Thursday, October 14, 2010

交響詩篇エウレカセブン ポケットが虹でいっぱい Eureka 7 the Movie Pocketful of Rainbows – BD-Live experience report

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So in my previous post, I’ve mentioned that this Blu-ray Disc is the first Japanese domestic released title that supports BD-Live. The disc is released by Bandai under their premium label Honneamise. So how’s the experience different from the previous US Hollywood based BD-Live? Here is the report. This post also touches upon the menu, etc, with a focus on the BD-Live features, I guess. There are two discs in the limited edition, I’ll talk about mainly disc1 which has the BD-Live on it; disc2 is just a Bonus disc which I don’t have lots of stuff to say… For the BD-Live content, I’ll put the screenshots along with disc2, you’ll see a reason why I go for this order in the end…
So here’s the first disc:
 
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Being BD-Live enabled makes this is a BD-J title immediately:
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It gave a dts-HD MA trailer, which is the same one you see on youtube:

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Download this demo:

http://cid-6e8f6dc16096cb25.skydrive.live.com/embedrowdetail.aspx/Eureka7BD/dts-HDMAdemo.part1.rar http://cid-6e8f6dc16096cb25.skydrive.live.com/embedrowdetail.aspx/Eureka7BD/dts-HDMAdemo.part2.rar

Studio Bones logo:

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The menu is effective and intuitive, nothing too special though:

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Except the chapter selection could be improved a little. Besides it, the menu shows poorly in powerDVD, text is barely visible; while it shows fine in TMT3.

The disc also has title menu, which enables to view a trailer, the only extra feature on this disc besides BD-Live:

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The following are the actual screenshots for preview, for original 1920*1080 size, more available at the end:

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These are from the special feature:

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I think the video quality is OK, especially those newly drawn ones. SONY’s SBMV technology also helps keep the bandings away.
Move on to the second disc:
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The bonus disc is a very basic disc with title menu only, no pop up menu. The “Eureka Seven resonance” is THE feature which lasts for a good 50 minutes.

 

It is a making of feature which shows director and seiyuu commentary, etc:

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The narrator is Sakiko Tamagawa, who also voices Natsumi in You’re under arrest and Tachikoma’s in Ghost in the Shell.
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The other features are just two TV spots:

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BD-Live exclusive report:
First, using US IP seems not being able to connect to the Bandai server. So I have to find a Japanese proxy which worked on my first try. Here are my settings under TMT3:

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PowerDVD doesn’t have this proxy server feature, so it really made me more appreciate to all the features TMT3 has provided. The only thing it let down is its playback quality is so shitty…

 

The BD-Live main menu:

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The BD-Live is quite simple compared to US BD-Live, it doesn’t require any registration. The contents are limited to downloads only.
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When connected to Bandai server, a “currently reading data” message box will pop up. It’s the only indication that you’ll know for sure if you have connected or not. The lower left corner saying “connecting” doesn’t tell you anything. The worst case is “connection failed”, which you’ll only see “My download” and “Main menu” buttons are available.
The special feature menu currently has three videos for download:
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Once downloaded, the videos are stored permanently on storage space unless you delete it via the menu. The folder structure is in dos 8.3 format, therefore the video is *.mts format. The video is NOT AACS encrypted, so that you can just copy out and play it with any players of your choice. I actually find that if you play in TMT3, the video looks weird, almost has a thing layer covering the video, while playing it with MPC-HC is fine… This is quite different from US BD-Live, where they only streaming the content in real time (thus you need really good connection speed), once the video is over, the content immediately gets deleted. Hollywood studios are scared to death to give you any chance of pirating their stuff, but in reality, their stuff is always the first to get distributed online asides from 0day software… And being streaming contents, you get the idea how crappy the video quality could go… Also being downloadable, Bandai made their effort in providing HD quality video, everything is in HD with large file size, the actual quality is also acceptable to call it HD.
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The content is really not too much to talk about, they basically have the footage already, but didn’t put all of them on the bonus disc. So you’ll have to download the extras to add “value” to your purchased disc…
These are the actual screenshots from BD-Live:

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These are the screenshots from the Bonus disc:

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Obviously they are shot at the same time just looking at the background and people’s cloth, makeup…

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The above stage appearance footage is after the initial screening, which is also a continuation from the Bonus disc.
So one new content  will be added on 07/24 (Friday):

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The above stage appearance is actually something new.

After downloading, you can watch the video in “My download” section:

 

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Information section is just Bandai’s trailer, currently has four trailers, both HD quality and SD quality are provided:

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Shin-Mazinger trailer:

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FAQ is just some generic information regarding BD-Live stuff:

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So to summarize the BD-Live, while I appreciate the ease of use compared to US BD-Live, I think it would be much better to just put whatever they have on the disc instead of going so much trouble downloading afterwards since these footages are obviously already existed, intentionally left out for BD-Live.

BDInfo report:

Disc Title:     PSALMS_OF_PLANETS_PCL
Disc Size:      37,604,344,726 bytes
Protection:     AACS
BD-Java:        Yes
BDInfo:         0.5.2

Total   Video                                            
Title                                                           Codec   Length  Movie Size      Disc Size       Bitrate Bitrate Main Audio Track                          Secondary Audio Track
-----                                                           ------  ------- --------------  --------------  ------- ------- ------------------                        ---------------------
00011.MPLS                                                      AVC     1:55:46 36,532,021,248  37,604,344,726  42.07   33.72   DTS-HD Master 5.1 3943Kbps (48kHz/24-bit) LPCM 2.0 2304Kbps (48kHz/24-bit)

DISC INFO:

Disc Title:     PSALMS_OF_PLANETS_PCL
Disc Size:      37,604,344,726 bytes
Protection:     AACS
BD-Java:        Yes
BDInfo:         0.5.2

PLAYLIST REPORT:

Name:                   00011.MPLS
Size:                   36,532,021,248 bytes
Length:                 1:55:46 (h:m:s)
Total Bitrate:          42.07 Mbps
Description:

QUICK SUMMARY:

Disc Title: PSALMS_OF_PLANETS_PCL
Disc Size: 37,604,344,726 bytes
Protection: AACS
BD-Java: Yes
Playlist: 00011.MPLS
Size: 36,532,021,248 bytes
Length: 1:55:46
Total Bitrate: 42.07 Mbps
Video: MPEG-4 AVC Video / 33721 kbps / 1080p / 23.976 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1
Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio / Japanese / 3943 kbps / 5.1 / 48 kHz / 3943 kbps / 24-bit (DTS Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 24-bit)
Audio: LPCM Audio / Japanese / 2304 kbps / 2.0 / 48 kHz / 2304 kbps / 24-bit

Full report:

http://cid-6e8f6dc16096cb25.skydrive.live.com/embedrowdetail.aspx/Eureka7BD/Eureka7movieBDdisc1BDInfo.txt

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Lastly, jacket and label scans (jpeg 2 parts) [there’s no booklet (40P) and storyboards (~400P*2) at the moment]:
 
 
All screenshots, menus are captured in TMT3, features are captured in MPC-HC:

 

 

 

 

 

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