Forum - View topicWorth getting Blu-ray player for anime?
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Garuda7
Posts: 3 |
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Hello, I would like to start collecting anime and was wondering what your thoughts were on buying them in blu-ray form. Of course I would like the best quality, but I'm a bit hesitant on dropping ~60 for a blu ray drive(for my computer), then $50 for blu-ray software, then extra per blu disc over a regular DVD. If there is a definite quality increase, I'll go for it, I'd just like to know what you guys think first. Thanks!
(extra info- my monitor is 23" at 1920x1080) |
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誤称
Posts: 549 |
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There is a definite improvement in sound if nothing else improving from DVD to BD. Personally, I didn't do it in my computer, I bought a BD player that supposedly also plays video games and streams internets.
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Garuda7
Posts: 3 |
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Haha, thanks for the info. A PS3 is a little out of the price range right now(and besides, I'm a PC gamer!) but I do have some high quality headphones that could benefit from the blu ray. |
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Polycell
Posts: 4623 |
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If you're willing to lose the menus, you can always use MakeMKV. I believe it can stream directly to VLC or MPlayer if you don't feel like policing dumps.
EDIT: Also, I've found that HD is always worth it, at least for native-HD productions. |
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marie-antoinette
Posts: 4136 Location: Ottawa, Canada |
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If you are just looking to get it for anime, my answer would be that it depends on what shows you are watching.
For what I watch, it would not be worth it because the visuals generally aren't really all that fancy (I have a player but the only anime I specifically bought in Bluray is Madoka Magica). The rest of my collection is all DVD and just fine (well, there are a few more I might have gone Bluray on if I rebought them but most of them, not so much). But if you mainly watch the shows that have better art/animation or plan to use it for other entertainment too, then sure, it definitely makes a difference but that difference is more impressive on the shows/movies that look damn good in the first place. |
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yuna49
Posts: 3804 |
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If your monitor has HDMI inputs, you could just buy a $60-70 Blu-ray player and connect it directly to the monitor.
In general, BD transfers of movies are usually worthwhile since filmstock has more "resolution" (used loosely here) than digitized frames. Current anime TV series are generally captured at 720p, but there are older series like Moribito that were presented in the 16:9 format but still captured at 480p. If you are in the US and have a reasonably high-speed Internet connection, you should take a look at Crunchyroll's HD streams and compare them to the 480p versions. |
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walw6pK4Alo
Posts: 9322 |
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If you're buying any analog (drawn on cels, shot on film, remastered digitally, typically pre-2000) anime on BluRay, you're getting an incredibly better looking picture than any DVD, even a well crafted dual-layer using the transfer, can offer you. That's if the remaster was well done, most things are but there's a few really bad ones out there, like 3x3 Eyes. When an HD transfer is done well, like Riding Bean, Venus Wars, Five Star Stories, Nausicaa, and Akira, the effect is dramatic. It's not just "bigger", the fine grain structure is resolved in the picture, lines become sharper, and colors are corrected to what they should have appeared like physically. It doesn't just apply to films and OVAs, TV series like Escaflowne, Berserk, Cardcaptor Sakura, Nadia – they look fantastic in HD. Escaflowne especially, some shots look practically 3D and give a real sense of depth in the art direction.
For digital anime, anything pre-2008 is likely an upscale. Those don't always make for good BDs, but a few cases like Kanon 2006 and Clannad season one make the cut. From 2008 on, things are at least 540p if not higher, so BD benefit begins to take effect. As we continue on, native resolutions for digital anime should increase, and there's no doubt higher budget films and OVAs will all be natively 1080p shortly, if they're not already. The benefits for digital anime on BluRay over DVD is that it isn't being upscaled by your system, all the info is on the disc. |
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P€|\||§_|\/|ast@
Posts: 3498 Location: IN your nightmares |
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Tuor_of_Gondolin
Posts: 3524 Location: Bellevue, WA |
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Past,
Well for TVs it works like this: either the player *or* the TV can do the upscaling. If you have a cheap TV, it might not be able to do it at all, in which case the player will do all the upscaling. If the roles are reversed and you have a poor player but an excellent TV, then the TV would do it. Usually, you want the player to do it as quality player has more power set aside to deal with specifics like upscaling 720P to 1080P while the TV can focus more on things like color palate, greyscale, and stuff like that. For a computer, I'd guess it's actually the GPU that does the upscaling if the player isn't up to snuff, not the monitor itself, but I'm not certain of that. I wouldn't bother getting a BD player for my computer, to be honest. A monitor is just too small for me to be able to properly appreciate the improved quality you get from a decent BD anime. |
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yuna49
Posts: 3804 |
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Upscaling consists of interpolating pixels based on the color values of the ones surrounding it. A 720p frame consists of 1280x720, or 921,600 pixels. When the frame is upscaled to 1080p, those 921,600 pixels become the basis to generate 2,073.600 pixels. It should be obvious that there cannot be any additional real information in the upscaled frame. Instead the new pixels are generated by averaging the ones around it. I haven't a clue what the person you're citing is talking about. "Anamorphic" DVDs use non-square pixels to encode a 16:9 frame into the 720x480 format of DVDs. There are no 720p DVDs. Upscaling DVD players take advantage of the anamorphic format, but they don't magically create 720p content out 480p originals. Nothing can create additional information that doesn't exist in the original source. |
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Polycell
Posts: 4623 |
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P€|\||§_|\/|ast@
Posts: 3498 Location: IN your nightmares |
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One-Eye
Posts: 2267 |
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I've got a Sony BD stand alone player and an LG internal BD player for my PC. Cyberlink Power DVD9 came with my internal player and works fine with both DVDs and BDs. I think BD is worth it if you have a decent sized screen and decent audio set up. Redline BD and Evangelion BD looks awesome on my HDTV. This doesn't mean you need a 60 inch screen and 6 speakers, something more modest can still impress. However, if you are on a budget, you may just want to wait till later for BD. You could do as someone suggested and get a cheap stand alone BD player if your monitor has an HDMI input and hook it up that way. Some anime looks pretty good on DVD and not all anime looks great on BD. Also if you are on a serious budget and are only going to pick up a few titles to begin with (anime BDs are not always cheap) you may want to save some money and stick with DVDs until you are better situated to take advantage of HD. Just my 2cents.
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Kruszer
Posts: 7994 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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No, it's not worth it, unless you really want one of those very rare shows that was only released on BD. Otherwise, DVD is the way to go because it will save you money and you're not going to see much of an improvement in the picture from animation to justify it.
Last edited by Kruszer on Mon Sep 03, 2012 3:39 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Tuor_of_Gondolin
Posts: 3524 Location: Bellevue, WA |
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Yeah, my short reply to the OP would be: it's not worth it if you're going to see it on a 23" monitor.
Wait until you have something worth seeing it on, something where you'll clearly notice the difference between 720P and 1080P, and then get it. |
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