Cowboy Bebop and IVTC

[Melanchthon]

The next anime series I buy is going to be Cowboy Bebop, but I don't know which discs to buy and since CB is one of those notorious anime sources I thought I'd try and find out what I'm dealing with before I buy it. There are three different releases I could get.

R3 (http://www.dvdasian.com/cgi-bin/dvdasian/19637.html) discs (I can find them cheaper elsewhere, but this page has more info). Apparently they're progressive, but CB is a hybrid source so I'm not sure what they're referring to. Soft telecine on the non-CG sections? Costs ~77GBP, doesn't have the English dub.

R1 (http://www.dvdpacific.com/item.asp?ID=8423) discs, bought individually. A quick search of the forums reveals that there are not one but two filters that used CB during development. That doesn't sound too promising. There are also the Remix DVDs, but I think the picture itself is no different from the original releases. Cost is ~60GBP for both of those.

Anyone have any advice?

[foxyshadis]

TFM/TDecimate has such good hybrid support that I doubt it'll be a problem to just start off with the original R1/R2j dvds. Using Telecide/Decimate could certainly be troublesome though.

[Awatef]

I worked on the CB R1s a few years ago, and I didn't notice any problems with the IVTC process.
The only thing that I think annoyed me was cross coloration... if I remember well!
Regards

[Mug Funky]

yep. lots of composite crawlies.

even the "remix" re-release has them, in spite of being allegedly remastered.

dedot or bifrost should be enough for it though.

also, the master was (i'm pretty sure) the same for the US and Japanese DVDs, so the only real decisive factor in my opinion would be extras and bitrate (those gateway scenes are hell for MPEG-2... you should see it after converting to PAL).

[Mr.Bitey]

I thaught the PAL (R4) remix's would have been a lot cleaner - still look pretty bad to me - lots of blends/juddery things. Unlike GITS SACwhich is very nice indeed :)

Bitey

[Mug Funky]

@ mr bitey:

you could've asked me...

however, the r4's are worth it for the original artwork - this is not on any other release.

it quite often happens that the best part of a DVD release can't be backed up to a DVD-R easily, unless one has a good scanner and good knowledge of paper stock and printing techniques :p

[Melanchthon]

Thanks for the advice, everyone, although it turns out that CB will have to wait due to the money I just spent on rightstuf.com's current offer (25 Geneon DVDs for $100 and free US shipping, if anyone's interested).

I'll think I'll go with the R1s.