Sentai Filmworks 1080i Blurays

Mangaranga

Mangaranga

Za Warudo
It appears that Sentai's Bluray releases of Fate Stay Night, Bodacious Space Pirates and Mawaru Penguindrum are all 1080i and occasionally suffer from compression problems, despite the Japanese Blurays being 1080p and looking perfect.

With the whole fear of reverse importation situation in Japan, there is suspicion that Sentai was either supplied with inferior/TV Masters, or that they just screwed up the encode. There is no way to tell until we see what their future releases are like.

My question is, if this was the former, and Licensors start being supplied with Inferior masters, would this affect which shows you buy and how much you would be willing to pay for a show?
Do you think that this would be a fair trade off for the far lower domestic prices outside Japan?
 
Giving everywhere outside Japan shittier products to discourage reverse importation isn't likely to help the anime market outside of Japan. I've said it before and I'll say it again - If you offer people a worse quality copy of something to buy than they can pirate for nothing, there's no point even offering anything at all. People now have ways of getting exactly what they want, whether the production staff and distribution companies make any money from that or not.

I can't feel sorry for anyone over this, be they Japanese or Western companies. Globalisation (as touted by the free-market capitalist system their businesses are grounded in) got consumers and producers word-wide into this situation for good or ill, if they want to stay profitable they'll just have to work out a solution - Evolve or die.
 
As Ayase says deliberately supplying an inferior product when a superior version could be downloaded is pointless.

If i'm buying a title I expect it to be the best quality available, afterall i'm buying it rather than stealing it online, why should I suffer lower quality when i'm actually putting down hard earned cash?

This would probably not stop most reverse imports anyway, afterall they already happily abandon extras for a massive drop in price.

If they are so scared about reverse imports they'd be best off putting restrictions on when a title can be released, we used to wait years and years for titles so perhaps we need to go back to waiting a year or two for them. This might even help online streaming to get itself better established if titles were not so quick to BD/DvD.

On a slightly sinister note, did anyone consider Sentai might of got the 1080i cheaper than the 1080p? We assume it's liscensors deliberately selling inferior masters but perhaps Sentai chose this option becuase it cut their costs and most people would never really notice?
 
A handful of people on the internet complaining about video quality for a cheap release in a foreign language is presumably seen as a lesser problem than lost sales of the expensive local release in favour of a cheap but nigh-identical foreign release.
 
ayase said:
Giving everywhere outside Japan shittier products to discourage reverse importation isn't likely to help the anime market outside of Japan. I've said it before and I'll say it again - If you offer people a worse quality copy of something to buy than they can pirate for nothing, there's no point even offering anything at all. People now have ways of getting exactly what they want, whether the production staff and distribution companies make any money from that or not.
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Well said. I won't knowingly pay money for deliberately gimped releases. But when some informed buyers take an "eh, who cares" stance, that doesn't give a lot of hope for those less well informed.

I don't know who the rights holders of those particular titles are, but there have been examples in the past of US companies being given composite masters (FMP: Fumoffu and Girls Bravo immediately spring to mind), most likely as a way to deter reverse importation. It would not, therefore, surprise me in the slightest if that's what happened here.
 
To be perfectly honest, the only time I've noticed a difference between 1080i and 1080p is when I've been playing video games. In fact, it wasn't until I obtained my Wii U that I learned the TV in my room can even play 1080p (while my downstairs one is limited to 1080i - boy did it piss off my brother when I told him that the £50 TV I bought has a better picture than the one he has that cost him 5x more xD).
 
I don't see the point if it's intentional; I'd rather just pay more and get an actually decent release. Having said that, I kept my Penguindrum order as I've been gagging to see it ever since it was first announced and I'm not letting a mediocre picture keep me from it for a moment longer.

I would accept the existence of gimped foreign releases if and only if the Japanese versions were provided a viable alternative i.e. they contained the subtitles etc - and in that case I'd prefer the division was done more sensibly without hitting the video quality. The Sentai P4 situation wouldn't have bothered me at all, for example, if the Japanese version had subs, but as it stands English-speakers in region A are screwed. It's not fair to let the Japanese subsidise the entire industry on their own so that we can have cheap things, but it's also not reasonable to expect us to keep buying when the options are either terrible or non-existent.

It's hard to believe that it's an accident as this has been going on for long enough for Sentai to have been told (ISTR there was a lot of fuss when Dream Eater Merry was released and that was a while ago). It feels more like a deliberate flaw though it would be tricky to speculate informedly about whose initiative it was.

