropping it on VLC. I don't really care if I'm losing picture. That's just how I am.

Well, I'm not denying that you're entitled to feel that way.

I was speaking more generally. I apologize for being a bit too snarky though.

[TheGmGoken]

Some stuff are still 4:3 though. Also why crop? If it bothers you just stretch the thing. What's wrong with 4:3 in 2014? People still read newspapers despite television and the internet

Stretching is horrible. I'm much more content with cropping.

If you use Vegas you can crop and not lose image. Do you crop 16:3 with black bars in top?

[qjz123]

I suppose you could make a purist argument for Kai that because it aired on TV in 16:9, the home releases should also be in 16:9.

As for myself:

Dragon Boxes: A (colors are the only real issue)
Level Sets: A- (definitely sharper looking and probably more enjoyable to me to watch than the Dragon Boxes in terms of video quality, but because of crushed blacks and lost detail, I can't really give it an A)
Kai DVDs: C- (way too blurry for my tastes, plus in 4:3 and not 16:9)
Kai BDs: C (same as DVDs, just a tad bit better)
Orange Bricks: D- (almost everything)
Season Blu-rays: E (even worse than the orange bricks)
Singles: C+ (bad compression)

I really don't see where people are coming from when they say this
Orange bricks

Season 2blu ray

Orange bricks

Season 2 blu ray

Orange bricks

Season 2 blu ray

Orange bricks

Season 2 blu ray


Funimation fixed a lot of the issues that the orange bricks had with the season blu rays. Are they perfect? Hell no, but the fact that they have these improvements and the season 2 blu ray is currently actually cheaper than the season 2 orange brick just makes it the better option. I don't see how anybody could justify paying more money to get the orange bricks over these.

[Pokewhiz7]

The second orange brick was just extraordinarily bad. Almost anything would look better than that. Apart from that, the Blu-rays just look like really bad oil paintings.

Spoiler:

Open in a new tab for full-size:

Look at the background especially to see what I mean: http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/screensho ... position=4
http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/screensho ... position=1

It doesn't even look like film. What isn't smudged is ridiculously flat. Even in those screenshots you've posted, if you look at them full-size, the outlines look terrible. At least on the orange bricks, it still kind of resembles what it's supposed to be.

[TheGmGoken]

Maybe y'all should look at these from an average person point of view

[Kojiro Sasaki]

Maybe y'all should look at these from an average person point of view

Not looking on things as an average person is the point of being not an average person. I prefer to not look at them at all.

[dbboxkaifan]

I'd rank the releases like this:
Kai-A- (4:3 AR prevents it from being perfect)
Season BD's- A+ (literally everything I was hoping for).
Dragon Boxes and Level Sets- A (again 4:3 ar and grain preventing them from being perfect).
OB's- D. (Although later seasons I'd give a B too).

Dragon Ball Kai originally aired in 16x9 AR so you're half right but saying that the 4x3 AR & Grain on the Dragon Boxes and Level BDs prevent them from being spectacular is just odd because you'd be looking at quality loss + detail loss.

At best if Toei Animation had to DNR the DBZ series it would probably look like Kai which kept the details but it looked too smooth and blurry whereas with grain it was just about right for me.

[TheKingOfKamehamehas]

In Season BD's, they restore some of the missing detail so its not too bad and I personally don't care if it looks like an oil painting that much

Here is my list:

Dragon Ball Z Kai Blu Rays-A+ Funimation did an excellent job putting these on Blu Ray and there is barely any problem except the reanimated scenes, but its Toei's fault. Originally it was 4:3 and then for TV they cropped it so I don't really care about that.

Level Sets-A- They are perfect, but they have crushed blacks and a little bit more grain than other releases They also don't include some stuff like the Dragon Box had.

Dragon Box-B+ These releases are life savers for U.S because they gave us DBZ in 4:3 and fully uncut. The only problem are the colors which I make it a B+ and for American fans you don't get the TV specials and extras on the Japanese one.

New Season Blu Rays-C- I really don't think that DBZ is a modern show and it should never be. You shouldn't saturate the colors and have grain removed and to top that off 16:9... although the Japanese audio sounds great and also what I said on top.

Orange Bricks-D- Basically what I said, but minus Japanese audio.