If Shout Factory does get the rights, I'm sure they'll give us best quality possible.

If you say so. Here's another example.

iTunes
http://s1.postimg.org/3kui3thfv/image.png

Other Source
http://s1.postimg.org/smx1gnnuz/image.png

It's clearer in that shot that it's just incredible pixelation, not grain.

As much as a grainy look would suit the first season or so of the series, it's something they just didn't do.

I don't think grain is on the list of priorities for on-demand streaming though. DVD/Blu-rays are a different story. :D

Shout Factory's DVDs/blu-rays are usually great quality. If Shout Factory handles the 4kids DVDs they should be done great.

Maybe we'll see the entire series on sale at Wal-Mart in a single set for $20, like with Danny Phantom, Hey Arnold, CatDog, Angry Beavers, and Rocko's Modern Life.

For that, I could live with that big ugly orange Nick logo on the front.

I seem to remember Shout Factory expressing disinterest in releasing the series back when Funimation lost the license.

Wasn't that right after Nick bought the franchise? Or was it before...?

I'm sure opinions could change after the success of the new series and the movie.

Well that sucks. :ohwell: Any other companies in mind, guys?

If Nick is really interested in distributing the 2003 series, then they'll probably do it themselves.

That'll be the day. :P

But they already have...

Only releasing Turtles Forever on DVD (and botching the US release) does not count. :lol: Unless you're talking about digital distribution (Nick.com, iTunes, etc), we're talking about DVDs.

One marathon, an iTunes release of a third of the episodes and a botched release of Turtles Forever may be less than it deserves but it's still distribution.

Hardly. Certainly not worth $10 million, even for digital distribution.

And 2 seasons is not 1/3 of 7 seasons. :P

Amazon vs DVD Rip Video Quality
 

I decided to take the plunge and purchase with some spare Amazon gift card money one episode from season 1, that being "Attack of the Mousers". I was pleasantly surprised to find that the video quality is practically the same as the previous DVD rip that I had before.

The most apparent thing about the video is that it includes the bumpers for commercial breaks. I know some people find this annoying, but personally it doesn't bother me. Also, there is no TV-Y7 FV rating on the upper left hand corner. This may be different with other episodes though, so I have to buy those later to make sure. For some reason, I feared that the credits wouldn't be in the video because they weren't on nick.com, but they are fully intact here, with the intro playing on the left side of the screen and the credits rolling on the right, along with the Mirage logo and original 4Kids logo at the end. Aside from the video cover art, no Nickelodeon branding is present.

Here's the somewhat bad news. While watching, significant artifacts appear at the bottom of the screen along with loud screeching noises from 06:36-06:38. I emailed Amazon, they refunded me, and are making sure to resolve the issue soon, so props to Amazon there. Another problem is that the list for Season 2, which I have yet to purchase, is missing the episodes "Secret Origins - Part 1", and "Big Brawl - Part 3". I also asked Amazon about this, and they assume that it's a decision from the content provider, and not a fault on their end, since both Google/YouTube and iTunes have those two episodes. I need to get back to them later about this issue.

The colors are the same, the picture looks the same, yet both versions of the video have their own very faint signs of macroblocking, pixelation, or aliasing that are noticeable if you actually take the time to pause the video, so it's nothing to fuss over. Some of it has to do with the original source from 4Kids, which is unfortunate. In some places, the video from Amazon looks better, in some places the DVD rip I have looks better, but it's barely noticeable. Also, the video from Amazon (and I believe iTunes as well) has like less than half a cm cut off on the sides of the picture, but it's no big deal.

Here's a collection of screenshots that I took to compare. The screenshot from the Amazon video is the first image you will see in a series of 2 images each. I would have taken native screenshots, but Amazon has DRM in place so you can only play the videos using Amazon's Instant Video player online and Windows Media Player or Amazon's Unbox player offline. Remember, I am comparing the Amazon version. I don't know what exactly the full iTunes version looks like, aside from the previews.

http://imgur.com/a/cWoTa

Also, some information for any videophiles out there. :D

Amazon

General
Format : Windows Media
File size : 424 MiB
Duration : 21mn 53s
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 2 707 Kbps
Maximum Overall bit rate : 6 270 Kbps
Encryption : http://www.amazon.com/gp/video/licen...uXAObEyOY40Q==
Encoded date : UTC 2015-02-19 07:02:04.672
WM/ContentDistributor : Amazon.com
Amazon/ASIN : B00UFECWMK
Amazon/Type : Content

Video
ID : 2
Format : VC-1
Format profile : Advanced@L3
Codec ID : WVC1
Codec ID/Hint : Microsoft
Description of the codec : Windows Media Video 9 Advanced Profile
Duration : 21mn 53s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 2 500 Kbps
Width : 640 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.339
Stream size : 391 MiB (92%)
Encryption : Encrypted

