Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind Blu-ray Release - Page 5

If Disney really doesn't want my money, they can keep holding back on Princess Mononoke. Although that depends on a putative JP release, I don't believe that movie has gone through the restoration and remastering process for an HD archival/release at Ghibli yet.

All of the Ghibli films have actually already been transferred to HD, but this was ages ago and the existing masters are rubbish across the board.

Judging by Nausicaa and Laputa they will be re-transferring all of them, thankfully, so I don't think they're holding anything back as much as simply taking their time and spacing the releases out.

So my knowledge about these techniques is pretty limited, but from what I understand nausicaa and the earlier ghibli films had their cels filmed on 35 mm or whatever, and this is the source to make new masters. The original animation cels are long gone. The newer films use computers to cut together the cels into a digital master, right? I'm just wondering if anyone knows at what point they started to use computer... I assume besides Ponyo it would be maybe just howl and spirited away?

Everything from 1999 onward, starting with My Neighbors The Yamadas would be digitally animated. That includes The Cat's Return and Tales from Earthsea, too (not that anyone cares. )

They seem to be releasing them in chronological order, so it could be a while. I really hope they announce more of them soon because Princess Mononoke is my favorite as well. I don't care, I'll pay the exorbitant Japanese pricing and get expedited shipping on that one.

As I understand it, the entire Ghibli library was sent to Panasonic Hollywood Labs for HD mastering after Miyazaki saw how well they treated Ponyo.

Regarding Princess Mononoke: I watched Nausicaa with a friend (who loved it) and went into the extras to watch other Ghibli trailors. There was an icon indicating Princess Mononoke, but could not be activated. Has anyone had any sucess with this? The reason I ask this is that Princess Mononoke was released through Miramax and not Disney. At the time Miramax was associated with Disney. They soon parted ways. I cannot recall who releases Miramax films now on blu-ray, but is PM still with Miramax or Disney? Comments please? Thank you.

Review of the UK Laputa.

Seems Optimum are intent on continuing their DNR shenanigans of the DVD era for the Ghibli library on Blu-ray as well.

UK Left. JP Right.

What's weird is that the Japanese version appears to have Dirt & Scratch Removal errors whereas the British version doesn't. Check out the lines around the guys at the top left in the background.

Curious. Do you think the unbroken outline on the guy in the background via the Optimum transfer is merely DVNR pasting it back in from surrounding frames?

It certainly could be that the JP release has additional scratch repair, but with the JP transfer having been released some time before the UK release I can only imagine Optimum would have gotten whatever 'final' master Ghibli had prepared for it.

I don't think so. That would be some incredibly heavy temporal averaging.

Take a look at the "white swishes" on the grass below them -- especially on the lower left. The DNR version removes about half of the image detail in the UK release.

Someone please outlaw DNR. Please.

Pre-order cancelled. Hope the US release is an improvement and region free!

According to Ghibliwiki, Whisper of The Heart will be released on Blu-ray on July 20, in Japan. No word on UK or US release.

YAY!

I lost my entire Ghibli collection in my house fire a month ago so these blu-ray releases can't come soon enough.

Cool!

Does anyone know how the US disney blu-ray Ghiblis hold up to their Japanese releases Picture-wise? Are they basically comparable barring title/credits changes?

The consensus is they're basically comparable despite the somewhat lower video bitrate.

Thanks svenge, god I hate how strong the Yen is right now!

It really is crazy to think that to own the entire Ghibli range on Japanese BD (when they're all out) you're probably going looking at a total expenditure of over £800/$1200! Why can't korea get their Blu-ray market going!

Hong Kong releases are official but are sub only. (Japanese releases have the English dub included) they are a fair amount cheaper as well. (check playasia to get an idea of pricing)

Is it IVL handling those releases though? I was looking at them but I'm a bit skeptical as to how they may have been handled/compressed. IIRC wasn't Ponyo 1080i?

Actually redid the math, and at Y6800 a title it would be over £1000/$1600 to own the full collection once it's out!

Ponyo wasn't handled well by IVL, but all the other releases to date have been excellent. The one IVL release that you should strongly consider is Laputa. It's been shown that the US release coming out on May 22 is dub-titled (i.e. it passes off the adapted dub script as the literal translation to the Japanese audio track), but the HK BD release has the exact same 1080p @ 33 mbps video encode and lossless Japanese DTS-HD MA audio as the expensive JP BD release, along with proper literal subtitles. The only thing it lacks is an English dub (it has Mandarin and Cantonese ones instead), but I'm a sub-watcher so it's no big deal for me. Here's a breakdown of the various releases:

JP: English dub, literal English subtitles, 1080p @ 33 mbps video w/o DNR, region-free.
HK: No English dub, literal English subtitles, 1080p @ 33 mbps video w/o DNR, Region-"A" locked.
UK: English dub, literal English subtitles, 1080p @ 26 mbps video w/ DNR, Region-"B" locked.
US: English dub, inaccurate dub-titles, 1080p @ 24 mbps video w/o DNR, Region-"A" locked.