Ghost in the Shell

[Myname]

I thought Blood: The Last Vampre was fantastic just for the visuals. Not that much structure andnot very long, but I still love it.

Don't think anyone has mentioned Perfect Blue yet, that's a great film. Not really all that anime in it's themes (more of a Western type thriller I guess) but still very cool.

 

[sizone]

perfect blue was a good movie

saw it in theatre about a week after seeing monoke himei on the big screen

i guess 1999 marked the peak of animes popularity in this country

 

[mtxblau]

If you liked Ghost in the Shell, you'll want to try Jin-Roh, too. Solid movie.

I didn't find GitS as great as most people said it is, I thought it was a by the numbers anime flick, with an attempt to define some very often asked philosophic questions.

 

[FAKK2]

I cant believe nobody is talking about Windaria?? That anime is awesome! Oh and its true, Urotsukidoji totally KILLS all the other anime series in every way imaginable!!

I would also like to state that the criterion edition of Akira on LD not only sounds better because of the old dub not compressed, but it's also got the japanese dialogue as well, plus it's in CAV which is way better quality than dvd will ever get...so why anyone would want the dvd of that anime or any other is beyond me!! dvd really sucks IMO... Compression really kills Anime'. My Robotech DVD's look sooo shitty compared to my LVD's its not even funny...

I honestly thought with the box sets of Robotech on DVD in Dolby Digital would be awesome, man was I wrong, I later found out that Dolby Digital uses compression also, so my LVDs sound better and look better. Well, at least its got the extras disc....which was the only thing worthwhile on them.

 

[sizone]

you should've gotten animego's release of macross instead of robotech, dvd compression issues aside they restored all the video and it looks good

 

[antime]

Originally posted by FAKK2@Oct. 16 2002, 1:20 am

I also would like to state that the old criterion edition of Akira not only sounds better because of the old dub, but its also got the origonal japanese dialogue plus its CAV which is way better than dvd will ever get...

The new DVD release has the original Japanese audio and the old and new English dubs and as I said the video is digitally remastered and looks so much better it's unbelievable.

so why would anyone want the dvd of that anime is beyond me!! even if it was the old dub on dvd it still doesnt have the resolution that the ld has...

You must live in some alternate reality. DVD has a resolution of 720x576 (720x480 for NTSC) while LD has a resolution of 528x576/480 or 544x480.

dvd sucks... Compression really kills Anime....my robotech dvds look sooo shitty compared to the lds its not even funny...

That can be a problem, but it's caused by cheap production of the DVD, not because of any inherent problem in the format. Many companies do rush-jobs where they take poor quality original video and compress it far too much giving you a fuzzy picture with compression artifacts.

 

[VertigoXX]

Ghost in the Shell... Okay movie, much better Manga. Same with Akira, no matter what audio you play.

Grave of Fireflies... This is the anime to show to anyone who thinks you're just watching cartoons. And when they ask for something else that isn't as sad, go with Perfect Blue.

Personaly, though, my fave has always been Armitage III. Not that crappy cut and dub released over here with Keifer Sutherland and Elizabeth Berkley. Ya gotta find the series, all four volumes. The only thing that the "movie" version has is a better dub by Berkley, but Sutherland's horrible voice-over is perhaps the worst I've ever heard. In the series dubbed version, the chick doing Naomi's voice sounds a bit squeaky, but they guy doing Ross's dub is at least half way decent. I haven't watched the sequel yet, "Dual-Matrix," though the DVD has been sitting here for several weeks.

 

[FAKK2]

"You must live in some alternate reality. DVD has a resolution of 720x576 (720x480 for NTSC) while LD has a resolution of 528x576/480 or 544x480"

Hmm where did you get this info, I have heard something completely different. Everybody has a different opinion on LD resolution from what Ive heard. Dvd's got more compression artifacts than a fucked up vhs tape!! Robotech is flawed all to hell on dvd and so are most of the Anime' dvds Ive seen (like 98% of them suck), I compared all my LDs to the new DVD releases on my "buddies" NEW High Quality Pioneer tv set and everyone that was there said that they thought my LDs looked better in quality, and sounded clearer! Turn the sharpness up on your tv and watch a DVD , artifacts city...LD was, and still is the best way to watch movies.

