Thanks!

Can someone upload the original discs, please?

Here's to hoping for Ultimate Muscle BD

Could you please encode Macross 7 (https://anidb.net/anime/442) ? It seems that there is no HEVC coding available on the internet.

https://anidb.net/anime/2130

@Shvoreps, if you have around 173 gigs of storage and fast enough internet (and access to private trackers), then the original BDMVs (USBD) are out there. Prolly never will be uploaded here to Nyaa though. Just saying.

Not sure if it's the questionable downscale to 720p, or the way this Blu-ray was authored by Discotek Media in the first place, but this objectively looks worse than both the QTEC upscale and the dubbed version from Discotek media themselves. I mean, it's painfully obvious that unlike QTEC, Discotek chose not to redo the OP and EDs, for instance, but I am beginning to question if the downscale and mini encode also contribute to it looking like that (basically garbage spit out by Waifu2x at worst, a fan upscale using ESRGAN at best). Either way, super glad I saved my money and chose to buy only the dubbed Blu-rays, as opposed to both subbed and dubbed, but you didn't do a very good job either. This is a nope from me, chief.

This should be in the “Anime - English-translated” category, because the subtitles are included. --- @thecharioteermode Yeah no. It is indeed a pity that the credits/lyrics aren’t remade here, but everything else, including the opening visuals, is better than ever before: https://slow.pics/c/cFg3KZ5m. I’ve included waifu2x and several random ESRGAN models from OpenModelDB for your pleasure. (Frames were chosen to match https://compare.bakashots.me/compare.php?setId=5150 plus a couple more. I don’t have raws of these discs, and I’m not on whatever tracker is hoarding them, unfortunately, so Discotek Japanese is represented by this torrent. All other screenshots come from raw disc dumps, although I’m not sure which particular version the DVD is.) Both of Discotek’s releases are much better than the QTEC one most of the time, but the Japanese version is even better than the dubbed one. It consistently retains _even_ more detail (and that’s despite the extra filtering and encoding applied by GOA!) and has less of that plasticky feel. The light pole in #6 retains most of the shading that’s meant to make it look round for once! To be fair, the dub does have darker contour lines, which some people may like, but quite a few of them seem to be made up, as the Japanese versions don’t have those lines at all, or go in wrong directions, connecting objects that should stay separate and dividing objects that should stay whole. Another drawback is that Discotek’s Japanese version seems to go overboard with grain/texture in some wider areas that seem like they really should be flat, but I think the additional significant detail more than makes up for it. The one frame where the QTEC actually manages to beat everyone else is #4, where it has distinct eye whites while the other BDs (and ESRGAN) blur them with surrounding skin. For Discotek Japanese, this may or may not be due to GOA’s filtering.

It’s obvious that weaker upscalers like waifu2x and nnedi3 are unable to compete; and those are already better than what most people would see when playing back the DVDs directly. As for ESRGAN, some frames do look nice, but the models show inconsistent results (the good frames come from different models, and most are meh), and they fail miserably on other frames, such as the small (distant) faces in #4 where they decide to erase all facial features as if they were noise. It might be possible to devise a model that fares better or combine multiple models by hand, but at that point, how is this different from what the company could be expected to do? It’s not like their upscaler is literal magic; it’s gotta be a combination of tech and effort. As a cherry on top, this release’s RGB colours and aspect ratio actually match the DVD, unlike the other two BDs (assuming that one plays the DVD on an actual 2000-era analogue TV where 4:3 refers to the NTSC active picture area). Except that the RGB gamut on Japanese TVs was probably different back then, oh well. FWIW none of the lot match the DVD’s colours if I attempt to correct for the gamut.

I'm surprised this is the only encode of Discotek's release up on the site after all of this time. Thanks for the upload. Needs seeding though.