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Answerman - Why Do Older DVDs Look So Bad?


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MarshalBanana



Joined: 31 Aug 2014
Posts: 5294
PostPosted: Mon Mar 13, 2017 12:15 pm Reply with quote
Well DVD did change over the years, DVD 9 has a lot more memory than DVD 5 for example and requires less data compression.
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Parsifal24





PostPosted: Mon Mar 13, 2017 1:13 pm Reply with quote
I can relate I don't know if it was an "upscaling" issue or what but I had a DVD copy of Kite Liberator and my PC's video player upgraded everything to high quality digital so I became unwatchable for me.
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Key
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Joined: 03 Nov 2003
Posts: 18135
Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley)
PostPosted: Mon Mar 13, 2017 1:25 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
And most of those shows from those early days of DVD have since been reissued and now look far nicer.

Most, but sadly not all. Right now I'm watching a recent reissue (review pending!) and at least the first disk of the reissue looks like crap. I actually think the original DVD from 2000 (which I also have) might look better.
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Sir Daniel Fortesque



Joined: 04 Jul 2013
Posts: 236
PostPosted: Mon Mar 13, 2017 1:32 pm Reply with quote
Can someone post a picture of how bad it looks?
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Lopezz



Joined: 22 Feb 2017
Posts: 54
PostPosted: Mon Mar 13, 2017 1:33 pm Reply with quote
This question is so stupid I can't even. It's like asking why photos from XIX century are black and white.

If old DVD's have bad quality how about VHS?
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varmintx



Joined: 31 Jul 2006
Posts: 1197
Location: Covington, KY
PostPosted: Mon Mar 13, 2017 1:46 pm Reply with quote
Try watching a non-anamorphic DVD of a movie these days. The Abyss just looks so awesome, especially after you zoom-in so it's not pillar-boxed. Yep, really happy with it still not being available on blu-ray after a goddamn decade.
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Greed1914



Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 4410
PostPosted: Mon Mar 13, 2017 2:05 pm Reply with quote
I was actually thinking about this topic a few days ago. I popped in my Girls und Panzer DVDs to prepare for the upcoming release of the movie, and it looked much better than I expected since I now always get the blu-ray version of things. However, once I considered the show's age, I realized I was probably watching a downscaled HD video.
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0nsen



Joined: 01 Nov 2014
Posts: 256
PostPosted: Mon Mar 13, 2017 2:37 pm Reply with quote
The best looking DVDs I've got are 576p, though. Not 480p. And really, DVDs from around 2000 just look horrible. So horrible, in fact, that I can't rewatch my Armitage III DVD anymore. And no one released that masterpiece on BD yet!!
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rizuchan
Collector Extraordinaire



Joined: 11 Mar 2007
Posts: 974
Location: Kansas
PostPosted: Mon Mar 13, 2017 3:38 pm Reply with quote
It'd be so nice if there was a resource as to what anime DVDs have been remastered in more recent releases. I will almost always buy Blu-ray if it exists, but 1. I would have no problem double-dipping for some of my older DVDs (Justin's answer implies that newer releases of Fruits Basket look better than the older ones?) and 2. I could avoid buying ones that haven't been. I got the Anime classics release of Haibane Renmei for Xmas and the video quality is so atrocious I wouldn't have been any worse off streaming it.
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NJ_



Joined: 31 Oct 2009
Posts: 2996
Location: Wallington, NJ
PostPosted: Mon Mar 13, 2017 4:22 pm Reply with quote
rizuchan wrote:
(Justin's answer implies that newer releases of Fruits Basket look better than the older ones?)


The Fruits Basket DVDs from the 2011 Collector's Edition are newly-made discs which had the show spread across 5 discs (4 with the episodes without the old alternate angles + 1 with the extras) and the 2014 Anime Classics set uses the same discs with the only problem being that the extras disc is missing so if you want those extras back, you would have to either hunt down the CE or wait for FUNi to release it on Blu-ray, which got released in Japan this past November.

Quote:
I got the Anime classics release of Haibane Renmei for Xmas and the video quality is so atrocious I wouldn't have been any worse off streaming it.


It's because FUNi used the Japanese Blu-ray masters, which was a horrible upscale to begin with.


