Anime on Blu-Ray discs of first region (R1, English)

So this is what interests me most of all: are there any R1 (Officially published in English) Anime BDs existing and if yes - is the HD-video quality of them identical with those of second (Japanese) region R2?

Are there guys on the forum, interested in such things?

Looking at The Right Stuff, yes there are a handful of R1 Blu-Ray anime releases.

The only one I am really interested in at the moment is Gunslinger Girl. I found The Sky Crawlers interesting, but not enough to own. I might consider the two Ghost in the Shell movies, but I would be more interested in the Stand Alone Complex TV series. I would buy Gunbuster, but I'm not sure how well that movie would hold up in Blu-Ray.

As for quality, I expect it's as good as the Japanese release. No real reason not to use the same D1 source.

With the world of HDTV and Blu-Ray still being quite pricey for me, both aren't really in my main interests of buying right now. And until Blu-Ray becomes more affordable for anime licensors to make discs for, it could be a couple of years until the format becomes widely accepted by the industry. Much like Disney did regarding the future of DVDs in the mid to late 1990s when they accepted their deal with Ghibli, I'm just gonna wait and see for right now.

I am not 100% sure of this because I haven't tried to import a bluray disc yet but I believe that america Japan is part of region 1 with the america's, so if you can play those you should have no issues playing japanesse ones.

From what I have seen of anime on Blu ray is that it can be hit or miss, some look alot better I just saw a screenshot for K-ON's Bluray copy and it looke alot cleaner then dvd, but then older stuff doesn't nearly clean up as well. If you are looking for a series in particular I would look up reivews and see if it is really worth getting on blu ray.

I am thinking that R1 is shared by both more now because I know someone who imported Advent children and he runs it off his PS3 so I don't know if they are region encodeded or not. Hope that was somewhat helpful.

They showed Samurai 7 on IFC HD a while back; not sure if that was the actual Blu-Ray version they showed, but it didn't look that much better than the DVD version. I'm hoping they do a better job with GSG.

Evangelion 1.0, however, should be considered the standard when it comes to anime on Blu Ray. I've seen both SD and HD versions, and image quality on the Blu Ray rendition simply soars above the DVD version. I'm betting that this has more to do with the fact that Eva 1.0 is an entirely new production as opposed to a simple retouch and reformat, which I suspect is the case with many of the BR re-releases we're seeing.

I just saw a screenshot for K-ON's Bluray copy

That's exactly on my mind. The fact, that our Russian anime forums and sites are full of these K-ON BDRip screenshot comparison posts, wouldn't be something original to say, but I just liked that 'lazy-crazy' series so much, that it made me start thinking of owning its BD collection
I'm about to buy 42" FullHD TV so it is quite an actual issue. And buying BDs to watch them on the CPU is neither use nor sense, because BDRips are always there for us

I don't know how many years would pass till BD anime is officially published here in Russia, so options are two: either original R2 BDs, or R1 BDs. But what is one supposed to do with R2 BDs, in Japanese only? I don't know Japanese to such an extent it let me watch it without subs So the only option left is R1, original Japanese sound with English subtitles.

Germanzombie wrote:I am not 100% sure of this because I haven't tried to import a bluray disc yet but I believe that america Japan is part of region 1 with the america's, so if you can play those you should have no issues playing japanesse ones.

Yes, the US and Japan are both in the same Region. Also, at this time, most BR discs are being released as "All Regions".

Toma-kun wrote:They showed Samurai 7 on IFC HD a while back; not sure if that was the actual Blu-Ray version they showed, but it didn't look that much better than the DVD version. I'm hoping they do a better job with GSG.

Yes, my BR player will also "upconvert" my DVDs to 1080p and it really works well with anime and anything shot with an HD digital video camera (like the Star Wars prequels). So my migration from DVD to BR will be quite slow as I watch so little of what I own now (I buy things more to show my support of a show or movie than out of a desire to actually watch it).

But as you noted with Evangelion, when the studio takes the time to do a serious transfer, the results can be amazing.

Why the devil don't they do away with region codes already? Many's the time I've come back from a foreign country with cheap DVDs, only for my player to tell me that they're not compatible.

I raised this question in the Ask Questions thread a while back. Here's the page for it. The question gets enough answers towards the middle part of the page.

Region Code Reasoning

Bah.

I know how you feel. There are certain anime titles that I'd be willing to buy if they ever got licensed here in the states. But with the demand and profit of such titles lacking in the eyes of licensors, they are sadly never gonna see the light of day in the R1 market.

What quality are FUNimation releases in general?
I see they made pretty a deep step into Blu-ray releasing...
What is 'Region A'? Is it what R1 means for DVD region standard?
Will I be able to play Region A Blu-ray disc outside USA and Canada?

PS: That's nice they have announced GSG for Blu-ray.

Personally, video quality isn't really THAT much of a big deal for me. What I want to see is the capacity of BD used to it's full advantage.

