I don’t buy much anime on DVD these days, mostly owing to the fact that much of what’s being licensed and released lately is of little interest to me. That, and I’ve gotten cheap. Still, I generally buy a disc or two per month, and when I do, I typically order online (from Deep Discount DVD… like I said, I’m cheap). I haven’t ordered anything for the past few months, however, so I’m “behind” on a few shows: Ichigo Mashimaro, Kamichu, and Ah! My Goddess.
Anyway, I found myself at Best Buy this past weekend (a rare occasion, indeed), and since it was a location I had yet to visit, I decided to check out the anime selection… and a nice selection it was! Yet, when I went looking for those discs I needed, they were nowhere to be found. A single copy of Ichigo Mashimaro Vol. 1. No Kamichu whatsoever. Every volume of Ah! My Goddess except the one I needed.
Now you know why I order online.
On the way out, however, I caught glimpse of Comic Party Revolution Vol. 1, so all was not lost. Well, except for $25. My wild spending habits aren’t the subject of this post, though…
I don’t own an HDTV monitor. Nor do I need one. My regular TV viewing consists of anime DVDs and fansubs. That’s it. So, for now, I get by just fine with my 25″ Sony SD CRT. It’s a nice TV, mind you, but a stroll through the TV aisles at Best Buy reminded me that it’s an endangered species. Now, I’m not in the market for a new TV… not yet, at least. When that day comes, however, I fear I’ll have little choice BUT to go the HDTV route. And considering that much of my daily TV viewing comes in the form of compressed, low resolution digisubs, that concerns me.
My “fansub viewing” environment is pretty straightforward. I have a dedicated computer for fansub playback (sort of dedicated, actually… I also use it for various background tasks), and treat the TV as a secondary monitor. I don’t bother using any of my video card’s overlay modes - too much overscan, thanks to broken drivers (note to self: next time, don’t buy an ATI card) - I simply extend my desktop to the TV, drag a folder over, launch a file in Media Player Classic, go full screen, and sit back and enjoy. The results are actually quite pretty; bad encodes look good, and good encodes look spectacular.
Of course, standard definition television has a resolution of 640×480 (NTSC), so a digisub of the same resolution will (obviously) look just fine when played back on an SD set. And, of course, digisubs with larger resolutions will look even better - especially if they came from an HD source. HDTV, however, is much higher resolution. So, playing that 640×480 digisub on an HD set will require upscaling the image… and since we’re dealing with a highly compressed image to begin with… well, you get the idea. The fact that most HDTVs have screens large enough to serve dinner on would just magnify problems.
So, my question to you, my readers, is this: is anyone actually doing this? That is, is there anyone out there watching plain vanilla digisubs on an HD set? If so, are you satisfied with how it looks?
I have a “HD ready” CRT TV that I used to watch all my fansubs/videos through. Maybe because it’s CRT, I had about the same experience as you described Jeff. Although I had my computer outputting at 1024×768 to a TV that’s set to widescreen only; so things got weird there. Not like that matters to me anymore since I upgraded my computer’s main display :)
I will admit outputting any fansubs to a TV in general “improves” the image, at least in my experience. And for projectors, it’s been 50/50 based on the type of projector and how big the “screen” is. It was pretty sweet when one of my roomies in college bought (and eventually returned) a projector just for the Super Bowl; best 30 days of watching anime EVER even if the image wasn’t perfect.
I think if Zanza comments, he’ll be able to tell us a better picture… what with his new 40″ LCD HDTV and all.
I watch all my anime on a 34″ HDTV CRT connected through the component cables off of my ATI 800XL. The picture looks wonderful. I know that it could look better because I have watched the “5 Centimeter’s Per Second” trailer and it is true HDTV resolution. The trailer looks spectacular actually. Compression artifacts are not present in anything I watch unless it is a really bad conversion (Utawarerumono is guilty of this). Simoun has been the highest resolution I’ve watch so far, except for “Sumomo mo momo mo,” which is even higher res, but the show doesn’t really need to be encoded at that resolution cause the animation isn’t that great. I can’t imagine them looking better on a standard CRT.
Sorry to post again, but I realized a very important point. Anime fan subs are only going to get higher and higher resolution as time goes by. By the time you need to get a new set, everything will be true HD quality.
I watch fansubs on an HD Plasma TV, and it looks just fine. Even normal xvid’s look spectacular. So there’s no worries there.
I watch on my Infocus 4805 projector, powered with DVI. It is only 848×480, so HD stuff actually gets scaled down, but it still looks fine. Colors look very solid and nice. The only time I wish I had higher resolution is the Ergo Proxy opening. Sometimes when I watch a show I expect to be boring, I use instead my 20″ LCD monitor, and use my second monitor for web browsing.
I’m jealous of you all. I watch all my anime fansubs on my little 2 year old laptop. I believe that its a 15inch or smaller screen at 1024 resolution. I wish I had a way to watch it on the TV. It would be more comfortable but at the moment I don’t have the cash to get the hardware necessary.
