Funimation's first Blu-ray realease

M

melonpan

Death Scythe
With the upcoming release of the two Dragonball Z Broly movies being done in DVD+Blu-ray format, I for one have been wondering what the Blu-ray aspect of the release will actually include. This is the start of the next generation of media, so this does affect what might eventually happen in the UK.

Funimation have done a question and answer session with AnimeOnDVD which answers many of the questions (but not the region code :/ ).

http://www.animeondvd.com/forum/showtop ... tid/23032/

Really interesting stuff, it seems to be done in the highest possible quality that is out there, directly mastered from the 35mm film, 1080p resolution, surround sound, encoding using the AVC codec (which means there will be a juicy 15-18Mbps bitrate, the highest possible of all the codecs), and Funimation will be outsourcing the encoding to a proper company instead of doing inhouse encoding!!! This is just a fantastic release.. I just wish I had a Blu-ray player, an HDTV and all the other stuff needed to play it :/.
I wonder what will be next for Funimation and Blu-ray, I'm really excited about the prospect of having other feature films done in this format (or even better, with Blu-ray dics becoming bigger, a 50GB dual layer disc means even sexier bitrates! ).

Oh and the release will be in widescreen, so no worries about the awful cropping Funimation did with the DBZ "remastered" boxsets. If only they had done this with those releases, it would have made people so much happier.. what a shame.
 
What would I want on a bigger disk. More episodes at the same quality as a DVD or the same but with a higher quality picture? The former please.
 
WTFDaveMustaine said:
What would I want on a bigger disk. More episodes at the same quality as a DVD or the same but with a higher quality picture? The former please.
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If you have the former, there will be much less point in having Blu-ray at all. The quality will be the same as regular DVDs (more or less). The point of having next generation media formats is to have a higher bitrate.
Just take a look at Haruhi... regular DVDs can't keep up with the growing speed of anime, in the opening scene, even on the Japanese release (where the bitrate is much higher as they only have 2 episodes per disc) there was massive blocking and a great loss of quality. DVDs are becoming less and less usable. Who knows though, maybe anime companies will squash an entire series onto one Blu-ray disc (although it'd have to be quad-layered (100GB) for the series, in fact it would need two discs to fit a 26 episode series). So it would just be for saving space, the price wouldn't be any less I would assume.
 
Just putting some Blu-ray anime information in, Metropolis is being released on the said format later this year. Play.com says so anyway.

I've known it for quite a while, and it could possibly be very old news. ah well. XD.
 
Jayme said:
Just putting some Blu-ray anime information in, Metropolis is being released on the said format later this year. Play.com says so anyway.

I've known it for quite a while, and it could possibly be very old news. ah well. XD.
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Paprika, Steamboy, Cowboy Bebop, Final Fantasy 7: AC, Tekkon Kinkreet are also coming from Sony throughout next year.

Also, Optimum are planning on doing HD-DVD + Blu-ray releases, so you can expect all of Studio Ghibli films to be getting a sexed up re-release soon enough.

EDIT: Hmm, just looked at Sony's up and coming, and it seems they plan to release Season 1 of Cyborg 009 sometime in 2009 (LOL, up and coming my arse). I read that this got halted in R1 and only 15 episodes or so were released.. or something.. so this is kind of big news I guess.
http://www.sonypictures.co.uk/homevideo ... P4355.html
 
Metropolis was supposed to be Blu-ray last year, but it never materialised, and it's not yet listed on Sony's site unlike the other anime blu-ray solicitations, so that's unlikely to come out any time soon.

As for Cyborg 009, wasn't that listed on Play for release early last year?

The Funi release doesn't really interest me, and I'm suprised they're doing this so early in the adoption cycle. At least they're outsourcing the encoding though, the idea of Funi encoding Blu-ray in house makes me laugh, given that they can't even encode DVDs properly.
 
Noratav said:
The Funi release doesn't really interest me, and I'm suprised they're doing this so early in the adoption cycle. At least they're outsourcing the encoding though, the idea of Funi encoding Blu-ray in house makes me laugh, given that they can't even encode DVDs properly.
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The fact that they're the biggest R1 anime distributor and they don't bother spending money on paying for a proper encode makes me laugh. They only bother on their 'big' titles, like Afro Samurai. Shame on Funimation
 
I don't like HD =( And I don't see why it's so beneficial to anime. For the majority of TV anime, minimalistic animation is generally used. I don't need to see that with a thousand times the pixels, or whatever.
 
