FUNimation DBZ TV Blu-ray Official On-Going Thread

[Kuwabara]

Why did they put Green Lantern's speech on the box? Did they forget which series this was halfway through the process?

Goku has been an Orange Lantern all along!

The only way this could get any more hilarious(ly) bad is if they went the extra mile and rendered their dub dialog in Japanese. And then made a 2nd Japanese dub track with their dub dialog translated into Japanese.

I would learn Japanese just to be able to watch and comprehend such a track.

[Gotham22]

My Opinion on this: This is just FUNimation having something DBZ being released constantly. The wording of the press release is weird, especially when it concerns Steve Franko. It does seem that they are working with ANDTRANSFER (which, correct me if I'm wrong, is Franko's company) for this new release, but it seems to me they only mention Franko in working on the old (Orange Brick) remaster. Its absolutely confusing, so I feel like I just need to wait and see. But announcing a new release while the Dragon Boxes and Kai, which use the same footage, are still ongoing? That's doesn't make sense. If only the Dragon Boxes I could see it working, but especially with Kai, (on Blu-Ray!) its just making me frustrated. Not buying unless there's something really worthwhile going for it, like a redub, which is very unlikely.

When this comes out the Dragon Boxes will be done so you'll have this and Kai out.

[Tanooki Kuribo]

My Opinion on this: This is just FUNimation having something DBZ being released constantly. The wording of the press release is weird, especially when it concerns Steve Franko. It does seem that they are working with ANDTRANSFER (which, correct me if I'm wrong, is Franko's company) for this new release, but it seems to me they only mention Franko in working on the old (Orange Brick) remaster. Its absolutely confusing, so I feel like I just need to wait and see. But announcing a new release while the Dragon Boxes and Kai, which use the same footage, are still ongoing? That's doesn't make sense. If only the Dragon Boxes I could see it working, but especially with Kai, (on Blu-Ray!) its just making me frustrated. Not buying unless there's something really worthwhile going for it, like a redub, which is very unlikely.

When this comes out the Dragon Boxes will be done so you'll have this and Kai out.

Ha, ha TWO versions of Kai actually! The release we know now, and by then those season sets will also be out.

[Gotham22]

Two version of Kai?

[AgitoZ]

Two version of Kai?

I think two types of releases would describe it better. But, yeah, the current 13 episodes sets and the 26 eps. re-releases.

[CODii]

It'd be pretty hard to make a BD worse than a DVD using any masters that are better than DVD to be honest.

If the masters were better then yes that would be true. But there is almost no conceivable way that Funimation could have better masters than the Dragon Box masters. Toei is notorious for providing crappy masters to their licensees. Funimation has clearly stated that they are using a film master for this, that they are then doing their own remaster on. That film master they have in their posession is almost certainly a piece of crap.

And you're not going to convince me that 16mm film is going to look as good as 35mm. The 35mm negative has several times the surface area (about 4 times if I'm not mistaken) of a 16mm negative. I am NOT saying that 16mm cannot look good. A much better example of the virtues of 16mm film than yours would be The Hurt Locker, which was a very good looking film. All things being equal however, 35mm will look more detailed than 16mm because of the increased surface area.

I was not saying that the only thing that makes the movies look better than the show is the film stock. Of course the film's had higher animation budgets, and therefore the films look better. That obviously helps the look of the films. The point I was trying to make is that it would be unfair to expect Funimation to have anywhere near the quality on this release that they had with the films. The source material (both because of the film stock and the animation quality) is just not nearly as good as the source material for the movies. Combine that with the fact that Funimation almost certainly has a shitty print and Funimation's past preferences during remastering processes (such as a tendency towards oversaturation and copious amounts of blurring to remove any trace of film grain) and I don't see anything to be excited about this situation. Again, the closest approximation that we have on the market right now of what these will look like (in terms of source material) is the Trunks/Bardock double feature which looks absolutely terrible.

We're talking about a cheaply animated show from two plus decades ago. It was never meant to stand up to viewing at the resolutions our televisions can output at this point. There is almost no conceivable way that these will be a significant jump over the quality of the Dragon Boxes. Add to that the fact that these will almost certainly be incredibly expensive (less than half the episode count of the DBoxes, on a more expensive format) and I still see no reason why anyone not in love with the Faulconer score would trade in their Dragon Boxes for this release.

