Forum - View topicHey, Answerman! [2010-04-16]
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mulrich
Posts: 139 Location: Denmark |
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Combining the previously mentioned Gunbuster and now Blu-Ray, here's a comparison image:
http://mulrich.dk/billeder/gunbuster_blu-ray.jpg Now, I would just display the image here, but it's so big that it would break the forum dimensions. Remember to view the image in full resolution. The improvement should be blatantly obvious. |
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SalarymanJoe
 Posts: 468 Location: Atlanta, GA, USA |
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Chalk me up as another reader who apparently missed this Answerfans question that I could answer.
This but there was one more thing you forgot - the availability of air conditioning. I live in the southeastern US with high summer temperatures and very high humidity like much of Japan. I also took a vacation to Japan last year (part of it was in Tokyo, most of it was to visit a friend in Fukuoka Prefecture) in August. While temperatures and humidity were about the same between there and my home around Atlanta, at that time, the AC is running within an inch of its life. In Japan, there were only a few places like that (arcades, pachinko parlors, a couple large department stores). Fortunately, it was perfectly acceptable to keep a small towel in a bag with you to clean up the sweat. I'm still a little mad that one of my favorite shirts still has salt stains from wandering around a late-night farewell from Fukuoka to train hopping around Tokyo between Haneda and my hotel in Akasaka.
The heat and humidity may be part of it but I think it's more a cultural thing. Being a man who appreciates the ladies, I tend to find women wearing more skirts and dresses to be much more acceptable than here in the States, where many girls tend to covet their jeans and T-shirts. It's not just Japan, though; I saw the same in central Europe and the UK. Though, this is all based on me being on vacation and not having spent anything more than a month or living abroad. It may be a broad generalization (or a generalization about broads).
If anyone takes anything away from the Answerfans section this week, I would say it is this. I had long had the "Japan Cool" believe killed before I could afford (financially and time-wise) and I still think I'm pretty temperate towards how anime and manga are treated in Japan. I made some stops and dedicated time to my hobby (hit Akihabara a couple of times, hit every Book Off and Hard Off I could for manga and LaserDiscs) but I also took a lot of time just to do what "normal" people do. Sure, talking about the weird porn in Akihabara or the three-floors of Ladies Doujinshi manga are interesting to anime fans, but what might be considered some more mundane activities or differences in culture are much more interesting to people who inquire about my trip and are the stories I have much more fun telling people. My biggest recommendation to anime fans that are bent on visiting Japan is to remember that these are cartoons and pop media. I wouldn't (and didn't while I was there) sperg out over it. The old addage about "When in Rome..." most certainly applies. But keep in mind that Japan's a modern first-world country and has a ton of stuff to offer besides cartoons and comics. I would also recommend seeing more of Japan than just Tokyo. To me, Tokyo, while an interesting place to visit, was a lot like London or Berlin, just with more Asian people. Big, global cities like that, I find them to be wonderful to visit but not a place I would consider living in. Fukuoka City, like the size of Atlanta, had a much better resonance with me not only as a great place to vacation but I have considered moving there. |
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v1cious
 Posts: 6216 Location: Houston, TX |
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yeah, it's definitely Gunbuster. I have to say Kekkaishi was a surprise. i was expecting it to be mediocre, but it's actually pretty good. the production quality is way above what you normally expect Viz to license, and the animation is fantastic. |
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Beatdigga
 Posts: 4520 Location: New York |
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Kekkaishi is going to fail because of the demographic issues. People can go "Oh, it's not a bad show! Oh, you're a meathead because you don't like it!" Too bad. It's a kids show on Adult Swim and it's going to bomb and bomb miserably. No blood. No boobies. No nothing. It is DEAD ON ARRIVAL. Debuting it on Memorial Day, opposite a freaking UFC with the new BA Baracus in it upgrades AS' usual anime scheduling from stupid to self-sabotage.
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Interesting. So you don't have to toss away a grand for it. Those are still the kind of prices I'd have to save up for though, as I'm most certainly not rich. Well, that I would still put the cost of HD even lower than that. How do you guys spend that kind of money anyway? Even $750 is, like, two weeks' pay for me.
I think what I'll ultimately do is wait for the price to go down some more. I'll be patient about this. I've always been patient regarding electronics, and it's always paid off. I've always been able to buy at half or even a quarter of the price that less patient people (or maybe I should say more eager) would pay. How would you even measure color accuracy? What is there to compare it to? Well, I guess you can record a landscape and compare it to what it actually looks like. Also, I can make things last. If something doesn't last very long, I will make it last longer than that. What's the reason that HDTVs don't last long? Are they more delicate in some way than older TVs? |
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mulrich
Posts: 139 Location: Denmark |
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Hmm, if I still had my job as a part-time mailman, and I took holiday/vacation hours - meaning I substitute for one of the full-timers - for two weeks (12 work days), I'd have earned about US$ 1,660. The full-timers get paid more.