I'm talking about having the entire Outlaw Star series on 1 or 2 discs. The good stuff and all that.

From what I've seen in BD list they do 13 episodes series into 2 Blu-ray disk set.
According to the official BD page, Single-layer Blu-ray disc capacity is 25GB (replacement for DVD5 (4.7GB)); Dual-layer Blu-ray disc capacity is 50GB (replacement for DVD9 (8.5GB)).

I wonder, does that mean, 26-episode series will be made into 4 BDs..?

Cryingvoid wrote:What is 'Region A'? Is it what R1 means for DVD region standard?

A/1: The Americas, and their dependencies, East Asia (except Mainland China and Mongolia), Southeast Asia.

Will I be able to play Region A Blu-ray disc outside USA and Canada?

Most BR discs are Region Free.

Cryingvoid wrote:I wonder, does that mean, 26-episode series will be made into 4 BDs?

I suppose it depends. Japan releases two episodes on DVD or Blu-Ray to maximize the number of discs fans have to buy. US licensors usually do 3 or 4 per disc.

It would depend on the bit-rate that the show is encoded to as to how many episodes could be released on a US BR.

That is the one thing I hate about buying anime dvds is getting nickeled and dimed by the sheer quantity of dvd's I have to buy for a series.

...hate having to switch discs that often too. you'd think they could fit more than 13 episodes onto 25GB, considering the standard used to be 4 episodes on 4.7GB (with no pixelization on a 42" Flatscreen, generally).

LoC978 wrote:...hate having to switch discs that often too. you'd think they could fit more than 13 episodes onto 25GB, considering the standard used to be 4 episodes on 4.7GB (with no pixelization on a 42" Flatscreen, generally).

Well if they just went with a DVD bit-rate, yes, that should be possible.

But BR is supposed to look substantially better than DVD, so I expect most studios wouldn't want to do that and instead go with less runtime at higher bit-rates.

...the bastards.

how are you supposed to make anime look better anyway? it all has the appearance of being hand-drawn anyway. it's not like you can get the sweat drops to look real without a re-draw.

Unless they purposefully are lowering the resolution/quality of their TV/DVD releases in order to make the Blu-Rays look good. Conspiracy!

BTW, here's a DVD-to-BR comparison

I suppose it depends on how the anime is produced. If it is mostly painted and shaded by computer and uses high-end CG effects, it would probably benefit.

I have a number of fansubs from BR rips and they do look pretty nice - much nicer than the "original" fansubs using terrestrial HD broadcasts. But then so do the DVD rips. *shrug*

I've compared Air on Blu-Ray and Air on upconverted DVD and I admit I can't really tell the difference - at least to the point that the BR rip is "obviously better". I expect it will be the same with Gunslinger Girl when it releases.

For older stuff, unless they go back and use a pristine film print and do a serious author, I expect it won't really benefit so that might be the way to release older series in cheaper box sets.

...you sure 'bout that screenie, Rusty? I've seen the same sort of image used for the VHS/DVD crossover. Same level of detail on both... and a vast majority of my anime DVDs look more like the right image than the left when you freeze-frame 'em.

then again, maybe it's just my crappy eyesight. I've never been able to detect a visual difference between DVD and Blu Ray. Most of the difference in marketing displays is the excellent ($$$) hardware they use to play the disc.

I could be wrong LoC, admittedly I just did a quick voyage on google for a DVD-2-BR comparison, and that's what popped up. So it wouldn't be wrong to look at it with a few question marks.

rusty-spring wrote:Unless they purposefully are lowering the resolution/quality of their TV/DVD releases in order to make the Blu-Rays look good. Conspiracy!

BTW, here's a DVD-to-BR comparison

Nevertheless, the said 'conspiracy' is a real deal. Meaning it is really true, that studios and companies nowadays are really intentionally lowering DVD-version quality to make BD-version benefit. So the 'death of DVD' is, in a way, forced forward.

As for K-ON version comparisons, as I said earlier, there are lots of rush about that:



It seems needless to say, where each version is, doesn't it?









It also 'proclaimed' pre-mortal agony of DVD format in Japan: first K-ON! BD volume sold 33 000 copies (which is said almost to catch up with a record of Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone BD of 49000 copies sold) at the time first K-ON! DVD volume sold 8 000.

Figures are strict

LoC978, Be sure to do 'click' with these shots, OK?

The trick is, the DVD images are being blown-up by over a factor of two to match the native resolution of the BR disc. That means the image is both improperly scaled and has LCD interpolation, both of which will reduce the quality and exacerbate the real differences.

Kiskaloo[b][b][url=https://gunslinger-girl.forumotion.com/../profile.forum?mode=viewprofile&u=553][/url][/b][/b] wrote:both of which will reduce the quality.