R
 
So, looking through the Amazon.com Listings, Penguindrum part 2, Space Pirates Part 2 and Kamisama Dolls are all listed as 1080i on the back of the box. The thing this time is that Kamisama Dolls is distributed by Media Factory in Japan, rather than Starchild/King Records.
I can't decide if this is licensors supplying shittier masters or just Sentai screwing up. Some of their other releases state 1080p on the box, and nobody else seems to be suffering from this thus far.

All i'll say is that if this picks up, and applies to other companies, I'm going to be buying a lot less Anime.
I wouldn't complain if we had to pay slightly more for proper releases, but there are people on sites like amazon.com who complain about paying $60 for a DVD/BD combo.
Why is anime so heavily discounted in the US anyway? They usually pay around $36-42 for a release, down from $60.
 
An update of sorts on this:

stardf29 said:
WTK said:
For Blu-ray releases like Bodacious Space Pirates and Penguindrum, why were the videos 1080i (since 1080p masters exist in Japan)? Was it given that way directly from Japan? Or perhaps it's some sort of licensing requirement from Japan?
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Those were the masters that the Japanese provided.

(On a similar note, yes, Bodacious Space Pirates was the English name insisted on by the Japanese.)
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http://www.fandompost.com/oldforums/sho ... post169811
 
I see. But then why does it seem only Sentai are getting 1080i masters and Funimation are not. Also from the reviews I have read, the transfers seem to lower quality and even at 1080i they should be better. Is this Sentai not doing a great job or are the masters of sub par quality from the off. I'm sure I have read Fate/Stay Night is 1080i in Japan but the transfers are better than Sentai's.
 
Emulsion said:
I see. But then why does it seem only Sentai are getting 1080i masters and Funimation are not. Also from the reviews I have read, the transfers seem to lower quality and even at 1080i they should be better. Is this Sentai not doing a great job or are the masters of sub par quality from the off. I'm sure I have read Fate/Stay Night is 1080i in Japan but the transfers are better than Sentai's.
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It almost seems like there is some kinda of arcane secret to doing a good 1080i, the Japanese seem to know how to do it and are not sharing. Then again they also don't skimp on the BD discs, could it be a simple matter of not trying to cram so much onto 1 disc?
 
We have no way of knowing if the masters they are getting are otherwise gimped as well as being interlaced or they are doing something wrong when processing them.

Penguindrum is Star Child
BSP is King Records
Fate/Stay Night is TBS

Starchild is part of King Records.
TBS is a shareholder of King Records.

There's no logo on Sentai's Kamisama Dolls box. Crunchyroll got it from TV Tokyo.
 
I just watched the first Sentai Penguindrum BD again on my computer (less forgiving) then tried my JP BD of the same episode. It was distressing how noticeable the degraded video was on a monitor watching up close compared to on my TV :/

It was so awful looking that I took additional picture evidence to go with the shots others have posted. I cropped the pictures for this quick round of evidence but I treated both exactly the same, viewed on the same hardware in the same application. You can't see the sweat on Kanba's face or the lines on his clothing in that frame when watching Sentai's disc.

R
 
I'd always noticed how bad the image quality was, but not how washed out it was. It's going on DVD level washed out. What OS/Media Player are you using?
It's such a shame that Penguindrum was the show to get such a bad release. I haven't even bought the second half of it.

May as well post this in this thread - Kamisama Dolls, Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 and Mysterious Girlfriend X are 1080i
 
I use OS X so I don't have access to most of the fun tools people use. I can provide full resolution image comparisons too but I think that one sample says it all, and some of the high motion scenes are much worse ^^;

R
 
Shiroi Hane said:
apparently the Siren Visual discs are better, albeit still 1080i.
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I do have to wonder what the bloody hell happened here.
We start with a nice 1080p Japanese master, and we get two different 1080i releases in different countries, one which is somewhat passable and one which looks terrible.
Reading that forum post though, it appears that the English audio is worse on Siren's disc. Not a real loss though since the dub is awful. (and I usually don't mind dubs)
This is one of those rare moments where I would want to buy a Kaze product, as I wouldn't be surprised if they could get the Bluray masters and release 1080p discs here.

Does anyone know if the Italian release is 1080i like these two?
 
Mangaranga said:
Does anyone know if the Italian release is 1080i like these two?
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I'm pretty sure it's 1080p. I've seen some screenshots and the quality is comparable to the Japanese BDs, all comments I read were super positive. Luckily it was released by Dynit, the only anime publisher in Italy that cares about quality.



Teo
 
Some vomit may have entered my mouth looking at those screengrabs. Show did not deserve anything less than top tier treatment. :-/
 
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