Also, the old dub of Akira sounds so much better than the new dorky voices one its not even funny, dvds got big issues with rainbow artifacts, Block Noise on the screen, among tons of "other" crappy problems, everyone that owns both dvd and lvd knows this to be a fact! True LDs are in very very slightly lower resolution than dvds, but who wants all the compression crap? Compression looks like shit, and even sounds like shit, allways has allways will. Mp3 never will be as good as wav, and dvd will never be as good as LD.

Its just the truth, come on over and see for yourself....I collect both LDs and a few DVDs and I compare the 2 all of the time, hell my Blair Witch Project even looks and sounds better on my LD compared to the deluxe collectors box set of the DVD blair witch.....LDs are louder, clearer, and sounds more like a theatre....no compression will allways be better than tons of compression, if you use nice equipment you can hear and see the difference very clearly. Have you looked at some of the extras thrown in the dvds, what a joke! Some are way low in resolution, and look blocky as hell?? Why would they even bother with that?? Look at "The Beach" deleted/extra scenes, what the hell is this, it looks like a vhs tape thats 100 years old, with nasty color and truely barf ass quality!! That is why LDs never include ugly shit like that it ruins the entire movie. and why make a movie in 720x480 but put the interactive menus in 320x280?? Jesus god allmighty! You can keep your horrible looking dvds to wipe your ass with, I'll go with my beautiful, big, uncompressed LDs....any day of the week!

 

[FAKK2]

double posted

 

[Curtis]

Look, FAKK2 cool down!

LD's are most definately lower resolution than DVD's - the resolutions that antime quoted are the highest possible resolutions that a standard TV can display. If you want quotes in line resolution, then LDs use about 425 TV lines and DVDs use about 480-540. Everything I've read about LDs indicates this.

The higher quality of the video that you notice it probably attributed to the higher quality of the ADCs and DACs in your LD player than in your DVD player. Did you say yours was worth $10,000? Do you think this might have something to do with it?

Besides, DVDs have other benifits not available to LDs - more audio tracks, more video, etc etc. It's not really something you need to get so excitied about.

 

[FAKK2]

Im not getting excited here, I said my friends new pioneer tv was $10,000

CLV LDs can hold 1 hour of uncompressed audio/video on each side 2 hours per disc, and CAV LDs can only hold 30 minutes of uncompressed audio/video on each side 1 hour per disc but. when you count that lds are made at $10 each and have no compression, compared to the cheaply made dvds that are made at 10 cents each, and have lots of compression, plus Macrovision, plus Region Protection, plus ugly Block Noise, plus nasty Rainbow Color Artifacts, plus boring Commercials for dvds, etc...etc...LDs are nicer to have. Everyone that has seen the difference, agrees with me. Slightly higher resolution, doesn't make up for all the downfalls of dvd crap technology...

Plus I rip dvds all the time and I see that the crap is encoded in MPEG-2 format, woo hoo. that is why you fit more shit on a dvd than a ld. Example: you can put like 10 -19 wavs on a cdr, or 500 mp3s, hmmm does the cdr hold more because it has 500 mp3s... HELL NO its simply horrible compression....and compression creates Lossy files which are files that lost some of the quality that the real movie had. Do you know that LaserDisc sound quality is 2x that of a DVD! But I guess you dont care right?

 

[antime]

Laserdisc schmaserdisc. Everyone who cares about quality knows vinyl is the way to go!

 

[Curtis]

Now that's theater quality vision

On a completely different but related note, those laser turntables look pretty tasty

 

[sizone]

yes, remind me to pick one up after i pay off my jaguar

 

[y2kzorak]

Mmmmmm... anime. I just bought Grave of the Fireflies on a whim. It was great, without saying much more for anyone who wants to see it. Let's just say this:

I wholly recommend Trigun, The Vision of Escaflowne, Gundam Wing, Cowboy Bebop, Magic Knight Rayearth, Slayers, The Irresponsible Captain Tylor... I could go on and on. For added fun, you could always watch Sonic the Movie, anime style. It's pretty good if you avoid the English dub like the bubonic plague. :

:

 

[SegaSaturnDDR]

You know theres a new GITS tv series aring in japan now? pretty sweet, ive seen the first 2 episodes and they all occur before the movie, so no weird hybrid major kusinagi.

