Ghost Ship Definitely check it out

Ghost Ship

Definitely check it out. Were not entirely sure what happened with the first episode of the series. It looks embarrassing. Its not particularly full of macroblocking, and its not traditional it just looks like complete garbage. The original release of Arrival looked very similar, so we can only assume that FUNimations masters for this episode simply cannot be cleaned that well. click for a full 720×480 lossless PNG version; approximately 500 KB As you can see, both FUNimation releases are ever-so-slightly zoomed in. The colors are significantly saturated, and in the case of this episode, far too dark. The amount of grain is quite unbelievable, and while its still somewhat present in the Japanese release, its nowhere Ghost Ship what the domestic releases contain. Granted, the first episode is an extremely poor comparison to make and unfair to all sides; FUNimations master is clearly terrible, while Toei went to great lengths to clean up their footage from the original masters they actually and personally own. This particular shot is from the third episode. Once again, FUNimations colors are saturated, but not to the point where its ridiculous. Whats obnoxious is the pure darkness of FUNimations release; its less obvious on a television screen properly calibrating helps, but its still there. The grain is slightly more significant on the FUNimation release, but certainly leagues better than Ghost Ship was previously released on Arrival. Lets talk overall bitrates, though. Without going into too much technical detail, when DVDs are encoded properly, you wont see all that digital breakup. As DBZ is a high-energy show with lots of motion, its very hard to compress as are most action shows. If there is not enough bitrate given to the high motion, youre going to see what looks like blocks called macroblocking appear; its the MPEG-2 format unable to keep up with the footage. The first-generation domestic anime DVDs such as the original FUNimation/Pioneer release were notorious for having embarrassingly low bitrates, and it showed in releases such as DBZ. So how do the three discs stack up against each other? Well, a picture is worth a thousand words. And since weve got three pictures below, thats a whole lot of words. The scene this comes from is when Raditz first rushes forward to elbow both Goku and Piccolo in the backs from Ghost Ship them. It is a very high-motion scene, and this particular frame is as Raditz is in the process of rushing forward, and momentarily disappears from the screen all together. Needless to say, Arrival had a lot of problems with this scene. Look at those blocks; you could actually count them, if you wanted to! The new FUNimation release keeps up pretty well; the grain is still there, and the saturation is somewhat obvious, but overall its a decent effort. The winner of course is the Dragon Box release, with its original colors and tolerable amount of grain and breakup. Im moderately impressed.