The Killer of Heroes wrote:Is there any kind of replacement plan webpage for the art cards at least yet? I got mine set through Amazon so I'm wondering what to do here.

Nothing about a page in the email I got. Says the intention is to ship as early as next week and will be mailed to the same address they sent the Collector's Edition. Though I ordered straight from GKIDS so they already have that info; no clue what to do for ordering through Amazon. Contact GKIDS I guess?

I got sent the replacement art cards today without filling out the form, so it seems like they're sending them out to everybody.

The Killer of Heroes wrote:I don't know how to take an actually like nice screengrab, but I hooked my capture card to my PS5 to grab a screen from my 4k which came in today.

SPOILER: Show

Someone with a better setup than mine should follow up on this, but it looks like same issues are present on 4K to me.

My copy finally came in from GKIDS. The 4K release from GKIDS actually matches up pretty well with the Japanese release on my setup. (Sony UBP-X700 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray player; LG C1 OLED TV.) But the Dolby Vision needs to be disabled in order for it to match the Japanese disc, as the Japanese release did not come with Dolby Vision. Dolby Vision is a technology that changes the picture settings of your TV in real time on a scene-by-scene basis, and it's usually used to create a more accurate reproduction of the film according to the filmmaker's vision. The Japanese discs didn't come with Dolby Vision, so the Dolby Vision on the GKIDS release wouldn’t be reflective of Khara/Anno's vision unless the film was screened in Dolby Vision theaters in Japan.

Now, it looks like Dolby Cinema was introduced to Japan exclusively through Shochiku Multiplex Theaters back in 2018, which does predate the Japanese theatrical release date of Shin Eva. And it looks like Toho movies are currently screening in Dolby Cinema theaters, like Godzilla Minus One. It’s not outside of the realm of possibility that Shin Eva was also screened in a Japanese Dolby Cinema theater back in 2021. So it’s possible that the Dolby Vision GKIDS has is based on the Dolby Vision that was used in these Japanese theaters.

As for the regular HD Blu-ray, the video compression and color banding seems to be unavoidable given the technical standards for BD production in the English-speaking market. I did some poking around on the discs and came to the realization that most Japanese anime on HD/UHD Blu-rays have both the English and Japanese language tracks presented in nearly or totally surround sound lossless audio quality. Basically, the technologies that exist today allow people to get the most bang for their buck if they dedicate more disc space to the audio rather than the video, as audio compression tends to be more noticeable to the human senses than video compression, especially if they have a high-end home theater system.

Typically for English-speaking movies released in a mostly English-speaking market, the English audio track gets the flagship lossless compression treatment, and any audio commentaries or non-English language tracks tend to be more severely compressed (DVD or even CD quality sound) to save room on the disc since those audio options don't have as high of a consumer demand in English-speaking areas. With anime, however, there is a perceived equal consumer demand for lossless compression audio tracks for both the English dub and the original Japanese version. Even though the audio is compressed, the TWO lossless-compressed DTS 5.1 Surround Sound audio tracks still take up so much space that they end up having to compress the video even more than the Japanese version in order to fit them both on the disc. Almost all Japanese video released outside of Japan is compressed to accommodate for the extra flagship English audio track, and that video compression gets more and more noticeable the longer the movie is. That's why the compression for English release of the 90~ish minute Eva Q isn't nearly as noticeable as it is for the 2.5~ish hour long Shin Eva. While this seems to be an issue for regular Blu-rays, apparently 4K/UHD Blu-rays have enough disc space to contain high-quality treatments of both the English and Japanese audio tracks without any noticeable compression issues with the 4K video.

TL;DR, The color banding exists in the BD of Shin Eva because there isn't enough space on a BD to fit a 2.5 hour long movie with high-quality versions of both the English and Japanese tracks, but that doesn't seem to be an issue with the 4K editions.

It sounded like Killer of Heroes noticed the same issue on the 4K, though? Or maybe I misread. But are you saying you've confirmed the 4K doesn't have banding?

It doesn’t seem to have color banding issues on my setup, but my setup isn’t the same as Killer of Heroes’. I haven’t heard too many great things about the PS5 as a 4K Blu-ray player though, so that could be a contributing factor.