Two version of Kai?

Yeah, Funimation is coming out with Kai "season" sets this winter that are simply double the episode count of the current release.

[MarcFBR]

It'd be pretty hard to make a BD worse than a DVD using any masters that are better than DVD to be honest.

If the masters were better then yes that would be true. But there is almost no conceivable way that Funimation could have better masters than the Dragon Box masters. Toei is notorious for providing crappy masters to their licensees. Funimation has clearly stated that they are using a film master for this, that they are then doing their own remaster on. That film master they have in their posession is almost certainly a piece of crap.

And you're not going to convince me that 16mm film is going to look as good as 35mm. The 35mm negative has several times the surface area (about 4 times if I'm not mistaken) of a 16mm negative. I am NOT saying that 16mm cannot look good. A much better example of the virtues of 16mm film than yours would be The Hurt Locker, which was a very good looking film. All things being equal however, 35mm will look more detailed than 16mm because of the increased surface area.

MOAR TALKING

You seemingly missed the entire point of my post.

Which was that the people (yourself included based on the content of your post) who keep going it won't work on Blu-ray BECAUSE it's 16mm were making a mistake.

DBZ TV will always look meh on Blu-ray, because it is cheaply produced animation with a low level of quality and detail (in general) not because they put it on 16mm instead of 35mm. No doubt it would look sharper if it were 35mm, but in the case of what I've seen in the past with this type of animation, not much.

I didn't bring up the Toei issue much because by this point it is common knowledge Toei fucking sucks (get ahold of some early Toei DVDs. I have a handful of them, fucking horrendous.)

As for Hurt Locker- You've missed the point of me using Evil Dead as an example. Hurt Locker was a modern film, with modern, good quality filmstock. Sure it's 16mm, but it's better than 'cheap' 16mm back in the 80s/90s would have been. Evil Dead made the perfect example because it was filmed on 16mm, it was done cheaply with cheap filmstock, the Blu-ray was cropped, and to add to it, the masters likely weren't stored well for most of their life. It made the perfect base of comparison for my point- DBZ TV will look meh not because of it being filmstock lower than 35mm, but because it's ratty masters for a show that honestly, wasn't animated to a high standard in the first place.

Not to mention the fact that almost everything you said has been said earlier in the thread (half the time by me...) so I feel the need to ask... have you actually read the thread?

[Gotham22]

Not counting Kai, DBZ will be done with other release besides these new Blu-rays.

[Choujin Daizenshuu]

I'm not sure what to think of that preliminary box art. Goku looks like he's flying through cyberspace.

[JulieYBM]

I'm not sure what to think of that preliminary box art. Goku looks like he's flying through cyberspace.

Now that you mention it...it looks like Gokuu has crossed-over into Summer Wars!


Well, Hosoda did work on an episode of Dragon Ball Z...so I guess it's fitting.

[MetaMoss]

My Opinion on this: This is just FUNimation having something DBZ being released constantly. The wording of the press release is weird, especially when it concerns Steve Franko. It does seem that they are working with ANDTRANSFER (which, correct me if I'm wrong, is Franko's company) for this new release, but it seems to me they only mention Franko in working on the old (Orange Brick) remaster. Its absolutely confusing, so I feel like I just need to wait and see. But announcing a new release while the Dragon Boxes and Kai, which use the same footage, are still ongoing? That's doesn't make sense. If only the Dragon Boxes I could see it working, but especially with Kai, (on Blu-Ray!) its just making me frustrated. Not buying unless there's something really worthwhile going for it, like a redub, which is very unlikely.

When this comes out the Dragon Boxes will be done so you'll have this and Kai out.

I meant the FUNimation announced the Blu-Ray release while the Dragon Boxes are going. And it'll only be a month after the Dboxes that the first one will come out. Add Kai into the mix, and its absolutely ridiculous.

[Sshadow5001]

Seems stupid to release this on Blu-Ray. I for one am fine with just upscaling my Dragonbox footage.

[ect5150]

Seems stupid to release this on Blu-Ray. I for one am fine with just upscaling my Dragonbox footage.

I tend to agree although I think it will be interesting to see what they can pull off.