 

[FAKK2]

oh well, I try to tell you the difference between good stuff and crap, but nobody cares, its just like the old days, people went with VHS over Beta, why....Not because VHS had good pic quality, no they chose VHS over Beta because VHS is cheaper shit!! Thats the only reason we got stuck with CRAP!! Is because people are cheap dicks!! And now my LDs are going to be obsolete, why? Not because DVD is better, but for the same reason as VHS, its cheaper junk and people will not spend thier money for anything worthwhile anymore, its allways cheap ass garbage that becomes the Norm. SHIT!!

If people would get off thier asses and buy the expensive stuff, we wouldnt be stuck with CRAP for years and years on end!! People say shit like Titan AE on LD for $55 bucks? or Titan AE on DVD for $15 bucks, hmmmm...Ill go with the DVD...grrr, you chaep damned people make me sick!! Now I understand that not everyone can afford LDs, but damn man why support something nasty looking like DVD you might as well go support VHS as well, they both suck ass. Now because of Cheap ass people Im going to be stuck having to buy cheapo dvds for the next 20 years!! And pretend Im getting some kind of enjoyment out of them, when all Ill actually be doing is looking at all the block noise and rainbow artifacts on the screen saying shit like, Wow, its a little better than SVCDs... if you are a dvd lover do society a favor and hang yourself!

 

[gameboy900]

Ok I've stayed quite for a while but you are really pissing me off FAKK2. It seems to me like someone shoved a vibrator up your ass and set it to 11. Anyway to reply to your previous posts (and for gods sake please learn to use punctuation properly and spilt things up into paragraphs).

1. Only PC's use a resolution of 800x600. No tv standard has it. IF you use NTSC the max you get is 720x480. There is no way of going past this unless you bend the standard and become incompatible with alot of tv's.

2. Yes compression does produce artifacts, this is it's nature. But unless you watch everything from 6" away from the screen you will not notice them at proper viewing distances. I got a nice 43" Hidef projection tv and I sure as hell can't see any problems from a distance. Keep in mind not all of us have a money tree in our backyards to buy the best equipment out there. So for the great majority of people DVD is just fine. IF you're such a quality nut I'm surprised you don't have a cinema projector in your house and only watch movies from their original 35 (or 70)mm prints.

3. You complain that the extras on DVD's are of lower resolution than the movie. Well you know what you're absolutely right, and you know what else? It makes shit difference if it was at a higher resoultion. All of these extras are filmed using regular video tape cameras (normally 8mm). Higher resolutions would do jack shit to the quality of the video except add to the size of the video files. Film studios don't want to waste money using expensive equipment for this stuff since they need to make some money on a movie first and dvd later.

4. You mentioned the extra scenes from the movie the beach. Suprisingly I have this dvd and guess what, the same argument I used in 3 applies here. Here's why it looks so crap (another example can be seen in the deep blue sea deleted scenes). When a movie is filmed, in addition to using the regular film that the final movie is made from, film cameras have a passthrough for a regular video camera. This video camera records the scene to 8mm tapes. This allows the director to review the recorded scenes on the spot instead of having to wait for the film to be developed. In complicated sequence this video footage is also used to edit the scene together (since it's easier to do this than with the actual film stock). The director can at this point see how the scene would turn out. No attempt is made to make the video look better since that is not the purpose of doing this. If a director decides to scrap a scene early chances are the actual film stock itself was never edited into the scene and discarded (or stored in its raw form). The video tapes are kept for reference in case the director changes his mind. These tapes are the only edited copy of a scene there is and this is all that the DVD producers can use to give us the scenes. These days instead of using the video tape to edit the scene, low res (but high speed) digital edition stations are used and their low res output is what is save to tape instead, hence the blockines. So yes the quality is crap but not because of the dvd format but because of the source material.

5. In case you're blind all dvd menus I've ever come across (and I've seen quite a few) are at least 640x480 resolution. True that some of the smaller and less well off movie producers may use lower quality but this is highly unlikely since the extra work to make higher quality menus (even if they are just still frames) is negligible.

