[US] Katanagatari

[sickVisionz]

Originally Posted by jala12

On that note, how much better was the BD picture quality over DVD?

Tech stuff...
Samsung 32" 720p LCD TV
PS3 scaling up to 720p

The difference fluctuates. I watched part of an episode on disc one and it seemed pretty bad for an upscale (it may not have helped that I watched a FMA BD seconds before checking this out) but I watched an episode on disc 2 and it seemed on par with what I'd expect from an upscale. I checked those out from like a foot away though. When I went back to my couch, which is like 10 ft from my TV, it all looked the same and BD-ish except for text being jaggy, edges/outlines being a little blurred and colors not popping as much.

I've got no proof, but I'd imagine that all of the episodes look on par with the quality you get when watching a typical anime DVD on a SDTV.

[jala12]

Interesting...

I'm itching to see how it all looks when my copy arrives. Might even do a few comparisons myself.

[Buster Darkwings]

Another thing I was curious about, is the audio 16-bit or 24-bit (16-bit would show up as 1.5MB/S on the PS3 info screen)? I believe Aniplex always uses 24-bit on their BD releases in Japan, so it would kinda suck if the US release has 16-bit, but the difference likely wouldn't be noticeable.

[jala12]

It uses 16 bit at 1.9 mb/s.

How much better would 24 bit sound, and was it on the JP release of Katanagatari?

[hissatsu]

The audio on the JP release is 24 bit at 2304 kbps. As for difference, if you had a rather high end audio setup and really good ears, the difference should still be very small at most.

[ThomasBellman]

Originally Posted by jala12

It uses 16 bit at 1.9 mb/s.

How much better would 24 bit sound, and was it on the JP release of Katanagatari?

No better at all.

As far as I know, not a single human being has been able to demonstrate that they can hear the difference between 16 bit and any higher bit depths. The vast majority of people are actually unable to hear any difference between 14 bits and higher depths, and even that only after training.

More than 16 bits per sample is pure waste.

[Buster Darkwings]

Originally Posted by ThomasBellman

No better at all.

As far as I know, not a single human being has been able to demonstrate that they can hear the difference between 16 bit and any higher bit depths. The vast majority of people are actually unable to hear any difference between 14 bits and higher depths, and even that only after training.

More than 16 bits per sample is pure waste.

There's no such thing as waste on Blu-ray when you have 8 mb/s dedicated for audio. It's more of a waste to spend the time reducing the bit depth.

Audible or not, I'd rather have a bit for bit identical stream to the audio masters (which are always 24 bit nowadays).

[WTK]

LINK

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Limited Edition Katanagatari Art Prints (Set of 6)
Dual sided prints showcasing 12 original pieces from Katanagatari Volume 2, printed in full-color on high quality, glossy card stock.

[ThomasBellman]

Originally Posted by Buster Darkwings

There's no such thing as waste on Blu-ray when you have 8 mb/s dedicated for audio.

It eats into the total disk space, and thus lowers the average bitrate available for video. If you have nine 25-minute episodes on a BD-50, the maximum average bitrate for audio+video is 29.6 Mbit/s. If you use up 8 Mbit/s for audio, that leaves you with 21.6 Mbit/s average for video, but if you limit audio to 3 Mbit/s, you can increase the average video bitrate to 26.6 Mbit/s.

It's more of a waste to spend the time reducing the bit depth.

That cost is very close to zero. And if you do any kind of compression, lossless or not, it costs more to try to compress those last bits of "resolution", since that will be almost pure noise.

Audible or not, I'd rather have a bit for bit identical stream to the audio masters (which are always 24 bit nowadays).

But you are willing to compromise video quality, where artefacts are much easier to detect?

Do you keep you D/A converter, cables, and speaker elements refridgerated with liquid nitrogen as well, so thermal noise in the electronics and wiring don't degrade your signals? IIRC, at room temperature thermal noise limits S/N to the equivalent of about 21 bits. (And even that is a theoretical limit that is practically *very* difficult to achieve; there are very few D/A converters available that do any better than 18 bits in S/N.)

And I believe mixing is usually done in 32 bits internally. One does that to avoid overflow and resolution truncation during the arithmetics for adding streams together and changing their volumes. They could just as well output as 32 bits. Or 48 bits.

24 bit audio, and likewise 96 or 192 kHz sampling rates, is just the equivalent of Monster or Nordost cables. Marketing trying to hide behind a veil of pseudoscience in order to get you to give the sellers more money.

[kakugo]

Originally Posted by ThomasBellman

If you have nine 25-minute episodes on a BD-50...

Katanagatari is about the equivalent of six episodes per BD-50, and only has one audio track. They could have kept the video bitrate at a constant 40 mb/s and had 24-bit audio while still about a gig left over. I know it's largely the exception for US releases on some levels, but under the circumstances it certainly could have afforded the bump from 16-bit to 24-bit.

The discs are PCM, too, but I'm under the impression that the difference between lossless and uncompressed isn't all that pronounced for mono/stereo material...