Audio
ID : 1
Format : WMA
Format profile : Pro
Codec ID : 162
Codec ID/Info : Windows Media Audio
Description of the codec : Windows Media Audio 10 Professional - 192 kbps, 48 kHz, 2 channel 24 bit 2-pass VBR
Duration : 21mn 53s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 192 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 24 bits
Stream size : 30.0 MiB (7%)
Encryption : Encrypted

DVD rip

General
Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : Base Media
Codec ID : isom
File size : 174 MiB
Duration : 21mn 16s
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 1 145 Kbps
Encoded date : UTC 2007-12-03 14:39:25
Tagged date : UTC 2007-12-03 14:39:25

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L5.1
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 13 frames
Codec ID : avc1
Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding
Duration : 21mn 16s
Bit rate : 942 Kbps
Maximum bit rate : 4 094 Kbps
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Original display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Standard : NTSC
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.091
Stream size : 143 MiB (82%)
Title : Video
Writing library : x264 core 57 svn-700
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=10 / deblock=1:-2:-1 / analyse=0x3:0x133 / me=umh / subme=6 / brdo=1 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / chroma_qp_offset=0 / threads=3 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / mbaff=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=1 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / wpredb=1 / bime=1 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40(pre) / rc=2pass / bitrate=942 / ratetol=1.0 / rceq='blurCplx^(1-qComp)' / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ip_ratio=1.40 / pb_ratio=1.30
Encoded date : UTC 2007-12-03 14:39:25
Tagged date : UTC 2007-12-03 14:40:02

Audio
ID : 3
Format : AAC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec
Format profile : LC
Codec ID : 40
Duration : 21mn 16s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 101 Kbps
Maximum bit rate : 108 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 15.4 MiB (9%)
Title : English
Language : English
Encoded date : UTC 2007-12-03 14:40:01
Tagged date : UTC 2007-12-03 14:40:02

Serious video quality issues from Amazon
 

So, after browsing through some of the other episodes, I found that the same artifacting problem that I experienced with "Attack of the Mousers" is also prevalent in "Search for Splinter - Part 1" and "Return of the Justice Force". Also, some of the episodes of Season 2 in particular have some serious quality issues. They are blurry and pixelated, when the rest of the episodes are quite clear and sharp. The episode "Junklantis" also freezes halfway through and stays that way for the rest of the episode.

Also, two episodes "Secret Origins - Part 1" and "Big Brawl - Part 3" are not listed. Even worse, "What a Croc!" is actually a duplicate of "City at War - Part 1". I don't believe these same problems exist on iTunes or Google Play/YouTube.

Luckily, I bought these using free gift card credits, so it's not a total loss. However, I am still very disappointed with Amazon, and I don't think I will be buying shows from them again after this debacle, so I advise anyone looking to buy these collectively to either wait a while until they fix these issues (which may never be certain without buying them, since there are no previews), or choose another source.

Thanks for analyzing those for us, The-Shredder! I almost feel like it's justice that you didn't have to pay any money for these episodes.

Given Nick's completely crappy job at handling the upcoming DVDs, I feel that it could honestly be a quality control issue on Nick's part.

Even if Amazon is the only place with those issues you mentioned above, it's more likely that the monkey-brained incompetents working for Nick gave Amazon horrible copies of the episodes, but somehow got it right for iTunes, etc.

It could be an issue on Amazon's part, but think about it: what are the chances that so many episodes of the same series could have poor quality due to an error on Amazon's part? Possible, but not likely. It's more probable that it's an issue from the source: Nickelodeon.

I can tell you one thing: Nick would never make such mistakes when dealing with their own show. They're probably so insultingly indifferent to the 4Kids series that they don't even care about distributing quality products for this show and only want to scrape as much cash out of fans' pockets as they can without exerting any effort.

I'm a little flabbergasted that the audio is 192kbps, but 24-bit at the same time. Why would they do that?

Also: I think it's a little bit pointless to include the specs for your DVDrip, since I assume you encoded it at whatever bitrate settings you prefer rather than do it through MakeMKV or something like that and have a perfect copy of what's on the DVD. Correct me if I'm wrong, though.

Truth be told, I previously got the DVD rip from another source, but intended to purchase the episodes on Amazon to get them legally, even if they aren't perfect for now. Digital distribution isn't my first choice for movies and T.V. shows, except when the physical release is either inferior or when it doesn't seem like it will get one anytime soon.

I am thinking about using VUDU in the future for such purposes. Their standard definition video quality from streaming a 2 minute preview looks a lot better than what Amazon is currently offering. Unfortunately, they don't have TMNT 2003 at the moment, but they do seem to have everything else that's TMNT.