Oldfan said:
I discovered another DVD set of this series I didn’t know existed. It was released last year I believe in Japan, by Bandai:
http://www.play-asia.com/x-bomber-aka-star-fleet-also-bomber-x-remaster-dvd-box-paOS-13-49-en-70-66ld.html
http://sgcafe.com/2012/11/1980s-sf-puppet-show-x-bomber-remastered-on-dvd/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
I’ve seen a rip of one of those remastered episodes and they aren’t what I would call remastered - apparently there were some serious issues with how they handled motion - I believe they used field blending from what I’ve read. The color leans heavily towards green. There does seem to be some good detail though. The French remasters look far better from some rips I’ve seen, though they tend to be darker too - maybe a tad too dark - a lot of the shadow detail is hidden in blacks in the French remaster, but clearly visible in the Bandai remasters. I still believe the French DVDs look the best - they certainly have the best color. I’ve only seen rips of the French DVDs, not full DVDs, so it’s hard to compare detail levels. The motion seems excellent in the rips I’ve seen.
I’d be watching these on a 46" screen though and I fear rips won’t hold up so well - just watching the rips I’ve seen on my 46" shows a lot of pixellation from the .avi compression. Full DVDs hold up a lot better, especially when upconverted by my player.
I was aware of such a set, and really I can say it’s not really remastered apart from them cleaning up a little bit of the footage. There was a 2004 DVD release of the Japanese series, and the quality doesn’t differ much. There’s only a couple differences; the intro is definitely remastered in the 2013 version because it’s much sharper and clean looking. They also re-edited the titles back into the episodes, they weren’t present in the 2004 version, excluding Episode 18 for whatever reason. I’m guessing they used a broadcast master for that one. I don’t know why, but the Japanese version has a very blue tone to it really. I really wonder why. Either way, the Japanese version is still better quality than the English one…
The one thing I can see that is in any real remastered quality on the 2013 DVD set is a pilot that nobody in the fan base had any idea was in existence. You can find it on YouTube or download it on xbomber.co.uk
It really depends what rips you were watching really. If it was on YouTube, then say no more, because YouTube compresses the hell out of every standard quality video. I’m using high quality mp4 rips for my project and I don’t really see anything wrong with the quality that wasn’t already on the DVD.
Here’s a screenshot I used on my Mac in fullscreen and I think it still holds up. I will be rendering the final project in mpg.
