I'm well aware of what upscaled is etc, I used to be an encoder for some speedsub group (which got nothing done) and I'd see plenty of station upscaled .ts files.

I just dislike when people think the "quality" comes from the files being 720p.
The only reason I stick to DB, is because I re-encode Bleach to <100mb files for some other site and DB are what the downloaders have come to expect.

Frankly, I wasn't expecting a reply when I initially sent you this message, I was merely trying to get the facts straight because DB has been using "SD source" and "upscaling" as an excuse to bash on other groups, and trash talk people down. I was surprise that there were actually people who are open to discussion. Most people would just repeat themselves over-and-over again like a dumb ass! So you've proven me wrong, and kinda made my day!

Below is the RAW of 248. It'd show you what an HD capture (from HDTV) actually looks like, though the video source used at the station was SD (hence called an upscale). BTW, an upscale is a video source that is less than 720p, it does NOT necessary mean an upscale from 480p (although most of the time that was true, because DVD sources were used).

http://jumbofiles.com/1sy65km75wy4/[Leopard-Raws]_Bleach_-_248_RAW_(1280x720_x264_AAC).part1.rar
http://jumbofiles.com/ng6tcywwjje0/[Leopard-Raws]_Bleach_-_248_RAW_(1280x720_x264_AAC).part2.rar
http://jumbofiles.com/1d5hga4iookz/[Leopard-Raws]_Bleach_-_248_RAW_(1280x720_x264_AAC).part3.rar

This should wrap up our tiny discussion, enjoy you day! Bye.

Well, to remove the element of karaoke which can chew up bitrate, I cut off the OP/ED to see how large the actual episode content is, and it was about 123MB.
So I did the same with Anime-Link's episode, resized it to 480p, hardsubbed the subs and used DBs low settings.

Anime-Link's version did come out slightly better, so they might actually use a better quality raw. They need to work on avoiding their interlacing artifacts though, dunno about ELEMENT.

Well, I'm not so sure about that...

Personally, I do more xvid encoding than h264 encoding, and I always use the highest quality setting for xvid, and average quality preset from h264 (to save a little time). Of the h264 encoding that I have done, I never have any problem with video quality if I choose a optimum bitrate. For a video resolution of 848x480, the optimum bitrate is 1000kbps (from my experience). I think DB's bitrate is about 1000kbps too. So DB's lousy video couldn't be due to the settings (h264 quality presets), right?

Dattebayo uses really, really low settings to encode their episodes.
Most encoding programs use higher settings by default.
If you take ELEMENTs episode, and turn all the settings down to basic, it won't look much better than Dattebayo's even without hardsubs and karaoke.

Bleach 249 Comment:

You're wrong. The main reason why the other fansub has better quality is because they use a better RAW. You can prove that youself by re-encoding ELEMENT's releases to 170MB!

In fact, I have done that with one of the RAW episode and contacted DB, but the correspondent told me that it was an unfair comparison because the RAW I re-encoded didn't have subtitles and karaoke.

Obviously, like you, he don't have much knowledge in video encoding, but he thinks he is qualified enough to be appointed as DB email correspondent or spoke person!