As a test I compared my R2 DBox with a Kai Bluray - here are the results (click through for large PNG files - and no, I didn't bother with aspect ratio issues).

Screenshot from R2 DBox



Same screen from Kai Bluray (US release and I dropped the black sidebars out)



DBox screenshot upscaled



DBox filtered and upscaled (my own little script to clean up grain and give an good upscale)



(and for those that want it, a smoothed 480P version of DBox here in which I use to make some nice encodes for the PS3 )


With the exception of color correction, I'm not certain I really see much difference between the Bluray of Kai and a cleaned-up and upscaled version of the DBox. Hopefully they can pull something off, it would be nice to see, but I'm skeptical.

[Krycek7o2]

No offence, but that de-grained pictures don't look good at all. The script introduces all sorts of weird anomalies to the picture when de-grained. Tone down the de-graining and you should be able to keep detail, find the perfect balance between grain and non. This is how some studios work with old film restoration.

[BlazingFiddlesticks]

No offence, but that de-grained pictures don't look good at all. The script introduces all sorts of weird anomalies to the picture when de-grained. Tone down the de-graining and you should be able to keep detail, find the perfect balance between grain and non. This is how some studios work with old film restoration.

Wow... I could barely tell them apart...

[ect5150]

No offence, but that de-grained pictures don't look good at all. The script introduces all sorts of weird anomalies to the picture when de-grained. Tone down the de-graining and you should be able to keep detail, find the perfect balance between grain and non. This is how some studios work with old film restoration.

The filter is basically a version of a strong median filter (with a few added steps) - and looking at the black lines, it appears to a sharper than the Kai version (with zero sharpening filters). Feel free to take the posted original and provide a sample of your own, I love to see what others can do and see how I can incorporate it.

[TheGreatness25]

Honestly, throughout the years so many people were making a huge deal that they should make it look like the Japanese release, that this doesn't interest me. I have the whole thing in so many different versions. I have Kai. Do I really need this in Blu-ray when it wasn't meant to be in Blu-ray? I think that after the Dragon Boxes and after I finish rounding up the Japanese ones, I think I'll finally be done giving away money for this.

[JulieYBM]

Honestly, throughout the years so many people were making a huge deal that they should make it look like the Japanese release, that this doesn't interest me. I have the whole thing in so many different versions. I have Kai. Do I really need this in Blu-ray when it wasn't meant to be in Blu-ray? I think that after the Dragon Boxes and after I finish rounding up the Japanese ones, I think I'll finally be done giving away money for this.

Well, the show wasn't 'meant' to be on any home video format, so...I don't think it hurts.

[TheGreatness25]

True, but I am just sick of sitting around for 2 years collecting sets. The Season Sets ran around 2 years, now the Dragon Boxes ran around 2 years. Now this thing will have, what? A GRAND WHOPPING of 17 episodes! Wow! It took two years to get the entire series released with 40 episode per release, but now boy, oh boy, 17 episodes! And after Blu-ray, they'll release it on the next thing that comes out that will be even better than Blu-ray. And then they're going to release it in 3D! And I'll be collecting DBZ when I'm 65 years old.

Screw it. I'm done. It's a cartoon. To see it in "oh my gosh, ultra high definition!!!" is not something I care about since I have Kai on Blu-ray (can't imagine the DVDs looking too much worse than they do), and I have the Dragon Box which may not be the most grandeur release they can have (it's no Blu-ray), but it is the most faithful version of the way the show was intended (at least for home release). So screw it. Besides, I'm not a technical genius, I know nothing about this stuff, but movies on Blu-ray KILL DVD. But a cartoon? What could be different? Unless the DVD image is blocky with sharp jaggedy lines, then I can't imagine what Blu-ray can do for it other than make it a bit brighter maybe (which you can do on your TV). That's just me and I will admit that I'm not knowledgeable in this field, but using logic... I mean on a real movie, in HD, it's more smooth, you can see more detail, you can see the leaves on the trees in the background, it looks just so much clearer. But on a cartoon? I mean you won't be seeing anything on Blu-ray that wasn't drawn in to begin with, and I don't exactly believe that DVD is in such stone ages that it prevents you from seeing everything that was drawn, exactly how it was drawn.

[Choujin Daizenshuu]

Screw it. I'm done. It's a cartoon.

Exactly! Bravo good sir!