(The PS3 & PS4 were top-notch BD Players, but the PS2 was a subpar DVD player compared to other contemporary models, so the PlayStation's capability as a all-around media device has always been hit or miss.)

FreakyFilmFan4ever wrote:compression stuff

Thank you for this detailed explanation of the issue!

No prob! I was worried that I'd have to do something dramatic to get a good 4K version with English subs, but the GKIDS 4K release at least resolves that issue. I guess the only thing that could resolve the issues with the regular Blu-ray would be to make two copies of the disc, one with the dub, and the other with the dub. But a lot of these big-name releases have their contracts negotiated to hell and back, and a lot of that has way more to do with packaging and the presentation of the discs than one would expect. (The box/disc arrangement must look good to the licensor.) Tossing in a whole new disc might complicate those negotiations even more, even if it's just of the same movie twice.

Also, I just remembered that neither the Japanese or English-speaking release of the 4K version of Shin Eva had HDR colors. HDR = High Dynamic Range, which refers to the dynamic range of the colors on screen. Basically, the dark colors can get even darker without losing any detail, and the bright images can get even brighter than before. This is done with the 10-bit color format native to just about all 4K discs, which have smoother, more detailed colors compared to the blockier, slightly muddier 8-bit color format of Blu-ray. (FYI, movie theaters have been operating on a minimum of a 12-bit color format since about 2002. They just can't fit that on an optical disc with today's technology.) 4K Shin Eva is still presented in 10-bit colors, so the colors still look fantastic, even without the HDR. The lack of HDR despite the 10-bit color format on the 4K version of Shin Eva wouldn't be weird if it wasn't for the fact that the Dolby Vision feature is optional on the GKIDS release, and Dolby Vision is one of the most expensive and impressive versions of HDR. So I really don't know how Dolby Vision HDR is working on a 4K disc that has no HDR. But it does work, and it does change your picture settings in real time on a scene-by scene basis, so that's really weird to me!

FreakyFilmFan4ever wrote:It doesn’t seem to have color banding issues on my setup, but my setup isn’t the same as Killer of Heroes’. I haven’t heard too many great things about the PS5 as a 4K Blu-ray player though, so that could be a contributing factor.

(The PS3 & PS4 were top-notch BD Players, but the PS2 was a subpar DVD player compared to other contemporary models, so the PlayStation's capability as a all-around media device has always been hit or miss.)

It might be the PS5 as the major deciding factor then since I also have an LG OLED (65C1PUB, not sure how that differs from your model or that it isn't just same one) and was still getting some banding issues through the 4K disc.

What I'm really getting out of all of this though is that once again English dubs ruin everything.

The Killer of Heroes wrote:It might be the PS5 as the major deciding factor then since I also have an LG OLED (65C1PUB, not sure how that differs from your model or that it isn't just same one) and was still getting some banding issues through the 4K disc.

What I'm really getting out of all of this though is that once again English dubs ruin everything.

Yeah, I literally have the exact same model TV. (65" and everything.) The 4K BD Player I have isn't the best, but it's more equipped than the PS5. I typically watch SDR video on the default "Expert Dark" setting, only changing the setting enough to completely eliminate motion smoothing. I watch HDR and Dolby Vision content with whatever setting that's automatically selected by the content I'm watching. ("HDR Cinema" and "Dolby Vision Cinema" respectively, I think.) After these settings are set for the different signals the TV receives, your TV should automatically switch back and forth between the settings depending on the signal it gets. I can already see that your TV is Dolby Vision compatible, but your PS5 isn't, so that might be effecting a lot there. Also, make sure that you're using HDMI cables with 18 GBPS (High Speed with Ethernet) or higher. (I'm using 48 GBPS HDMI, which is probably overkill, but you never know with devices these days.)

And yeah, English dubs are a hassle, one way or another.

The Killer of Heroes wrote:What I'm really getting out of all of this though is that once again English dubs ruin everything.

Literally what I said to myself as I read!

I had no idea this was a phenomenon with dual audio, but it makes sense.

I'm glad to see confirmation the 4K is fine on a robust set-up, and that there was some kind of accounting for why the BD has issues, as there are many cases of poor transfers that are just that and can't be mitigated with technical improvements on the user end.