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Answerman - Quick Answers Part 3


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DmonHiro





PostPosted: Mon Jun 19, 2017 11:52 am Reply with quote
I'm sure Justin knows much more about this then I do, but not ALL upscaled BD's look better then DVDs. There is a very infamous upsaling technology that produces absolutely HORRIBLE results. I have forgotten the name, but anything upscaled with that technology should be avoided like the plague it is.
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Blanchimont



Joined: 25 Feb 2012
Posts: 3426
Location: Finland
PostPosted: Mon Jun 19, 2017 12:37 pm Reply with quote
DmonHiro wrote:
... There is a very infamous upsaling technology that produces absolutely HORRIBLE results. I have forgotten the name, but anything upscaled with that technology should be avoided like the plague it is.

QTec?
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DmonHiro





PostPosted: Mon Jun 19, 2017 1:26 pm Reply with quote
QTec! That's the one. But hey, it's been a while. Maybe they learned how to do a good/decent upscale.
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Blanchimont



Joined: 25 Feb 2012
Posts: 3426
Location: Finland
PostPosted: Mon Jun 19, 2017 1:53 pm Reply with quote
No idea if they have improved any. But if whatever I could glean from their Japanese Wikipedia page is correct, upconversion is still in their repertoire, and they've advanced to upconverting HD to 4K;
Q-Tec, Japanese Wikipedia, google translation wrote:
Conventionally, FOCUS (Fine Optimum Customization Up-convert System) = technology called high definition HD remastering upcon. It was renamed (EX PICTURE HD) along with the definition of FORS, and at the same time (EX PICTURE) which became available from HD to HD (EX PICTURE), it also coped with up conversion to 4k (EX PICTURE 4 K). It is said that it will be a sharp finish that excludes jaggies etc. as much as possible with technology based on original know-how. It diagnoses over 10 items of SD video and up converts to HD picture quality in the optimum way according to the work characteristics.
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leafy sea dragon



Joined: 27 Oct 2009
Posts: 7163
Location: Another Kingdom
PostPosted: Mon Jun 19, 2017 3:30 pm Reply with quote
There are plenty of small, minor amusement parks dotted all over North America and Europe too. They're just not as highly visible as the huge theme parks that constantly advertise and that people are always talking about. They're not always kept quite as clean as what I see in anime though, but none of them quite reach the lows of the shady traveling carnival you always see in western fiction.

And regarding TV series adaptations, there WAS that Monster adaptation made by Guillermo del Toro that kind of vanished into thin air.
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EricJ2



Joined: 01 Feb 2014
Posts: 4016
PostPosted: Mon Jun 19, 2017 3:32 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Most anime take place in major cities, which do have quite a few amusement parks. During the bubble economy of the 80s, lots of theme parks opened all around Japan. While many of them closed, the bigger, more popular ones still remain. Obviously, the Disney theme parks (Tokyo DisneySea and Disneyland) and Universal Studios are two of the best known, but there are other parks like Fuji Q Highland, Nagashima Resort, Toei Eigamura, Nikko Edomura, Space World, and a few dozen others.


There was a boom (bubble, in some cities' case) for aquariums after Boston and Long Beach revived their waterfront areas in the 80's--It was a quick answer for indoor tourist attractions in a small, central urban seacoast city, could be open year-round, and didn't need as much safety maintenance for guests.
Not sure how many aquariums are in the Tokyo area, but it was made to order for Tokyo's real-estate problems of finding attractions to put inside a building or underground.

And while some of the parks are small independent imitators--or indoor, like the One Piece park at Tokyo Tower--think most of the "Fantasy castle" theme parks in anime are directly trying to homage Tokyo Disneyland, while avoiding the Wrath of the Mouse.
While Amagi Brilliant Park parodies some of the cheaper imitators, Yomi's dreams of visiting Fantasy Land in the Azumanga Daioh episode is pretty clearly Disney, and a major amusement park nearby the Kaleido Circus tent on Kaleido Star pretty well nails the fictitious US location to Disney World's "La Nouba" Cirque Du Soleil tent in Orlando.
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Greed1914



Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 4410
PostPosted: Mon Jun 19, 2017 4:18 pm Reply with quote
I used to quantify my disc collection based on number of discs. After the switch from 3 or 4 episodes to a disc to sets of 12 or 13, I stopped. It no longer made sense to measure it that ways when I was getting more episodes on fewer discs. Plus, I wasn't sure of how best to count a combo pack since I only bought one item, but got twice as many discs as releases that were DVD or blu-ray only.

I thought about counting it by number of titles, but that didn't seem very accurate since it wouldn't acknowledge that one show on my shelves, say Fairy Tail, was as long as several others combined.

