Funktion said:
I watched bits of the Blu-Ray release of Ghost In The Shell: Innocence last night, and I must say I'm extremely disappointed with this release.
While most of the times the film looks ok, I was easily able to see what looks like compression artifacts in the background of dark scenes (and in scenes with white or very light colors), especially in the beginning.
Frankly, of all animation releases I own on BD, this has to be the worse of all of them, and my first disappointment.
The screenshots I saw of the Japanese and US releases seem miles better than this release, with no apparent problems. I know screenshots can "lie", but this release is probably the first BD where I noticed what seems like compression problems.
Additionally, for those who can only watch Region B BDs like me, this is probably the best we will get for the time being: based on the menus and logos at the beginning, this is the same disc that is going to be released in both Spain, and Australia (through Madman Entertainment).
If anyone bought this disc give us your impressions, I'm curious to see what you think of it (and if you noticed the same flaws on the transfer; it can always be a calibration problem on my end or a bad disc, but I highly doubt it).
This is the problem with this current generation.
I have no idea what I'm going to do - either get on the import bandwagon and get an Oppo/hack it to play Region A and completely ignore the UK market, like I did for the whole DVD era since I realised how ****** UK DVDs are in comparison to US ones - or wait it out a bit longer to see if UK companies will use the same encodes as the US companies, so I can be happy to buy from the UK, but then miss out on my chance to get in on the US Blu-ray market from the start if the UK market turns out to be ****.
The same trend from the DVD era's releases has continued to Blu-ray already, with non-simultaneous releases, Funimation are putting out tons of Blu-rays, and plans for a lot of series, but over here we're getting hardly anything in comparison, and already several months, or it will be years later than the US.
The only thing that's going to change my mind about this market and put it from the 'lost cause' box to 'I'll give this generation a chance' box is what encodes they use, and if Manga have gone and made their own encode and it's worse then I won't be happy and won't be giving the UK market my money.
There is zero reason to use a different encode now, as the HD standard is universal (more or less).
As for GITS:Innocence, if I remember correctly I don't think the hype around the release was glowing, video-wise, I might have a look back over the posts though.
That's also what I like about the US industry, the wealth of information on releases, compared to the UK market where absolutely no one seems to know, or care about the quality of the release. If you're going to stand being given ****, then the companies will milk your money by giving you ****.