And about HD, I’m not gonna really worry about it for a while considering that most of TV channels are still SD quality. Right now, HDTVs just seem a bit too expensive now.
BTW, my TV is only 13inches but its mostly for average TV viewing, which hasn’t been much since anime fansub viewing has increased.
I just got a 50″ HDTV that does 1080p. I have my computer hooked up to it via VGA cable. The only problem is that the TV only accepts up to 1280 x 720 via VGA so I only get about 41″ via my computer.
I’ve watched Sumomo, Yoake…Crescent Love, Pumpkin Scissors (HD and low-def), D.Gray Man and more so far on my new TV. I cannot really tell much of a difference between the HD and LD versions of the same sub. Either way, I think they all look great. Generally much better than how standard TV looks now via cable.
Hmm…as for me, I just watch everything on my PC monitor. Over at where I stay, the quality of the TV programming doesn’t really encourage you to buy a TV, except to get a bigger screens.
I just mainly watch my anime on my 21in screen at 1600 x 1200 resolution… although I’d seriously kill for a 50++ inch LCD or plasma.. or maybe I should just wait for those AMOLED TV’s :).
I use a 32 inch Sony Bravia LCD HD Monitor and so far everything looks good. The biggest problem though is that few fansubs are actually encoded in HD (most are at 700×400 even with shows that were actually broadcasted in HD (1280×720), in order to keep file sizes low and ease of encoding for the most part). So using an HD monitor to watch shows doesn’t provide any benefits unless the show was encoded in 1280×720 resolution.
I watch most of my fansubs just off my 20″ monitor, particulary stuff I care less about, as I tend to browse forums on the sidelines and stuff while the clip is playing :p.
I do have a normal 32″ SD Sony hooked up through TV-out to my computer, but messing with the TV-out settings as well as having to move my ass from my comfy chair to the couch for just a twenty minute thing are usually too monumental tasks for me to bother with for such a short thing :p.
When marathoning things or watching DVDs, I do tend to switch to over to the TV for that couch potato feeling - With my setup it doesn’t make size-wise that much difference anyway, since while my TV might be 10″ bigger, I also view it a good 2 meters further away than I view my monitor.
Another thing I sometimes do is to just lay down in the bed, with a good deal of pillows in the back, put a pillow on my chest for elevation&isolation and then park my laptop there and use it as a movie theatre - It may only be a 12″ screen, but when you view it from a 20-30 cm distance, the size is actually quite respectable, and you can’t really get a more sleazy-comfy viewing position than that :p.
A big point for normal SD TVs is though that they make shitty encodes look much more appealing with the blurring effect. I used to watch those old 320×200 (or something? 400×300?)super-blocky VHS fansub rips of Legend of the Galactic Heroes, and they were so much more pleasing to view through the smoothing effect of the TV than from the monitor.
I watch all my fansubs on a 20in LCD, at high enough resolutions that any encoding errors should be pretty evident, and I’ve yet to have any complaints. I haven’t owned an actual TV for years, due to how good TV tuner cards have gotten (one reason to get an ATi card), but we just recently got a 30in HDTV CRT I’ve been itching to try stuff out on. Only problem is it’s in a different room, and neither it nor the DVI-capable tower I’ve got all my illicit anime on are all that portable. If only my laptop had a DVI output I could answer your question.
Speaking from a purely technical standpoint, however, I know enough to say that anything that looks good on the monitor should look at least as good (if not better) on an HDTV, unless said HDTV is really big, due both to the inherent higher resolution of similarly sized monitors vs HDTVs, and the “fuzzing” quality that most TV-oriented output devices still have, despite the move to HD. Of course, you also have to take into account the type of HDTV. Projectors are going to look the best up close, due to the lack of physical pixels, while the big plasmas and LCDs, unless they’re very high resolution (and equally expensive) are going to look like ass within 5ft no matter whether you’re playing Spider-Man on Blu-Ray or FMA on RealPlayer.
Well, i watch my anime on my 24inch widescreen dell 2407 which does 1080p and then some. The HD releases look damn good and are worth it. But, there is no difference for the standard quality subs.
Encouraging responses thus far. I hadn’t considered it before, but connecting things via DVI would probably help a good bit. My fansub machine has a 17″ LCD for its primary monitor, connected via DVI, and fansubs look fairly decent on it when played at full-screen. I rarely use it for that purpose, however… I’m too used to stretching out on the couch in front of the TV. And, as Muey points out, the blurring/softening effect you get with SD CRTs can bring out the best in ugly encodes. LCDs, on the other hand, tend to bring out the worst.
As for the future of HD fansubs… I’m not sure if current compression and distribution methods can get the job done. We’re talking giant files. That, and it takes a lot of processor power to decode said files. Also, only a select number of shows air in HD in the first place. I think it’ll be a few years yet before HD fansubs are the norm.