Espy said:
I don't like HD =( And I don't see why it's so beneficial to anime. For the majority of TV anime, minimalistic animation is generally used. I don't need to see that with a thousand times the pixels, or whatever.
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The need is there, as I said about six posts up :eek:
 
WTFDaveMustaine said:
I never noticed any pixelation on any DVD releases I have. Probably because I wasn't looking.
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Word. I managed to be completely engrossed by Cowboy Bebop in its entirety on a 9*9 screen, and my newer 21-incher does the job quite nicely. I don't need huge screens with tiny pixels to enjoy anime. Some people may do, I'm not one of them.
 
I'm with WTFDave on this, more episodes per disc is the way to go for Anime on HD-dvd and Blue-ray... A nice HD picture would be of benifit to the big budget Anime releases, but it'd also be nice to get a complete TV series on one disc rather than seven.
 
While my opinion may caused by lack of money more than anything, I don't see moving from DVD to HD-DVD/Blu-ray anywhere near as huge as the jump from VHS to DVD. Our now outdated DVD's look excellent with the right source/TV/DVD player/cabling, even more so on fancy HDTV's.

I remember when I had my 26" Sony CRT (those were the days I actually had a working TV!) and watched my R1 Gungrave box set on it. I was amazed by the picture, the colour left me watching in awe at beautiful it looked compared to on other TVs...this with a cheap DVD player and high quality RGB scart lead. I'd still be a very happy man if I had that picture (or any picture right now...) to look at.

People are being way too picky over DVD quality. Would any of us be questioning the quality of DVD's (space issues aside) if HD hadn't been released to the masses?

/goes to cry in a corner about having no TV
 
Aion said:
Would any of us be questioning the quality of DVD's (space issues aside) if HD hadn't been released to the masses?
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Yes, they would be, and they would be wondering why the next generation of media hasn't come yet.

You could just be saying why aren't we still watching VHS tapes.. I mean, at least we have something to watch there, we don't need any newer format to make a picture better ohh no.

Besides, it's been 10 years now since DVDs were introduced to Japan, and it's been around 17 years since VHSs were introduced to the world.
It's time for a change whether you like it or not :)

EDIT: Oh, and the comments about more episodes per disc just isn't feasible. We're lucky enough to be getting 3-5 episodes per disc outside of Japan, let alone 2, more episodes on a disc just isn't going to happen.
 
DaNiMe said:
Besides, it's been 10 years now since DVDs were introduced to Japan, and it's been around 17 years since VHSs were introduced to the world.
It's time for a change whether you like it or not :)
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Change for changes sake (or more precisely for the sake of the profit margins of the big studios) is not a good thing. Blu-ray and HD is being released five years too early. HD TVs are still not widespread enough for people to care about the difference. The only real selling point these formats have is superior video and audio quality and I really don't think the difference is enough to sell these formats to the mainstream, paticularly given that on smaller TVs the difference is barely noticeable.

Besides, as Espy says a lot of people, myself included, don't need amazing video quality or a large screen to enjoy anime. Sure, I'll cringe at the beginining of an episode, but if I'm noticing video issues five minutes in then that's a sign that I'm not enjoying the show and shouldn't be watching it as much as an indication of bad encoding.
 
DaNiMe said:
Yes, they would be, and they would be wondering why the next generation of media hasn't come yet.
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Considering I'm verrrry picky over quality, I doubt there would be many complaining. Only a few out of the majority would be upset with the quality of DVD's.
 
Aion said:
DaNiMe said:
Yes, they would be, and they would be wondering why the next generation of media hasn't come yet.
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Considering I'm verrrry picky over quality, I doubt there would be many complaining. Only a few out of the majority would be upset with the quality of DVD's.
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I suggest you head over to another larger forum, say.. AnimeOnDVD, one of the biggest; I think you'll find quite the opposite of what you said there.
 
A forum of anime fans that obsess over quality because that's just what they do on animeonDVD.

The quality isn't that much of a difference to make me want to spend a whole lot more for something that has the same content. Like someone else said it's certainly not as radical from the leap from VHS to DVD. I was actually on board 100% with that because VHS degrade very quickly whereas on DVD's the quality remains the same unless you simply don't take care of the disks.
 
While I've never owned a HDTV, I have used a friends HDTV and do have a 1400x900 monitor. There is a difference, there's no denying that, but the it's small - The main difference I've seen on my 720P anime vids is the colour and more a slightly clearer picture. Nothing to lose sleep over.

You said before 'We might as well still be using VHS', implying that the VHS>DVD jump is equivalent to the DVD>HD jump. The picture of VHS tapes was baaaaaaaaaad, the tapes easily damaged and ugly - VHS NEEDED to be upgraded to something else. DVD and HD-DVD/Blu-ray are both on discs and the video quality isn't THAT different in comparison to the VHS>DVD jump.

And, going back to the size of DVD's, I kinda prefer having 7 discs in a box set to one or two, it gives a strange feeling of getting more for your money. Wouldn't be much of a "box set" with 1 DVD, either.
 
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