UHD Titles Worth/Not Worth Upgrading [Archive]

[ryannichols7]

Is Indicator still releasing Carnal Knowledge? Haven’t heard anything as to this rumor in a long time. It’s considered a heavyweight title (at least in the U.S.) and seems like Studio Canal would, actually, release it rather than licensing it out to another label.

it's been confirmed numerous times, even on this very website, by Indicator staff. there was even a confirmation of a commentary recorded. I'm guessing the holdup is how it wasn't originally planned as a UHD but now will be, as a new master became available. this is probably the most likely scenario..should be worth the wait. unlike California Split, I don't see any reason for this to not come out

[MichaelB]

Is Indicator still releasing Carnal Knowledge? Haven’t heard anything as to this rumor in a long time. It’s considered a heavyweight title (at least in the U.S.) and seems like Studio Canal would, actually, release it rather than licensing it out to another label.

Indicator is still releasing Carnal Knowledge.

[nicolas]

Arrow‘s Torso UHD is a FiM encode and DV grade. Impressions like this one promise a red category title.

For fus1on: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is a blue category title as Disney crammed the film on a BD-66. People mentioned that the encode doesn’t look much better than the stream as a result. Lionsgate’s Kill is disappointing as the disc has burnt-in English subtitles for Hindu sound. Horizon: An American Saga should be red with the film having gotten a full BD-100 in case you want to add them to your list. I don’t have, nor do I plan on getting any of these, so this is just collected info from BR.com

[yoloswegmaster]

A user on the other forum posted the screencaps for the 88 Films and Eureka release of Police Story 3: Supercop, and I gotta say that the differences are quite staggering. No idea which release is more accurate and faithful to how it's originally intended to look, but I prefer the Eureka release since it has more color to it and looks more lively. Curious to know what each company used as a reference for the color-timing.

[MichaelB]

I saw it in the cinema on its original release and recall the colours being very vivid indeed.

[Finch]

No idea which is more accurate either but the Eureka looks more pleasing to me. Look at the screenshot of the woman in the black dress with flowers entering the elevator. The Eureka has deep blacks whereas the 88 image has a red tint and is brighter.

[jegharfangetmigenmyg]

The 88 Films look a bit squashed horizontally, too, doesn't it? If you look at the screenshots with faces in them.

[therewillbeblus]

I love the way my 88 Films looks in motion, and the colors definitely pop. But I don't have the Eureka to compare, maybe it's even better

[nicolas]

Nova Media’s 4K UHD of Blue Is the Warmest Color is a disappointing AI upscale with increased color saturation, occasional HDR highlight clipping, traces of noise reduction and finally raised gamma levels which result in milky black levels. Buyers at BR claim it’s tastefully done but these caps look terrible and just a notch below Avatar.

Finch, I also noticed The Straight Story (Studiocanal) is missing on your list and should be in the red tier. Thanks!

[Fus1on]

Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1 (WB) (Added to Reference)
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (Disney) (Added to Solid)
Kill (Lionsgate) (Added to Disappointing)

[yoloswegmaster]

Kill (Lionsgate) (Added to Disappointing)

Damn, I was thinking about picking this up. What's wrong with it?

[nicolas]

Kill (Lionsgate) (Added to Disappointing)

Damn, I was thinking about picking this up. What's wrong with it?

The UHD omits HDR altogether and has burnt-in English subs. This isn’t the first Lionsgate SDR UHD of a contemporary title with the other recent one being Boy Kills World. Picture quality is probably still good but the burnt-in subs are ridiculous.

[yoloswegmaster]

The HDR omission isn't as big of a deal to me (especially if it wasn't meant to be on there). I'm also interested in getting the 4K since I remember image at the theater that I went looking a bit too dark and murky for my taste, so I want to see if the home viewing will give me a different viewing. The burnt-in subs make no sense though and I fail to see why Lionsgate would choose to go that route.

[kekid]

Any opinions on the Italian 4K of The Conformist ?. Are there English subs and are they done well?

I am watching the 4Kult's 4K UHD of The Conformist, and it is excellent. The English subs are done well too.

I received the Italian 4K UHD of Il Conformista from Orbit. The set has a 4K UHD and a Blu Ray.
When I trued to play the 4K disc, the disc would not play, telling me it is region B locked.
This surprised me, because 4K UHD's are supposed to be region-free.
I reset the region code on my player to B, and the disc played successfully.
This made me wonder if that disc was really 4K UHD or simply a Blu Ray with a wrong label.
I have let Orbit know of this experience.
Is there a way that I could determine if the disc is truly 4K UHD?
Has anyone else experienced this problem with this set?
Thank you.

[tenia]

A few UHDs are region locked either by mistake or wilfully, as there still are ways to "geoblock" them despite them, indeed, supposedly not being so. They are true UHDs, though.
I seem to recall it's done through using BD-J and coding the region just like on a BD.

[nicolas]

The Chronicles of Riddick (Arrow) is a red category disc. Very good encode by Engine House confirmed by GeoffD / BR without the Desperado chroma issues. The new Atmos is also apparently superb.

Bringing Out the Dead is also red and is described as a flawless release. (I should have my copy on Friday and will verify but haven’t read anything negative in the slightest).

Shout’s The Strangers is red category with strong improvements to the old BDs in color and detail. Particularly HDR is described to be brilliant. Not enough info yet on The Stepfather but this is probably just solid as someone mentioned that the audio isn’t as remarkable.

Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip also looks like a top-tier disc. The screenshots on BR are very beautifully detailed and colorful.

For fus1on: Screenshots of Wind River were uploaded at BR and they look solid for the blue category! Good improvement to the BD PQ wise and they also upgraded the audio to Atmos.

[nicolas]

Little Buddha’s 4K Blu-ray (France) is unbelievable. Storaro re-framed the film to 2.00 and heavily altered the colors. See here. I added the release to the disappointing column of the international section. To see that this isn’t an Eclair or Ritrovata mess-up and directly sanctioned by Storaro makes it even more terrible.

[tenia]

It seems the movie hasn't been in 2.35 since its 90s DVD. The previous French BD was 2.00, I suppose other HD releases also were, and this one still is. I thought Storaro retrieved its common sense regarding cropping to 2.00 after the fact, I just guess he never had but the projects always had someone else along him to prevent having his hands free.

Also, select shots are weird looking, with the grain looking electronic and slightly frozen, like you'd get when tinkering a bit too much with sharpening.

I can't say for the colors, they seemed not that far off from the caps I saw from the previous BD, but they do look very flashy, the golden segments being extremely saturated and bright. EDIT : yeah, the new grading seems bonkers, especially with the new blue filter and all the changes.

In any case, it symbolises, I suppose, why restorations' commissionners are steering clear from Storaro as much as they can.

[nicolas]

David Mackenzie replied to my question at BR about the encode of The Chronicles of Riddick and he actually did the encodes of all discs in the set. The mentioning of Engine House is (another) Arrow printing error in the booklet.

He also encoded 88 Film's Project A 1 & 2 set and Chen lung, who went above and beyond for this set, posted technical details on this page. Extensive efforts have been made with the audio as well. Clearly a fantastic release.

Bringing Out the Dead should be moved to the solid category as it does feature the occasional spotty highlight encoding in HDR10 after all as confirmed by more knowledgeable BR members.

Criterion's Happiness has disappointing audio. They put the DVD's audio into a lossless container and applied extra filtering to it. No info yet whether this is an error or Criterion got busted but I thought I'd mention it maybe for Chris to put into his eventual review.

[therewillbeblus]

Bringing Out the Dead should be moved to the solid category as it does feature the occasional spotty highlight encoding in HDR10 after all as confirmed by more knowledgeable BR members.

If played in DV, does this correct the issue? (i.e. is it Red if your player supports DV?)

[nicolas]

Bringing Out the Dead should be moved to the solid category as it does feature the occasional spotty highlight encoding in HDR10 after all as confirmed by more knowledgeable BR members.

If played in DV, does this correct the issue? (i.e. is it Red if your player supports DV?)

Can't say that yet as the BR.com people weren't as precise in that regard. I'll have my copy tomorrow (wisely pre-ordered from Amazon this once) and will check. I hope that it'll be an improvement but I'm not expecting anything night-and-day as the base HDR10 layer has to be encoded better in the first place. I don't think the screenshots that were shared look bad though as the film looks quite dark to me and, as with Kino, this is beneficial for compression.

Another thing someone mentioned is that the UHD only has the new Atmos remix and the BD 5.1., which may be a dealbreaker for some.

[cdnchris]

Criterion's Happiness has disappointing audio. They put the DVDs audio into a lossless container and applied extra filtering to it. No info yet whether this is an error or Criterion got busted but I thought I'd mention it maybe for Chris to put into his eventual review.

Yeah, the audio isn't great, so that might explain it. I was putting it to source, but hadn't even compared it to the DVD.

[cinemaniac]

I’ll be posting tone-mapped HDR10 vs. DV/FEL caps on BR.com as soon as I receive mine. However, fkid might upload PQ screenshots comparing them before then.

[MichaelB]

David Mackenzie replied to my question at BR about the encode of The Chronicles of Riddick and he actually did the encodes of all discs in the set. The mentioning of Engine House is (another) Arrow printing error in the booklet.

It may not have been a printing error as such - booklets typically go to press some time before discs, and the information may have been correct at the time.

For example, I'm listed as the QC inspector on Arrow's original 2013 BD of Cinema Paradiso, which was certainly the plan, but in the event I got bogged down on another project and someone else took over. And I'm listed as the Technical Producer of Indicator's The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings, a film I haven't seen to this day - again, I was supposed to oversee it but in the event there were no problems with the supplied materials so my involvement wasn't needed.

[nicolas]

David Mackenzie replied to my question at BR about the encode of The Chronicles of Riddick and he actually did the encodes of all discs in the set. The mentioning of Engine House is (another) Arrow printing error in the booklet.

It may not have been a printing error as such - booklets typically go to press some time before discs, and the information may have been correct at the time.

For example, I'm listed as the QC inspector on Arrow's original 2013 BD of Cinema Paradiso, which was certainly the plan, but in the event I got bogged down on another project and someone else took over. And I'm listed as the Technical Producer of Indicator's The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings, a film I haven't seen to this day - again, I was supposed to oversee it but in the event there were no problems with the supplied materials so my involvement wasn't needed.

Thank you for that! Your perspective "from the trenches" is always interesting and learning that booklets are usually printed earlier was certainly new to me.
It is understandable as they're releasing the film simultaneously in the UK and US, which probably takes even more time off their schedule once the release is announced.