Jagasian

NLScavenger's review is the most critical of all reviews and he is still implying it is the best release yet. I personally have compared it to the 2016 1080p Bluray and my own custom AI upscale of that Bluray to 4K. This official 2025 4K release is better than both. It isn’t perfect, but it can’t be perfect due to the analog nature of film recording of hand drawn cel animation… where the original film recording had focus issues.

I posted this tip earlier in this thread. Once the PS5 noise reduction is disabled, I can see film grain on my LG G2 OLED.

Is it me or are more stars visible in the backgrounds of the 4K release? How is that possible? Did the original film have that many stars? Often in the 4K version the stars are multiple colors, not just white.

I recently purchased the 4K Blu Ray of the 1984 Transformers movie. It is very good for people that want to preserve the original film. It is very intensely grainy in some scenes where the film has clearly degraded over the past decades. However, I will say that this 4K DYRL is not botched like, say, the Akira 4K release, which was scrubbed too aggressively. This DYRL still has visible grain. It has been lightly scrubbed, but not entirely removed.

Or just sell the raw 5K transfer and let the hardcore collectors use their AI scaler of choice. Waifu2x-Extension-GUI is a free software suite that makes it easy to create your custom AI scaled anime. There are settings for keeping the film grain, and settings for scrubbing away all grain. It can upscale, downscale, there are dozens of AI models to choose from.

I agree that it won’t happen for many years, and that above 5K the transfer is only going to capture more details of the film itself such as the grain, holes, dust, and focus issues… as opposed to capturing more details of the cels. Also, any improvement going from 4K to 5K will only be noticeable using special tools, not normal viewing. I was just pointing out that since a 5K transfer was made, they most definitely have it securely archived so that several years from now they can monetize it. The fans are so obsessed now that any minor improvement they will pay for… and that is a good thing. Just look at their 1080p transfer as a good example. They sold it twice. The first one with censorship (2012) and the second one without censorship (2016). Back to the normal programming: this 4K release is the best yet and definitely worth buying. I’ve watched it twice this weekend.

This year’s 4K was is a downscale of a 5K transfer. So once 8K media is released several years from now, I bet they offer the full 5K transfer. The difference will only be noticeable using special tools that hardcore fans use to inspect each frame. The reason they captured the film in 5K was likely to give their digital editing team a bit of flexibility to digitally clean things up in 5K so that when downscaled to 4K, their edits are subtle.

The blurry parts are due to the original film. Same goes for the film grain that is visible in this 4K release. The blurry parts are a good thing if you care about preservation of the original film look. DYRL, Akira, Transformers, and a few other 1980s animated movies are the last true fully handmade animated movies. After them, computer aided animation became common.

I did both. The PS5 supports UHD and HDR. It is convenient as a set top box for a big 4K OLED TV and slouching on a couch viewing. For a drive to rip it, I recommend this drive. It is inexpensive, external USB, and it has a firmware hack that makes it a great drive for ripping. Lossless 4K rips are gigantic.

PS5 does support DVDs, Blu Rays, and 4K Blu Rays. Pro-tip: disable PS5 4K Blu Ray noise reduction to make sure film grain is not removed by the PS5’s 4K Blu Ray player as seen in this tutorial.

My copy arrived today. I watched it and compared it to the 2016 1080p release, as well as compared it to my own custom AI upscale of that 1080p release. My AI upscale is also 4K. This official 2025 4K release is superior to both. After turning off my Blu Ray player’s denoising setting and similarly for my TV, the film grain is visible! This release is clearly not just some AI upscale. It is a real 4K transfer. Technically it was a 5K transfer that was downscaled to 4K. The 100% hand drawn cel animation on film look is fully intact. This is the definitive release of DYRL… until they put the 5K transfer on an 8K Blu Ray.