ANS: First Gundam remastered box

[DocWatson]

From the Anime News Service (http://www.animenewsservice.com/):

"8-26-06 (7:33AM EDT)---- Highest Visual Quality Yet In Gundam Head DVD BOX?"

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If you can't swing the recently announced 350,000 Yen 1/12 Scale Gundam Model, you're probably not alone. No worry, Bandai Visual (http://www.bandaivisual.co.jp/dbeat/g-head/) has basically taken the 1/12 polystyrene head from that person sized figure, combined it with a ABS plastic DVD BOX, added a remote control and visual / sound effects and plans to sell it in limited edition for 99,800 Yen. Japan's IT Media (http://plusd.itmedia.co.jp/lifestyle/articles/0608/25/news130.html) recently caught up with Bandai reps Takaaki Konishi and Masayuki Fujikawa at the ongoing Gampla Expo and found that despite all the aesthetic hype of the head, one of the most stand out features of the set maybe on the discs inside the box. To contain the entire original Mobile Suit Gundam TV series (over 2 sets), the image video quality is said to be "premium". How good is that? Well according to Bandai, for the past remaster the original 35mm frames were scanned only once. For this version, each frame will be scanned 6 times total. Additionally, RGB (red, green, and blue) colors will be scanned separately for the highest possible quality in high and low light frequencies. The result is an extremely high quality 1080p HD master, from which the DVD's will be encoded. Both through the amount of time and money this process takes, the end result is far from a standard remaster. And due to the limitations of DVD, the HD master could be used for some future television broadcast. Director Yoshiyuki Tomino supervised the project. You can order the box through net mail-order exclusively. Reservations will be taken from September 1st - 11th. In the event of demand exceeding production, orders will be selected via random drawing.

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So how do you think this will compare in quality to Toei's remastered series?

[slerch666]

You could have posted this in the other first Gundam thread. (http://forums.animeondvd.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=1317641&page=0&view=colla psed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1)

Actually someone already posted pics of the box in there as well... though the added information is appreciated.

Since they did a full 1080p HD version, sounds like perfect material for a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD release. Maybe I'll cancel my DVD preorders and take the wait and see approach...

[ObiKenobi]

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slerch666 said:
Since they did a full 1080p HD version, sounds like perfect material for a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD release. Maybe I'll cancel my DVD preorders and take the wait and see approach...

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Considering the first Gundam series has always been one of the last to be released on every home video medium so far you'll be waiting for ages. It took almost 9 years for it to even be on laserdisc after the first Gundam laserdisc releases and now it's taken 8 years since DVD releases first started I can only imagine you'll be waiting close to another decade before you see a release on a next-gen format. But hey, it's all up to you.

[AUSTIN316]

Yep exactly, the LD boxes came near the end of the LD player's life in August 98 and now that DVD has a successor, they finally release the original series on DVD. I dont think there will be a BD or HD-DVD release for a few years yet.

[ObiKenobi]

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Stone Cold said:
Yep exactly, the LD boxes came near the end of the LD player's life in August 98 and now that DVD has a successor, they finally release the original series on DVD. I dont think there will be a BD or HD-DVD release for a few years yet.

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Yeah it just wouldn't make any sense from a business perspective to release this on a next-gen format so soon after this DVD release. Since this show is Bandai's cash cow I just don't see anything being in their interest to release this again for quite a while to build anticipation so they can milk the next release.

[slerch666]

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ObiKenobi said:
Considering the first Gundam series has always been one of the last to be released on every home video medium so far you'll be waiting for ages. It took almost 9 years for it to even be on laserdisc after the first Gundam laserdisc releases and now it's taken 8 years since DVD releases first started I can only imagine you'll be waiting close to another decade before you see a release on a next-gen format. But hey, it's all up to you.

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I've waited 8 yrs, what's another 10 in the grand scheme of things?

And considering they've already stated they have 1080p masters available, wouldn't it just be a matter of getting it onto one of the new formats? I mean, they've already done all the hard work, now they just need to encode it and make the discs.

Did they ever release first Gundam for the PSP as they had planned? That certainly would lend one to believe they may work on a B-R/HD-DVD version sooner.

I guess in the end I really could just buy the R2 DVDs and stick with that. I mean it isn't like the show was originally created in HD so I'd be getting the show at the best possible SD resolution and detail level available.

I have 4 months to decide as I haven't canceled my order just yet. /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[ObiKenobi]

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DocWatson said:
So how do you think this will compare in quality to Toei's remastered series?

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Far better probably. While I do enjoy Toei releasing shows from new telecines from film prints they don't do much in the way of grain abatement or anything else. From what I could get from the official site through babelfish it looks like they are doing not only an HD scan but they are doing a cleanup as well.

[ObiKenobi]

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slerch666 said:
I've waited 8 yrs, what's another 10 in the grand scheme of things?

And considering they've already stated they have 1080p masters available, wouldn't it just be a matter of getting it onto one of the new formats? I mean, they've already done all the hard work, now they just need to encode it and make the discs.

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I didn't say it would be hard work, but it wouldn't make any sense from a business perspective to do any sort of next-gen release so soon after this one. One of the major reasons for having such a big gap between releases is probably to build up anticipation for the release to increase sales. I can only see a negative impact on sales if they were to do a next-gen release so soon after this DVD release.

[slerch666]

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ObiKenobi said:
Far better probably. While I do enjoy Toei releasing shows from new telecines from film prints they don't do much in the way of grain abatement or anything else. From what I could get from the official site through babelfish it looks like they are doing not only an HD scan but they are doing a cleanup as well.

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Actually I was under the impression Toei introduced grain back into the video as otherwise it doesn't look "natural?" Akin to what Animeigo did with Macross, though Toei's releases seem a little closer to the "natural" grain we'd see over Macross.

Toei created new masters and cleaned them up for all the shows I have (though some imperfections still exist), or did you mean something different was being done for Gundam?

[ObiKenobi]

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slerch666 said:
Actually I was under the impression Toei introduced grain back into the video as otherwise it doesn't look "natural?" Akin to what Animeigo did with Macross, though Toei's releases seem a little closer to the "natural" grain we'd see over Macross.

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No, they don't do anything of the sort. If they did it would be easily noticeable. The difference between real film grain and artificial is readily apparent.

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slerch666 said:
Toei created new masters and cleaned them up for all the shows I have (though some imperfections still exist), or did you mean something different was being done for Gundam?

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For anything I've seen that they've released it's usually been pretty grainy and it seems like they did nothing in the way of grain abatement. This includes Saint Seiya, FotNS, Mazinger Movies, Slam Dunk, 70s Cutey Honey, etc.

What I was referring to in the way of the Gundam release is that they were actually going to do some work in cleaning up the grain.

[Skywise]

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slerch666 said:
You could have posted this in the other first Gundam thread. (http://forums.animeondvd.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=1317641&page=0&view=colla psed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1)


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Lets stick with the other thread please as it's not even close to getting locked for length. Locking.