nerv bae wrote:Does anybody on the forum know how or why something like this happens? I don't know anything about how physical media is produced; why aren't the US release discs exactly as good looking as the Japanese release discs?
I've read a few things here and there over the years about transfers and how BD distributors operate ... my understanding is that it's a byproduct of the know-how and means of the release studio and associated partners. So it has to do with institutional knowledge, the thoroughness of quality control, and budget. So, same reason quality differs between any version of the same product. Whoever owns the rights over in Japan does their own version, and the filmmaking studio, in this case Khara, sends a copy of the film over to anyone who wants to do a domestic release; that studio ultimately is to blame for how they decide to encode the transfer onto a disc. In other words, it's very unlikely anything is wrong with the reference copy of the film if the Japanese BD didn't have the same issues. Gkids and whoever they partner with did something subpar in the engineering. There's any number of things it could be; regardless, any quality less than perfect is the result of something that went unnoticed, or a deliberate gamble--something minor that most people won't notice unless doing a direct comparison with a foreign BD can easily be dismissed as "who cares, who will notice?" Fixing a color banding issue can be written off as not worth the time and cost, depending on release windows or how much of both was already poured into the project, if it might end up looking good enough to the vast majority of consumers. For instance, I just perused a couple forum threads and reviews, and nothing bad has been said about the video; zero mention of color banding. One review gave the video an A+. Unfortunately, many people who spend a lot of time on home media or even write about it professionally don't actually have technical insight at all.