My wife, who had work as a waitress would've earned about the same. She now works as tech support in Sweden and earns about $2,160 a month, before tax. A third of what's left goes to her rent, so she has about 900-1000 bucks left for food and passtime stuff every month. I may not have my job anymore, but the Danish state still pays me to be a student, about $900 a month, to which I have a student loan of $450 per month, so total of about $1,350. About $450 goes to my rent, another $450 for debts to my parents and my brother - from when I moved out from home - and the rest is for food and stuff. Ah, but I digress. Anyway, stuff like TVs is stuff you save up for. You may not get it straight away, but it is possible in no time. 
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dragonrider_cody
Posts: 2541 |
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That's not true. HD sets are capable of displaying a 480p image, and upconvert bluray and DVD players allow you to display the image in the original 480i/p. You can adjust the settings on most displays to upscale or not, while some TV's will just display the standard resolution of the source material. |
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edzieba
Posts: 704 |
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1) scaling it 2) having it only use a small area of the screen (1:1 pixel) Which scaling algorithm is used, and how much post processing is done, is another matter entirely. But you will be scaling the image. You'd be doing some (horizontal) scaling on a regular SDTV anyway due to anamorphic encoding and different pixel aspect ratios. Totally 1:1 pixel perfect source = display viewing is essentially impossible for SDTV or DVD (SD broadcasts, DVD resolutions, and TV SDTV resolutions aren't all the same). Then you have overall aspect ratio, colour encoding, interlacing, IVTC, yadda yadda yadda. One of the big benefits of HDTV is that a good 80 years of legacy nonsense can be brushed under the rug. |
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dragonrider_cody
Posts: 2541 |
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True. I never said it would be a pixel for pixel reproduction. And some TV sets do use a small section of the screen to recreate the 480p picture in a nearly identical resolution. My old Westinghouse did not scale images, so when I would watch SD channels, they would only take up a fraction of the screen. Some sets also have a setting to do this, though it is no emphasized and is not readily available. A bluray player or upconvert DVD player will do a better job upscaling an image than even higher end TV sets. I do agree with the argument that it's pointless to upscale SD images for a bluray release, when a decent upconvert DVD player can often do an equal better job. This is particularly the case when looking at older movies, or when the studio releasing them does a half-assed job, like many of Funi's upconverts, and the earlier blurays from Warner, Paramount, Universal, etc. |
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14863 |
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I got a 32" Sony Bravia for $370 and a different 46" for $700. There really is a difference in quality among TVs. For an extreme example, at work we have a 55" Samsung costing ~$3000, and when you watch a movie on it like Gladiator, OMG the depth of colors make it look like you're actually there.
Ironically enough, I still use my ol' Trinitron to watch TV, right beside my computer now as I'm doing computer stuff. 
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eyeresist
 Posts: 995 Location: a 320x240 resolution igloo (Sydney) |
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Yeah, but "ORC did not reveal the methodology for its survey". My guess is that if you include all the TV watchers who aren't affluent early adopters, you'll find penetration is no more than 50%. Most people, including myself, have perfectly good CRT screens that we see no need to junk until they die or deteriorate significantly (age in CRT monitors can be compensated by adjusting the view settings). And HD monitors will undoubtedly drop a lot more in price in the next few years. I bought my good-sized CRT about 10 years ago for $400, and I think I'd feel ripped off paying any more than that, especially for something I don't feel any special need for. (And with my eyesight, I suspect HD would be mostly wasted on me!) |
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YotaruVegeta
 Posts: 1061 Location: New York |
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Yeah, that horribly described anime from the flake sounds like Gunbuster to me too.
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Dargonxtc
 Posts: 4463 Location: Nc5xd7+ スターダストの海洋 |
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Is the Ghost in the Shell 2.0 Blu-ray transfer really that bad? I bought it (it seems I have bought every version that came out) a while ago, but I haven't watched it yet. Now I am kind of scared. You would think with such a popular show that they would put a lot of effort in the transfer. Since Brian pretty much says it is terrible but not much else, can anyone be more specific or give a link? I looked on AoD and couldn't find anything, but I did find this at AVS, and he wasn't that harsh of the video.
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hissatsu01
 Posts: 963 Location: NYC |
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He was probably talking about the original version of Ghost in the Shell included as an extra with 2.0. It's probably the worst looking version ever, aside from VHS.
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Petrea Mitchell
Posts: 438 Location: Near Portland, OR |
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In recent years, the Japanese government has been trying to encourage a culture of energy conservation, most notably in the form of turning down the AC (and changing perceptions so that it's okay for businessmen to work without business jackets, to cope with it). And the government is trying to lead by example with its own buildings, which means Narita Airport is right at the forefront of the conservation movement. I came off the plane dressed for a normal air-conditioned airport. Hoo boy.
Yeah, I saw a lot of that at Disneyland. Fortunately, if I go to Japan again before 2017, I want it to be for Hal-Con, which is in the spring. |
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