Ultraman TV and Movie Licensed to Mill Creek for North Ameri

[lhb412]

^ Good to know!

Was the stuttering of the image on the old DVDs the results of the compression or the interlacing?

[canofhumdingers]

[Jinzo Ningen]

Interlacing. All the way. Sad thing is, as Humdingers said, it's an easy fix. Lots of TV series releases of late have been kneecapped by this issue. The recent Automan, Manimal, Knight Rider (not quite so much) and Airwolf - ALL released thru Fantastic Films, (which points the finger solidly at their mastering and/or encoding process) - are plagued to one degree or other by this problem. It sucks, and there are ways around it, but it is something that should never make it to the end user (consumer) in this day and age.

[SeaHawk]

16mm origination does not explain incredibly poor video quality plagued by huge amounts of noise reduction. A proper transfer of this show from its original camera negative would look gorgeous... this transfer, though, gives 16mm a bad name. You all don't have to convince yourselves that this is "good enough considering it is 16mm." Feel free to admit the poor quality you see, but don't blame it on 16mm.

[kiryugoji04]

I am only going off the Japanese rips as I don't have the Mill Creek set in hand but it's still pretty fair to say the show has never looked better, even if there's a lot of room for improvement.

[Jinzo Ningen]

[RobD]

I've got both Ultra Q and Ultraman blu-ray steelbooks in hand!
Curious to check out the visual quality here. It was awesome walking into the local Bestbuy and seeing Ultraman available for sale!!

[Shokara]

I also picked up my own standard edition of the Ultraman set at a local Best Buy. Will be giving it a look over later.

[Dr Kain]

They're HERE!!!!

[lhb412]

Aha! Flimsy packaging smooshed by the mailman yet somehow my sets are unscathed. It's an Ultra-miracle!

[Dr Kain]

I did an unboxing video:

[SeaHawk]

[Shokara]

While I don't own the actual Tsuburaya Blu-ray set of the original Ultraman, I do have a bootleg Blu-ray rip of it. I can say that Mill Creek's release is virtually identical to the Tsuburaya Blu-ray rip in terms of picture quality. Also concerning the comments about new sound effects being mixed into the Japanese audio track, I can confirm that these new sound effects are also on the Tsuburaya Blu-ray audio.

[O.Supreme]

Well looks like things are going well so far. I have a legit tracking number. I'm willing to wait a few extra days, considering I got both sets for $36 ($18 each) with no tax or shipping costs

[lhb412]

Well, I've been sampling various moments from the entire run of both series to check out the picture quality and my verdict: Ultra Q looks terrific. This is how you hope an old series like this can look with a Blu-ray transfer. Sparkling.

Ultraman has a more problematic transfer. However, just because it isn't sparkling doesn't mean it's terrible either. It's a vast improvement on previous DVD releases, in both detail and the plethora of anomalies that plagued Chaiyo's copies. It's merely good while the Q transfers are great... maybe extra great.

Packaging is cool, and even though there are no on disc special features the booklets are totally awesome, and that's basically special feature, right? It's just a physical one instead of a digital one!

[kiryugoji04]

Only had time to sample one of them tonight so I went with Ultraman to try to calm my anxiety after all this "DVD upscale" ballyhoo. I chose my favorite episode, Akio Jissoji's "Overthrow the Surface!" featuring Telesdon, and, honestly, I thought it looked very nice! No, it's not a truly relavatory experience and I can understand why this would so upset a trained archivist but it's also the best I've ever seen the show look. Given the sad necessity for things to justify themselves with profit, this might be the best the show will look for awhile now, which is regrettable but I can live with it.

I get it, though. I've seen Super 8mm scans of footage that almost looked like 16mm and it blew me away. Given how comparatively awful the show looked on the DVDs I watched it on, however, I am overall pleased. Looking forward to watching more.

[kiryugoji04]

[gojiman]

I rarely post and mostly lurk, but I've got both the Japanese Blu-rays and the new ones of Ultraman. From what I've seen so far
they do seem to be very close to the same. I played most of disc 1 of the new release, then put in disc 2 of the Japanese box to compare episode 6. The opening scene is a little fuzzy with the grain on both. There are very clear scenes of the monster sinking the ships. It seems some medium shots have more grain like the scene where the smugglers are cutting the bags looking for the diamonds. The discs look pretty much the same to me. I would post some shots, but don't have a way to do it at the moment.

Overall I'm very happy with the release!

[Dr Kain]

[kiryugoji04]

[Jinzo Ningen]

First impression was... Who - if anyone- on this side of the pond did the final checking of the included booklet?!? There's some horrific Engrish going on in it. Almost laughable, but it really isn't. Honestly, not a deal-breaker, but it's also something that anyone with basic English knowledge should've caught and corrected in, like, less than 5 minutes. That's just plain sloppy. Hope to have time to delve into a few episodes this evening - work schedule permitting.

[Jinzo Ningen]

[O.Supreme]

My guess is that the larger sets (50+ episode series) will have 8 discs, but 7 vs 8 isn't a big deal.

I know its still a ways out, but I am a bit concerned about releases like Ultra Fight Orb & Ultraman Zero (series + Movie). I'd rather have more actual series, rather than rehash (if these are not series that just refer beck to others with stock footage, then I apologize in advance).

I believed from information I had read online that "Ultraman Zero" was basically just the 3 movies (Mega Monster Battle: Ultra Galaxy Legends (2009)
Ultraman Zero: The Revenge of Belial (2010), & Ultraman Saga (2012)) cut up into episode-long bits, with a few other random things mixed in. I'd much rather just have those three films as a whole on a nice set.

[Dr Kain]

I finished discs 2 and 3 of Q.

So far my top favorite episode is "Baron Spider," while my least favorite is a toss up between the turtle one with the kid and one with a runaway kid and a bird. The first one was just utterly stupid as hell while the bird one made no sense and it seems like they forgot to give it an ending. Then again, the super fast train episode also had a "OH GODZILLA! WHAT TERRIBLE LANGUAGE!" ass ending.

[lhb412]

^ The turtle one is all about riffing on one of the most popular and well-known Japanese fairy tales. If you grew up in Japan you'd immediately get it when all the weird things happened, like if an episode of The Twilight Zone started having glass slippers and pumpkin carriages.