May reduce, but not essentially.
According to TBS channel logo first shots are from HDTV-rip (that pseudo 'HDTV'-rip, which is actually up-scaled from Standart Definition), but as experience shows, DVD won't look much better (if not to say 'any better').
Anyway, what I want to add - there is no way benefiting for Blu-ray unless, as Kisk pointed, watched on some Hi-end TV FullHD screen not less then 42". Thus improved details of the picture are most vividly displayed, and the true differences come to light, that is.

I find my Japanese DVD rips look sharper than Japanese terrestrial HD broadcasts.

What if we shrunk the BR version to match the SD version? Case in point, EVA 1.0:

Full DVD version, not a rip. JPG with zero compression:


RIPPED BluRay version, 1920x1080 reduced to 480 vertical lines with zero compression:



First thing you notice is that compression artifacts aren't particularly evident on the DVD version, but it is noticeably grainier. I dunno why there's a difference in brightness, but I can assure you that was not added afterwards. Even though this comparison is a little biased towards the DVD version, it's clear that the BR has en edge in image quality.

...maybe it's my eyesight again, but... the only differences I notice in the above pics are 1:size (e.g. higher rez on the BR) and 2:coloring (the DVD's colors are more saturated... which actually looks better, to me)

Well the BR appears to have better color balance and it looks like the DVD is anamorphic which would improve the resolution if it had been unsqueezed (which it has not, hence the proportions appear "off").

Meh, it's all just comparing apples to shinier apples. The most important thing either way is that apples are still delicious...wait...I think I'm on the wrong line of thought here.

*Goes to eat a late lunch*

Well anime is the only real growth industry for BR sales in Japan, so I would not be surprised if the studios are putting extra effort into their BR releases to keep those sales flowing.

Kiskaloo wrote:I find my Japanese DVD rips look sharper than Japanese terrestrial HD broadcasts.

From ripper to ripper, from capper to capper, that is.

And again, the screen you use to watch your stuff is a very big deal. E.g.: I've recently bought long desired semi-professional (half-professional... what is it in English?) DELL 24" monitor based on S-PVA matrix (this one is supposed to be used among designers). The colours are not 'the way better'... they are_just_different from casual TN-TFT matrix-based monitors. Here red is RED, green is GREEN and so on. What I'm telling is when I watch anime on this thing I see many things I haven't seen before on TFT: there are artefacts such as blocks (caused by bit rate lacking), the sharpness and vividness of the picture I watch is on completely different level; so, one may say, things, which used to look better before, now look worse. And, yes, of course I won't see any difference between Blu-ray rip and SD TV-rip on my casual 19" TFT, stationed in my office, but on higher resolution display and higher-ranked matrix I do, so... a sort of 'machine preparation' for HD should be done to experience what it REALLY offers.

Toma-kun wrote:First thing you notice

First thing I notice, as I hinted before, there is_no_use in downscaling HD. Its very benefit is originally in its_very_resolution. Which gives you a picture more detailed on this resolution, that is.

Cryingvoid wrote:

Kiskaloo wrote:I find my Japanese DVD rips look sharper than Japanese terrestrial HD broadcasts.

From ripper to ripper, from capper to capper, that is.

I tend to use the same group for my TV, DVD and BR rips. And I've seen it across a couple of dozen titles over the years, so while not definitive, I believe I see a pattern. *shrug*

Cryingvoid wrote:And again, the screen you use to watch your stuff is a very big deal. E.g.: I've recently bought long desired semi-professional (half-professional... what is it in English?) DELL 24" monitor based on S-PVA matrix (this one is supposed to be used among designers).

Actually, S-IPS is the better matrix for color accuracy and is preferred by design and photography professionals. My 30" Apple Cinema Display uses S-IPS.

S-PVA is quite decent (my Dell 2408WFP 24" uses S-PVA), but the colors on my ACD are more accurate (both out of the box and after both have been calibrated).

Kiskaloo wrote:Actually, S-IPS is the better matrix for color accuracy and is
preferred by design and photography professionals. My 30" Apple Cinema
Display uses S-IPS.

S-PVA is quite decent (my Dell 2408WFP 24"
uses S-PVA), but the colors on my ACD are more accurate (both out of
the box and after both have been calibrated).

As if anyone doubted S-IPS to be the best... -_____-
I guess, it is less troublesome to buy American mons in America, then to bue American mons in Russia, prices for good quality import stuff rampage, not to say 'non-TFT' mons are a rare find itself in our stores ^_____^ So my DELL is my treasure!
BTW, it seems as our DELLs are the same model... later recheck for sure.
Anyway, sugoi, nothing more to say Do you use both monitors at the same time?

monitor resoloutions are mostly for bragging rights anyway, most monitors operate at a higher resoloution than the human eye can see anyway !

The eventual consumer of all 3D rendering is the human visual system. With display technology and real-time hardware rendering speeds ever increasing, we are on the threshold of a generation of machines that will surpass the visual system’s input capabilities. On a machine with a single user and a sustained render frame rate of 60 Hz, even present day CRTs exceed the maximum spatial frequency detection capability of the visual system"