Macross DYRL: DVD vs VCD

First created on 7th Jul 2003. 31st Jul 2003: use CSS. 7th May 2004: use CSS for most elements.

visits since 7th Jul 2003

Note: this page may take some time to load due to its size (393 kB).

Macross: Do You Remember Love, or in Japanese, Macross Ai Oboete Imasuka.

This page compares a movie in two formats: DVD and VCD. This complements the live-action movie comparison of DVD and VCD. You can find that article somewhere on my website. :-) The real intention is to compare this against the bootleg version. There is more than one version, and one of them is supposedly as good as the R2. Well, we will see when I get my hands on it. *grin*

I got the R2 in 2001 for 8500 Yen (~US$70). Today (Jul 2003), it costs 7800 Yen (US$65). Getting better every day! However, a bootleg version retails for only S$20 (US$11) locally.

Does the R2 live up to its Perfect Edition moniker? Almost. It blew me away when I saw it projected -- the way it is meant to be seen! However, it is interlaced, has a huge overscan and is soft in some parts. The DVD was released in Aug 1999, so maybe they didn't expect people to have progressive displays then.

Only some of the images are loaded to save loading time. Click on the links to show the other images. You need Javascript for the clicks to work.

Time	R2 DVD		VCD (actual size)		Time
0:02:04		Details.		Eng Alt	Chap 1 0:01:54
0:02:21		More details.		Eng Alt	Chap 1 0:02:11
0:06:52		Start of a space battle. Looking good.		Eng Alt	Chap 2 0:00:30
0:09:26		The VF-1A (Strike). VCD looks decent when the scene can be encoded properly.		Eng Alt	Chap 2 0:03:05
0:12:23		No blocking in fast moving scenes. The required bitrate often exceeds the VCD bitrate and something has to go.		Eng Alt	Chap 2 0:06:02
0:30:05		The start of a very lighthearted escapade. See into the shadows.		Eng Alt	Chap 5 0:00:09
0:39:16		Our heros in a "fish tank".		Eng Alt	Chap 6 0:04:29
0:39:51		You can still see their eyes!		Eng Alt	Chap 6 0:05:06
1:12:40		You can see the details on the city.		Eng Alt
1:12:42		Yamato has released their 1/48 VF-1 valkyries. Have you bought yours? :-)		Eng Alt
1:12:44		The R2 is slightly dusty here.		Eng Alt
1:37:03		Minmay realized it is game over for her.		Eng Alt	Disc 2 Chap 6 0:03:53
1:37:15		Unlike the tv series, I really empathize with Minmay here. Some combing.		Eng Alt	Disc 2 Chap 6 0:04:05
1:37:56		There is a ghost image of Minmay fading out. Can you see it?		Eng Alt	Disc 2 Chap 7 0:00:14
1:38:07		The DVD is not progressive, so if you play in weave mode, you will see combing effects.		Eng Alt	Disc 2 Chap 7 0:00:25
1:40:45		I feel like a Zentradi when listening to DYRL. I can't move!		Eng Alt	Disc 2 Chap 7 0:03:07

Weave vs Bob

Weave	Bob
		Bob is softer, but has no combing.

PowerDVD 4.0 is used; no hardware acceleration; weave mode; original video profile.

For the VCD images, the black borders are cropped off. The DVD images are resized in PS (using bicubic interpolation) from 720 x 480 to 854 x 480. This is to restore the proper aspect ratio. The original files are not available on this webpage. No sharpening is done. The images are converted from BMP to JPEG (quality 9) using Photoshop 6.0.

Due to problems playing the VCD directly, I set PowerDVD 4 to play the media files on the VCD. Surprisingly, in this mode, the captured images have the original 352 x 240 size, not the extrapolated 720 x 540 when I play the VCD directly.

DYRL and I

I first saw DRYL at an anime club's film fest in 1995. It re-introduced anime for me. What's more, I like this version of the Macross story more than the tv series. I knew I just have to have this, the day when it becomes available.

About the VCD: this is a bootleg VCD I picked up back in 1997 (or so) for RM10 (~US$2.60) or so. This VCD used to be unplayable on software players -- even some standalone players cannot play it -- due to mastering errors, perhaps. However, modern software players can play it without any problems.

I have another version of the DYRL VCD, with hardcoded Chinese subtitles. That is the one I actually wanted to compare with, but I left it in office, so it is now the "Alt" version. I paid S$40 (US$23) for two burned CDRs in 1996. I remembered paying separately to get a color photocopy of the covers! :-P Such was the state of anime in Singapore in 1996. The discs wouldn't play on my (old) Sony 4x CD-ROM drive, so the shop owner exchanged them with the original CD-ROMs for me! (Good service! :-)

US$23 does not sound much, until you realize bootleg movie VCDs go for RM20 (US$5.30). ;-) The VCD prices kept dropping till RM5, and then bootleg DVDs took over.

I once paid S$20 for a copied VHS of DYRL. This should be in 1995. Once upon a time, there were no anime VCDs in Singapore. :-P