dbboxkaifan wrote:Maybe the Japanese are more considerable towards that but the western tend to bitch when it looks "old" (4x3 AR) or "dirty" (grain) so what FUNimation did was to counteract these issues with their Dragon Ball Z Season Blu-ray release. And hey, people love the Season Blu-rays so they're quite satisfied with the result.
That's a good point! It's possible that the cost of the remastering process wasn't the main reason of FUNimation's decision to cancel the Level sets. Maybe, after big success of Orange Bricks and low sales of Level sets, they concluded that the only way to be successful is producing the release...
FUNimation wrote:with a brand new remaster using new technology to make the show look brighter and crisper.
It sounds like it was targeted at people who weren't happy with an “
old remaster” which lacked brightness and crispness (?). There was only one HD remaster available before FUNimation announced this...
I see two variants to be considered:
1. New manager/producer took over the project. He said:
“Fully professional, frame-by-frame restoration process for some old kids show? Are you kidding me? Where the hell have you learned how to make business? Do the job as cheap as possible, market it as “modern experience“ because it's popular these days, give more episodes per set, lower price and call it a day! You know how to do it, you did it before!”
2. (Let's suppose that the restoration process was affordable) Producers:
“Hmmm... Look at the sales. It seems that classic look and the idea of restoration to make the show look as it was meant to be doesn't appeal to people. We need to change that strategy. It didn't work - let's just stick with our good ol' standards.”
The idea that the restoration process was too expensive sounds logic, but yet - they did it. They remastered ~40 episodes of their most damaged film prints and sold them for ~$22 per 17 episodes. I guess that FUNimation is a business company, not a charity foundation.
Dragon Ball Z on Blu-ray? That's how it should look and sound:
Eyecatch 1&2 (22Mb/s 1080p AVC + 384Kb/s 44,1kHz/16 bit Dolby Digital stereo)
(Watching it on mediafire will give you crappy quality. You need to download the file to make use of my example)
Unfortunately, most of us don't want a release like this, another part of us claims to want it , but they vote against it with their wallets. What about the rest of us?
Edmund Burke wrote:The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
I know more about American fanbase than I knew when I fought my little war here, but I'm still not sure what would have happened if all the people who prefer “
originality” to “
butchering” would properly vote with their wallets and demand what they really want. The thing I know for sure is that it didn't happened and that it will not happen.
We should forget about getting a proper HD release of this show or we should get our lazy and fat asses up and start to do something really serious. We have 0,0000001% chance to succeed, but it's possible that we would get some “official” statement. For example, I heard that they damaged some film prints when they did transfers for Kai. It would be nice to get this kind of info from an official source.