At some point, I realized that I just plain didn't care to try to count my collection anymore.
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Alan45
Village Elder



Joined: 25 Aug 2010
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 19, 2017 7:32 pm Reply with quote
@Greed1914

I considered those measures. I also considered counting episodes for TV series. Then I realized that some shows had 15 minute episodes, 12 minute episodes or even 7 minute episodes. I also realized that I would need separate lists for movies and OVAs. I finally came to the conclusion that the only accurate count would be minutes of show. At that point I decided it was silly, pointless and too much work.

Like you I decided that I didn't care.
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leafy sea dragon



Joined: 27 Oct 2009
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 19, 2017 7:56 pm Reply with quote
Alan45 wrote:
@Greed1914

I considered those measures. I also considered counting episodes for TV series. Then I realized that some shows had 15 minute episodes, 12 minute episodes or even 7 minute episodes. I also realized that I would need separate lists for movies and OVAs. I finally came to the conclusion that the only accurate count would be minutes of show. At that point I decided it was silly, pointless and too much work.

Like you I decided that I didn't care.


Even if you'rte counting minutes, would you count extra features and bonus content? It can still get rather complicated in that way.
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Shar Aznabull



Joined: 12 Jan 2015
Posts: 236
PostPosted: Mon Jun 19, 2017 8:18 pm Reply with quote
There was that really weird period from like 2005-2008 where shows were produced in wide screen but not HD.
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Zendervai



Joined: 06 Apr 2012
Posts: 197
PostPosted: Mon Jun 19, 2017 8:26 pm Reply with quote
I don't know who did it, but the upscale for seasons 1 and 2 of Shakugan no Shana look ghastly. There's shots that are blurry, shots that clearly haven't been upscaled and the whole thing just looks muddy and awful. The show doesn't look that amazing most of the time already, so all the upscale did was make every pre-existing flaw stick out like a sore thumb...while also introducing pretty much every single flaw you could get in a bad upscale.

The DVDs for that show are about a million times better, just becuase they didn't get butchered in the upscale process.
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Sakagami Tomoyo



Joined: 06 Dec 2008
Posts: 940
Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia
PostPosted: Mon Jun 19, 2017 8:32 pm Reply with quote
The "it wasn't produced at 1080p, don't bother getting it in HD" argument never really made a lot of sense to me. If it was produced at an SD resolution that's one thing, but the impression I get is that when shows aren't produced at full 1080p, they're something like 800p or 900p, so it's still going to be pretty good.

Even in *cough*fansubdownloading*cough* circles, people say "the 1080p is an upscale, get the 720p instead." Sure the 1080p won't be quite the same quality as if it were actually produced at 1080p, but it's still going to look better than the 720p.
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Alan45
Village Elder



Joined: 25 Aug 2010
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 19, 2017 9:08 pm Reply with quote
leafy sea dragon wrote:
Quote:
Even if you'rte counting minutes, would you count extra features and bonus content? It can still get rather complicated in that way.


That way lies madness. At least with the basic show runtime you can get it from the box in most cases. Extra features would require you to get out the disks and check the times. Then you get into the question of what to count. ADV used to claim its trailers were special features, I'm not sure that clean opening and ending would count as it is material you already have. An interview with creative staff would count but probably not commentary tracks which are just an additional voice track to an existing episode and frequently have no real relationship to the show. I can see endless arguments as to what to count.

Trying to claim you have the larger (or largest) collection is silly anyway. It would usually lead you to buying and keeping shows you didn't really like or want to watch just to enlarge your collection. Even if a show is an acknowledged masterpiece, if it is not a show you like it is just wasted space in a collection.
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MrBonk



Joined: 23 Jan 2015
Posts: 192
PostPosted: Mon Jun 19, 2017 9:17 pm Reply with quote
If the uscale is not horrible, then be is worth it for bit rate and no potential for ivtc errors. I don't know why more shows produced at 480p don't get SD BDs, they could have even higher bit rate and then just let the player upscale it. A lot of professional upsample are incredibly amateur, and end up running the quality. Not all, but quite a few, basically everything from Toei or Viz media.
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Top Gun



Joined: 28 Sep 2007
Posts: 4563
PostPosted: Mon Jun 19, 2017 9:32 pm Reply with quote
Greed1914 wrote:
I used to quantify my disc collection based on number of discs. After the switch from 3 or 4 episodes to a disc to sets of 12 or 13, I stopped. It no longer made sense to measure it that ways when I was getting more episodes on fewer discs. Plus, I wasn't sure of how best to count a combo pack since I only bought one item, but got twice as many discs as releases that were DVD or blu-ray only.

I thought about counting it by number of titles, but that didn't seem very accurate since it wouldn't acknowledge that one show on my shelves, say Fairy Tail, was as long as several others combined.

At some point, I realized that I just plain didn't care to try to count my collection anymore.

Honestly I just chuck everything into Film Aficionado and let it count things as it chooses to. Even then it's not entirely accurate, since there are a few UK and Australian releases I own that don't have entries in their database.
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