Last year, I got up the courage (and the cash!) to buy a 32″ widescreen LCD HDTV that outputs @ 1366×768. I connect my computer to it with the DVI input. I can say that, with few exceptions, all of the fansubs I’ve watched have looked spectacular. It’s like night and day. I’ve noticed that a lot of the h264 and mkv fansubs look especially good, and fill the screen. I guess it’s because the raw was recorded off HDTV to start with. A word of caution about DVDs: Buy an “upconvert” DVD player to go with your HDTV. It upconverts the regular 480 DVD to 720 or 1080, and makes a huge difference. It’s the best $79 I’ve spent for my home entertainment system.
I have no intention to ever switch to LCD. This whole LCD hype is simply a big coup for the industry and many LCDs even have the wrong resolution for HDTV. Also selling 720p displays as “HD-Ready” is really nothing but cheating. The should b only one HDTV resolution, that is 1080p.
There a very few problems with CRTs and most of them are pretty much irrelevant for watching videos. In most regards, CRTs are vastly superior to LCDs e.g., color-depth, contrast, brightness and freedom of resolution. I never understood the point of having a “flat display” anyway. See above; the little distortion might matter for medic displays or CAD but certainly not when watching videos for entertainment. To be honest I don’t even need a big screen. If I get a neck strain from watching videos that’s not an advantage. Hell, I’ve watched fansubs encoded as crappy Real video just a few years ago. Did I enjoy those any less? I don’t think so. Sure, now I’m spoiled and wouldn’t want to watch those distorted, blurry videos but we’ve already reached a point at which fansubs often exceed DVD quality at least when it comes to the raw resolution.
Anyway, what I’ve noticed it that sub-standard video quality doesn’t bother me at all anymore after 5 minutes into it unless the show is just bad.
My setup is a Sony 30″ Widescreen HD CRT TV hooked up to my Media Center PC via a DVI to HDMI cable. The TV seems to run best at 1152×648 (don’t ask me about the weird rez, it’s just what works). I used to have my PC hooked up to a 32″ Sony TV via S-VIDEO. On my older fansubs it goes from unwatchable (anythning that was encoded in Real) to no difference (I still have a burned CD with NGE and Love Hina fansbubs that I downloaded in highschool), however on newer fansubs that are either running with better compresion software (h264 or mkv) or are just in HD there is a discernable difference in quality but not enough to justify the ridiculous premium you gotta pay for an HDTV (in the interest of full disclosure I did pick up my HDTV open-box and with a coupon from best buy). However what really made the purchase worthwile for me was that in switching from an SVIDEO connection to DVI->HDMI I no longer have to contend with the one issue that made watching fansubs on my TV a pain, subtitles getting cut off when running in overscan mode.
I’ve got a 21″ widescreen monitor that I got last year for Christmas because I’ve got a tv card installed on my tv as well as for watching anime. My bedroom is small enough that I can sit on the bed and watch tv/anime on the monitor without strain (as long as the video is full screen). I haven’t noticed any issues with good or bad encodes. I do use the monitor on VGA for the simple fact that its hooked up to a kvm switch so I can do the same with my laptop and watch much more comfortably stretched out in bed. I’ve found that if I watch something “normal” sized on the screen and surf on the sidelines, I eventually don’t even know whats going on on-screen anymore. And yes, I do tend to watch more than one show at a time, playlists are good things as are remotes and wireless headphones.
i use a modded xbox (the old one) connected via composite cable to a Sanyo Z2 projector (720p). since my xbox can’t handle h264 or some mkv for processor issues, i have a dvi cable that’s connected with my computer to view those ‘big’ files, but i rarely do it, since i actually try to find a xvid version of those series. It all looks just great and i’m really happy with My sanyo Z2 is just right for the job. Wouldn’t want a tv whatever model anymore.
I have a 15 inch CRT monitor, a 5 year old computer with 256 mb of ram, and a 13 inch SD television whose picture tube recently conked out.
I watch anime just fine.
Did I mention I’m also an aspiring graphics artist?
Just another positive comment: 27″ Samsung LCD (1366×768), VGA input, fansubs look wonderful.
Unfortunately, I was using my notebook for all my anime-watching needs (either stand-alone or plugged into the TV)… and then it died. :(
A bit late to this party, The “high definition monitor” I use presently has a screen 11′ tall x 20′ wide (dimensions approximate). It’s a ViewSonic projector run at 1280×720 that I use to run anime screenings with at the local art museum here in Fresno. And MAN it looks great.
Otherwise, at home, I’ve been thinking of getting an HD monitor, but I want one that’ll take DVI or straight VGA. I’m not a huge fan of HDMI (or more accurately, what it carries, HDCP).
On the sound front, it also bears noting that the KyoAni version of Kanon has “matrixed” surround sound which “folds” a total of four channels into a two-channel carrier. If you have Dolby Pro Logic or better capabilities in a home theatre amp (in my case, I have a Sony home theatre amp with Dolby Digital and Dolby Pro Logic at home), try giving it a go! It works quite nicely. And this is in all Kanon prints out there, raw or subbed. Furthermore, you don’t even need a digital input on your amp since Dobly Stereo is actually an ANALOG process.
Hope this helps out a little.
–Ian.