6. I like this "Jesus you can keep your horrible ass dvds, Ill go with my beautiful, big, uncompressed, theatre like LDs". LD's and for that matter all video formats these days are NOWHERE near theater quality. 35mm film is normally quoted at being somewhere in the range of several thousand pixels across (usually 5000-6000). This is also why a digital scene that would take a minute to render on a pc at 640x480 takes several minutes on a sgi workstation for theater quality. If pixar used tv resolution their movies would not take that long to render.

7. Higher resolutions on tv's are not necessarily a good thing. Once you get above the maximum standard resolution of NTSC anything else the tv must stretch to it's native resolution. This of course involves using filtering to remove the blocky look (kinda like what 3d cards do to texture maps). Depending on how this is implemented it can help or cripple a video source. It's like the difference between low res and high res textures that are filtered. One looks like a bloby mess and the other razor sharp.

8. LD's are not burned. They are stamped just like cd's and dvd's. IT'S THE SAME FUCKING TECHNOLOGY!!! The only difference is in the way the pits and grooves are organized.

9. You mentioned that the "higher" quality CAV LD's can only hold 30 mins of video. GOOD GOD MAN CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW FUCKING ANNOYING IT WOULD BE TO WATCH A 3 HOUR MOVIE ON THAT, such as Lord of the Rings to use a recent example. Personally it would spoil the experience that much more if I had to get up of my ass 6 times in a movie to change/flip the disc than any little hardly noticable compression artifacts would cause on a single dvd.

10. And what's wrong with commercials for dvd's? I like being able to see trailers for other movies/dvd's on a disc. Helps me decide if I want to get them.

And yes I would hate to pay $55 for a copy of Titan AE LD. Shit man I could by a couple used DC games for that much and still have money left over. The extra $40 IS NOT worth the hassle. Same reason I don't feel the need to buy Monster cable to hook everything up. Unless you examine all your movies with a magnifying glass you won't notice.

I have a question for you. In your great crusade against dvd and for ld, do you actually watch and enjoy these movies?

 

[FAKK2]

actually I do watch them , but comparing nowadays is taking over as dvds look and sound so shitty, it makes me want to puke! The extras on LDs look superb, while the extras on DVDs look really horrible and with your crap on getting up to change the LD, shows how much you know lol, they (LDs) auto flip dip shit!! and take merely a few seconds,

I watch movies like Aliens Directors Cut on CAV LDs and it's allmost 3 hours long, getting up twice during a 3 hour long movie isn't bad at all and its only once if the movie is on CLV discs, considering most people want a ciggarette or something else anyways....

Yeah the compression looks and sounds shitty on DVD plus Ive seen DVD movies that are the same way as LDs, half the movie on DVD#1 and the other half on DVD#2 like Se7en for example. If they want the movie to look/sound even halfway good on DVD that is what they gotta do.

lol so piss on your little idea of sitting there for 4 hours and not getting up to swap discs!! In that area you are screwed as well.

You type alot of crap that is completely meaningless, dvds suck and are garbage, I hate the fact that cheapo crap is here to stay. I dont get to live forever and I figured technology would take a dramatic step forward from LDs, to something WAY better, instead we get tiny little compressed junk! man that shit blows!! and YOU are the ONLY gay ass person out there who wants to watch fucking commercials for other gay ass movies, when I put the movie in I dont want to sit and go through tons of bullshit telling me warning fbi shit, and to go get other dvds, and get this and get that, I just want to see the movie I put in, no dammed menus to go through, no stupid audio setup functions to go to, just pop the movie in and watch it.....the commercials on DVDs fucking suck and remind me of VHS crap!! yuck....

 

[gameboy900]

You know judging by your comments it seem to me that you have your head so far up LD's ass you couldn't see the sun if it bit you on the butt. You don't seem to understand basic principles like STANDARDS that can't be broken without affecting alot of users. And quite frankly getting up once during a movie sucks cock. There's only one movie I have encountered that does it and that's the new extended edition of LOTR. I don't want a movie to get interupted because I have to get up and change it. I like watching my movies in one go and not having to bother getting up.

Seeing as it's pointless talking about this with you (god you're a bigger LD fanboy than Karny is a nintendo fanboy) I'll leave it at that.

PS

My tv is capable of displaying HDTV signals so STFU.