You Are Under Arrest (R2)

First created on 12th Apr 2003. 17th Aug 2003: use CSS. 3rd Jan 2004: use CSS for most elements.

visits since 12th Apr 2003

I was very disappointed when I got my R2 You Are Under Arrest (YUA). Its image quality is very low: it is very soft, and yet has strong edge enhancement. It was very far from what I expected of an R2 DVD.

I captured a few screenshots for illustration. I chose episode 5, the first in the TV series. The first four episodes are the OVA, so they are bound to be better. In any case, I haven't bought it! :-)

At that time, poor video quality or not, there was no R1 release, so there was no other choice. I decided that YUA would not be released in R1, so I continued to buy the R2. Looks like I need a new fortune-teller! *grin*

Soft

Vol 1, ep 5; 0:01:34

I don't have to tell you how soft this is.

Edge enhancement

Vol 1, ep 5; 0:01:38

The edge enhancement is very distracting.

Field blending

Vol 1, ep 5; 0:01:39

This is due to the way software DVD players blend two fields when playing interlaced video. Instead of displaying the fields at 60 Hz, they blend two fields into one frame and display at 30 Hz. Shouldn't matter except blending causes the video to be much softer, and jittering worsens it (makes the video even softer from time to time; the change in softness is distracting).

These images are captured using PowerDVD 4.0. No hardware acceleration is used. Bob mode is used, as the video is encoded as interlaced. No resizing or sharpening is done. They are converted from BMP to JPEG (quality 8) using Photoshop 6.0.