American releases' video quality

[TaranT]

...Awful colours, rainbows, and a big black spot that's there for five frames!...

I believe that's a cue dot, although most of the one's I've seen are oval in shape. I'm far from a film expert, but I did find this: http://www.weavervale.co.uk/onscreen/project1.htm

...You may have noticed in the cinema and on TV that every so often a black spot - known as a cue dot appears in the top left hand corner of the film. These tabs were used to accurately run dual projectors.
Projectors would be set up so that the film was always laced up with 9 diamond - i.e. the diamond shape that appears after the number nine on the leader, directly in front of the lens. As soon as the first cue dot appears - for four fames, the projectionist starts up the second projector, and on the second cue dot right at the very end of the reel, the projectionist opens the shutter to let the light through the second projector and switches the sound over by pressing a button on the front of the projector...

The region 1 DVD of Mononoke is a mess in some sections, too. I have the R2 of it, but haven't had a chance to watch it yet. And I think Kusoyaro's "Self Titled" had some trouble with Mononoke, something about the aspect ratio being off.

Anyway, I've only used R2 footage twice and in both cases - Totoro and Windaria - the quality has been excellent.

**************

[ErMaC]

In general, it's a safe rule to assume that the Region 2 discs will look either better or as good as the US releases. The only possible exceptions are on things like maybe Rurouni Kenshin (which Sony released in the very early days of DVD in Japan). In general the Japanese just have both better sources and higher quality standards (the average Japanese DVD buyer is way more concerned about video quality than the US counterpart). The Japanese are still releasing Laserdiscs because some die hards think they look better (and on CAV LD they certainly can).

Also, sadly Tim's filter is basically obsolete at this point (no offense Tim) since you can run any smoother you want on just the Chroma channel (like his does) in AVISynth by going MergeChroma(Smoother(options)) which runs "Smoother" on the chroma channel while leaving Luma intact (which is what Tim's does, except his runs in RGB colorspace and thus is super-slow).

Some more things to point out. Using the new MPEG2DEC3's Post-Processing Options can help remove lots of MPEG noise that get thrown around in older discs (like Lain, which is rather old these days, current Pioneer discs don't have these issues).

Finally, I stopped trusting AonDVD a long time ago for content, but for video quality - back when Chris got his Skyworth player, he started leaving the Video fields ungraded since he couldn't give a fair grade to the disc since his equipment was "so good" or whatnot, but he began doing it again, I don't remember why. Needless to say, Chris is not the scrutinizing Videophile that he should be given the reams of DVDs and LDs he's gone through. Hell, I can't watch plain old TV anymore because I can _SEE_ the interlacing and it bothers me to no end, whereas Chris can say that a disc looks fine, but when you take an actual look up close you see huge problems.
He's looking at it from a home viewing on a TV perspective. We're looking at it from a digitally-ripped, unfiltered perspective and thus we see way more than he does, so I shouldn't totally bash him, but unless he actually pans a disc (which he rarely does) I don't listen to him.

[Hitori]

And I bought the CPM DVD just before the Collector's Edition came out.

I too bought it before the Collector's Edition came out...

But hey, I have Armitage III Dual Matrix movie and the Armitage OVA and the OVA is much better! Got it for like 13 bucks from TRSI! 8)

[Wyverex]

Thanks all for the replies and thanks also to that guy who mentionned AnimeOnDVD, great site (though I don't really believe their rate on video quality, as Tim and ErMaC said).

Just something I want to clear out : don't say "zone 2 DVD are the best". Say "japanese releases are the best", which is obviously the truth. Let me remind you that european releases are zone 2 too and some are just disgusting...

I'm currently interested in Jin-Roh and Battle Athletes OAV box-set (btw is the anime good?), zone 1, cause I can get them from someone who only provides zone 1 DVD. As some previous replies say both are decent quality, right? But what do you mean by "decent"? I really need to be sure of this point...

And please keep on posting screenshots, that really helps a lot ^_^.

[Wyverex]

One last question : you think trading the original japanese release of Memories for Jin-Roh plus Battle Athletes OAV 3 DVD box-set, american releases, would be a good deal? I don't know if the guy will accept but I know Memories is quite hard to find (I bought it in Tokyo).

[dokidoki]

Also, sadly Tim's filter is basically obsolete at this point (no offense Tim)

Meh. I know. But I was given some optimisations and it'd be nice to post them.

(which is what Tim's does, except his runs in RGB colorspace and thus is super-slow).

No, it's super-slow because it's unoptimised. The YUV<->RGB conversions are rather quick. I converted some ASM code to C to write the filter, but didn't convert it back when I was done changing the algorithm since I'm not as proficient with ASM.

[Ashyukun]

Battle Athletess is easily one of my favorite series, and most people I know who have seen it have also liked it. The TV series is, IMO, better than the OAV series, but then it's much longer and they were able to develop the characters far more, but the OAV series is still quite good (one good thing about picking up the R2 Japanese discs would be you wouldn't have to worry about accidentally listening to the dub on the R1 discs... they took some... interesting... liberties in the translation ). I'd say go for it.

[CArnesen]

If its in Region 2, its PAL, right? They dont sell NTSC stuff in europe... right?

Actually, Europe is a different region number (too lazy to look it up). Region 2 is used in Japan (which BTW is in Asia) and they do use NTSC (remember, Never The Same Color). The only difference is that in Japan, NTSC Black = 0 IRE and in the USA, NTSC Black = -7 IRE.

[Wyverex]

Europe and Japan is the same zone number (#2) but Japan uses NTSC and Europe PAL.

[RadicalEd0]

Ah upon inspection of the many region charts out there I never took the time to notice that Japan and Europe were both R2
I don't need mnemoics to remember NTSC though, which is defined as 525 lines of vertical resolution and 15000 something lines of horizontal resolution broadcast and displayed at a rate of 60hz matching up with the american AC transmission frequency. Of course this rate was converted to 59.94 after the addition of the two chroma channels, which were inserted in the unused frequency range between luminace and blanking. The rate change was necessary because a small small amount more bandwidth was needed than what was left empty around the luminace signal.
/me initates a video technogeek showdown :O