Super Dimension Fortress Macross laserdisc, worth it?

[uzernaem]

Yes, I am aware of the blu ray remaster. And while I don't have the boxset myself, I've watched it by "other means". From what I've seen, the increased resolution made the noise and animation problems in some episodes a bit more obvious.

I'd like for someone who has an LD box to share their opinion on the video and sound quality. I have some anime titles on LD and while the majority of them are very good, there are exceptions (for example Evangelion TV series LDs, which were made obsolete by the remastered 2003 DVD release - this is the case of original LD release quality being underwhelming).

[TMBounty_Hunter]

Analog video, especially consumer grade analog video was always trash. Awful colors, awful contrast, often frame bleeding and other artifacts. There's really no reason to ever go back to something that could never properly preserve the image quality.

The HD remaster for SDF is absolutely fantastic, it's the best the show has ever looked because it's the most care that was ever put into a home media release for it.

If you think it reveals too much don't worry, the old analog masters were often not cropped properly instead relying on your CRT TV's own overscan to do that. So you get stuff like Roy's not fully painted head while loosing image detail everywhere else in the frame.

[uzernaem]

2 hours ago, TMBounty_Hunter said:

Analog video, especially consumer grade analog video was always trash. Awful colors, awful contrast, often frame bleeding and other artifacts. There's really no reason to ever go back to something that could never properly preserve the image quality.

The HD remaster for SDF is absolutely fantastic, it's the best the show has ever looked because it's the most care that was ever put into a home media release for it.

If you think it reveals too much don't worry, the old analog masters were often not cropped properly instead relying on your CRT TV's own overscan to do that. So you get stuff like Roy's not fully painted head while loosing image detail everywhere else in the frame.

Is the first shot from the LD release? The colors look really rough. Most of LD anime titles that I've seen look better than this. Thanks for the shots, this is what I wanted to know. Now I wonder if another BD release is in the works for the 40th anniversary, hopefully with a better artwork and further picture enhancements.

[TheLoneWolf]

On 5/17/2021 at 2:19 AM, uzernaem said:

I'd like for someone who has an LD box to share their opinion on the video and sound quality. I have some anime titles on LD and while the majority of them are very good, there are exceptions (for example Evangelion TV series LDs, which were made obsolete by the remastered 2003 DVD release - this is the case of original LD release quality being underwhelming).

@uzernaem I've got all LDs for SDFM and I can't ever go back to watching them after watching the Blu-ray remasters; the LDs are painfully blurry compared to the Blu-rays. While the Blu-rays do have noticable film grain, I'll gladly take that any day over the LDs blurriness that results in fine details being lost. As for colors, it's hard to say which one is technically accurate, as the colors are slightly different amongst all the various LD releases. I don't think there's any color uniformity amongst the DVD and Blu-ray releases either, but the Blu-ray remaster was overseen by Kawamori, so I'll defer to his judgment.

As for audio, it's been years since I last watched the LDs, but I don't remember there being any noticable difference between them and the Blu-rays. Hope this helps!

On 5/17/2021 at 11:18 AM, uzernaem said:

Is the first shot from the LD release? The colors look really rough.

I'm pretty sure that screenshot is from the AnimEigo DVD release. That release was notorious for its oversaturated colors and underscan (eg: Roy's chopped head).

[uzernaem]

@TheLoneWolf, thanks for the information!

[JB0]

4 hours ago, TheLoneWolf said:

I'm pretty sure that screenshot is from the AnimEigo DVD release. That release was notorious for its oversaturated colors and underscan (eg: Roy's chopped head).

The framing, at least, was intentional and Animeigo was very proud of it. It was to ensure the entire intended image landed inside the overscan area of the TVs of the day. The chopped head would still have landed in the overscan area of a picture tube in 2001. The then-new LCD televisions also had generous image crops to emulate overscan, because every source to feed them assumed overscan.

 

I suspect the colors are similarly "mastered for CRT". I've noticed on some recent rewatces that a lot of stuff looks VERY different depending on what display you're using. I've only ever watched the Animeigo DVDs on a picture tube, but some other anime DVDs I was very fond of "back in the day" were completely intolerable on LCD and I had to hook a DVD player to my old CRT to watch them.

I guess I should throw my SDF Macross DVDs in the computer and see what they look like.

[TheLoneWolf]

17 hours ago, JB0 said:

I suspect the colors are similarly "mastered for CRT". I've noticed on some recent rewatces that a lot of stuff looks VERY different depending on what display you're using. I've only ever watched the Animeigo DVDs on a picture tube, but some other anime DVDs I was very fond of "back in the day" were completely intolerable on LCD and I had to hook a DVD player to my old CRT to watch them.

I don't think that's the reason. The SDFM Laserdiscs didn't undergo any color remastering, but they still appear more natural-looking than the AnimEigo DVDs when played on a CRT.

IIRC, AnimEigo said that their remaster was predicated on the poor condition of the video masters that they received from Harmony Gold (they weren't allowed to use any materials from Big West). It's more likely that the oversaturated colors that they settled on were the best that they could get from HG's video.