Following up on my article 'Where are all the BD Releases', Funimation does have plans for a quite a few BD's coming up this year that are not yet on the 'official' schedule (which is what we post pre-order's from and only covers releases scheduled over the next 90 days or so).Funi's recent pack-in marketing material (the little books they put in with their DVD's) list series like Guyver, RIN Daughters of Mnemosyne , Black Cat, and Desert Punk that will be coming on BD early this summer. Other titles (including some new releases) like Afro Samurai (Murder Sessions), Black Blood Brothers, Casshern Sins , Eden of The East, Full Metal Panic and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood are also planned for BD release later this year. And from what I'm hearing, there will be lots more.
Hopefully some of the other studios will jump on this bandwagon soon as well.
I'd also like to dispel this stuff going around about 'all' of Funi's BD's being upscaled. That is completely untrue. The deal is that Funi has only upscaled in the absence of original HD source material. Their BD's will be produced from original High Def source material as long as it's available, just like the recent Eva 1.11 BD - which looks incredible by the way. Unfortunately there is a large amount of Anime in everyone's back catalog that was not produced in HD, and those releases will either have to be upscaled or not released at all on BD, and given the choice I'll take an upscale over 'not at all'. I think their upscales, for what they are, look pretty darned good. :-)
2 comments:
Agreed that they look good. My only complaint would be the overuse of DNR, but hey.
Also, I saw them list Mushi-shi for bluray as well on one of their inserts. I believe the release date was April 20th. Still upsets me that I couldn't get the movie on bluray, but with the digital noise apparent in the original source, I'd have to say it's better not to see that much grain in 1080p.
Great to hear about more Blu-rays as I personally am d-o-n-e with DVDs. Its got nothing to do with being a videophile rather DVDs even upscaled look pretty bad at times on my HDTVs on top of that Blu-ray cases are smaller and shorter which means I get more space out of my shelves. Not to mention the difference in price is so minimal DVD seems like a rip off. Player prices are way down (you can get a lower end player for $129)Its time everyone made the jump.
The only other alternative is digital downloads and there is NO value in that. You never really own the content and the DRM on digital releases is so extreme (stupid pirates)that you don't really own the content, rather you pay full price to borrow it.
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