Last edited by NJ_ on Mon Mar 13, 2017 4:25 pm; edited 1 time in total
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0nsen



Joined: 01 Nov 2014
Posts: 256
PostPosted: Mon Mar 13, 2017 4:24 pm Reply with quote
For Haibane Renmei the source is really bad. The Blurays look like they were taken straight from some old VHS.
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Animegomaniac



Joined: 16 Feb 2012
Posts: 4070
PostPosted: Mon Mar 13, 2017 4:50 pm Reply with quote
varmintx wrote:
Try watching a non-anamorphic DVD of a movie these days. The Abyss just looks so awesome, especially after you zoom-in so it's not pillar-boxed. Yep, really happy with it still not being available on blu-ray after a goddamn decade.


Interesting... this topic made me think of how my once good looking DVD of the Abyss looks like garbage in my HD set up. That just made it look like a bad VHS tape somehow. Maybe I have a different transfer of it? I know I have other T*H*X master DVDs that do work well in HD, things like Halloween and Tenchi Muyo, but the T*H*X Abyss only a thankless effort. For me at least.

I also have problems with the monster movie The Host. For some reason, the upscaling makes the CGI monster pop out so it looks like a cartoon in a live action drama. I probably need to reset the color grading for that one but I don't know if it's caused my the color setting on the TV or the one on the BD player which I have balanced for animation.

I have a non anamorphic Guys and Dolls DVD that looked pretty blurry before having to blow it up but I also have a non anamorphic How to Succeed in Business Without Even Trying that looks great before and after zooming. In short, I think it's a coin toss as these DVDs were from the same company and time period.

As for my old anime DVDs, it's never bothered me as much as the movies because the older anime didn't always look that hot to begin with... I'm looking at you, Macrossed eyes. And then there's the "We'll get to detail later" early digipaint shows.
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EricJ2



Joined: 01 Feb 2014
Posts: 4016
PostPosted: Mon Mar 13, 2017 4:58 pm Reply with quote
0nsen wrote:
For Haibane Renmei the source is really bad. The Blurays look like they were taken straight from some old VHS.


That's not far from the truth:
Anime companies were some of the first to jump onto DVD, since fans were the first to see the more-space/smaller-package/dual-audio-and-subs advantage of DVD's, when movie studios were still baffled.
Even then, there was little or no concept of "restoration", and if there was no new JP master of a series, companies would simply shift their masters from tape to disk.
If we were lucky, they WOULDN'T try to "improve" it by filtering the VHS master through a horrendous DVNR noise-reduction filter--like AnimEigo did when they switched Urusei Yatsura to disk, or CPM with their "special edition" of Project A-Ko. But most of the times, they did, since DVD was, like, more high-def than VHS.

Quote:
[quote="Justin"]One additional fly in the ointment was that everyone was still excited about DVD and its potential back in those days, and were constantly trying to push the boundaries of what the format could do. This resulted in a lot of experimentation with features like multi-angle that really had a negative affect on the image.


Oyyyy... Confused I remember--back during those same days before we really knew what DVD's were "for", when Multi-Angle was seen as the big thing that DVD could do that VHS couldn't--everyone tried to find some neat showoff angle for it.
The usual was branching the JP vs. US openings depending on whether you chose Japanese or English audio as the default option, which was already using up too much valuable space on a cheap DVD-5 that only had room for 3-4 episodes to begin with.

Looking at companies currently floundering trying to sell the public on why they "want" Digital-Ownership or 4K UHD disk, it makes you appreciate how a new format has to earn its way by demonstrating how it can solve the problems of the viewer, not show off the technology.
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Hoppy800



Joined: 09 Aug 2013
Posts: 3331
PostPosted: Mon Mar 13, 2017 5:12 pm Reply with quote
Thank God Sister Princess got a BD release. I don't want to know how my DVDs look on my 4K TV.
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WingKing



Joined: 27 Apr 2015
Posts: 617
PostPosted: Mon Mar 13, 2017 5:29 pm Reply with quote
This is an uncomfortable topic. I have a fair number of older anime DVDs (including the Media Blasters Utena release that Justin mentioned) that I haven't tested out since I upgraded my home entertainment system last year, and now I'm suddenly nervous that a big chunk of my collection might be obsolete. The only pre-2006 anime DVDs that I've watched since I got my new TV is my old Noir set, and that's looked fine so far (halfway through), but now I'm wondering about the rest of my older DVD sets. Granted I could double-dip for some of my old favorites like Angelic Layer if I need to, but I do have a few shows like Lyrical Nanoha and Tweeny Witches that are out of print and not replaceable, and judging from the horror stories about the new Stand Alone Complex BDs, I sincerely hope that my DVDs for that series still hold up.
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