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NEWS: Funimation to Stream Letterboxed Dragon Ball Z

The broadcast's aspect ratio is also expected to crop the original 3:4 screen to appear widescreen.

As long as they have the English sub version, everything else is irrelevant in my opinion

I like the Japanese music too, but for me some of the U.S. music is much better for certain scenes.

I've recently been collecting the orange sets. However, lately I hear bad things about them in comparison to the Dragon Box sets.

What is the difference with them? Why are they supposedly better?

In 2005, Funimation began releasing what they called their "Ultimate Uncut" edition of the show. This featured the new dub of the first two seasons, restoring footage that had been previously edited out, and creating a consistency with the later dubbed seasons. However, this release was cancelled soon after the ninth DVD, in favor of the nine "Season" boxsets which came onto the market in 2007. This new release would be a controversial one.

Touted as a "remastered" release, "Dragon Ball Z as it was meant to be seen", the nine sets released over the next two years (often referred to as the "orange bricks" for their appearance) featured three audio tracks. One was the Japanese track with the original Kikuchi score. Another was the English track with the Bruce Faulconer replacement score used for television broadcast. A third track had the English dub paired with the Japanese music, a new feature. Fans were unsure how to react, as fans of the Japanese version were uninterested in an inaccurate English dub, regardless of what music played, and fans of the English dub were too used to the TV broadcast music to care about the Japanese music.

Something more noticable, however, was the footage itself, and its format. Funimation themselves were the ones who "remastered" the set, adjusting the color, and removing grain, but also detail. Saturation occured, as well. In addition, the picture was blown up and cropped from its original 4:3 aspect ratio to 16:9 for widescreen. The result was the viewers missing parts of the picture itself. The only advantage to these sets became finally owning, unedited, all 291 episodes of Dragon Ball Z. However, the show was once again "cut".

Goku having a wussy voice (WHY THE HELL DIDN'T THEY AGE IT?!)

They have better acting chops, capable of expressing emotions better than their over-the-top, awkward sounding English counterparts.

Anyway, I'm more interested in watching the original DB series. I won't be getting that on DVD until a Dragon Box version is available here.

Maybe I missed something, but I can't recall one time when you personally found the english audio track better than the Japanese one of any anime you ever talked about.

Even if I had said "none" that doesn't make me a fan of the Japanese language and a hater of the English one.