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tenia wrote: Sun Dec 01, 2019 7:28 pm Synpase might get burnt with Suspiria though as they've been repeatedly saying over the past years "we don't plan this or that" only to later release those.
I wouldn't be surprised Suspiria gets a non-LE UHD re-release in the near future, or at least that some customers will be waiting for one instead of buying the current LE release (which also doesnt even include the movie on BD despite its price).

In any case, you're right about the probable wait for slightly longer term figures to assess the market.

Synapse's Suspiria UHD isn't a limited edition. And, despite the high MSRP, I think it is like $35 or $36 at most etailers. A price that I think is more than fair.

dwk wrote: Sun Dec 01, 2019 8:35 pmSynapse's Suspiria UHD isn't a limited edition.

Oh, right, my bad.

dwk wrote: Sun Dec 01, 2019 8:35 pmAnd, despite the high MSRP, I think it is like $35 or $36 at most etailers. A price that I think is more than fair.

It's way more expensive than what most people are paying for the utmost majority of their BDs and again, despite that, it's not even a combo.

This is a bit of a tangential question but have any non-English language movies been released on UHD in North America by any label at this time?

HitchcockLang wrote:This is a bit of a tangential question but have any non-English language movies been released on UHD in North America by any label at this time?

Well Go released Zhang Yimou's Shadow

HitchcockLang wrote: Wed Dec 11, 2019 2:14 pm This is a bit of a tangential question but have any non-English language movies been released on UHD in North America by any label at this time?

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in 2016.

Exciting...

Pan’s Labyrinth recently got a 4K release from Universal. I haven’t watched it to compare with the Criterion, but most of my UHD experiences to date have been vastly superior to their Blu-ray equivalents. With Easy Rider coming soon, there will soon be two films in the collection with UHD releases in the US. I wonder how many more there will be by the end of 2020.

RitrovataBlue wrote: Tue Dec 17, 2019 2:38 pm Pan’s Labyrinth recently got a 4K release from Universal. I haven’t watched it to compare with the Criterion, but most of my UHD experiences to date have been vastly superior to their Blu-ray equivalents. With Easy Rider coming soon, there will soon be two films in the collection with UHD releases in the US. I wonder how many more there will be by the end of 2020.

Age of Innocence was one of the titles mentioned in the Sony UHD survey earlier this year. Probably not a lot of people voted for it but I really hope it comes to UHD.

TMDaines wrote: Tue Dec 17, 2019 2:21 pmExciting...

What is "Exciting"?

I asked Jon Mulvaney as to whether Parasite issue will include a 4K version. He was very prompt and detailed in his response. Part of it I post below:

"We understand that there's interest from the Blu-Ray collectors community for this format and it's something that our team has continued to discuss regularly, but PARASITE will not be a 4K UHD title for us at this time (nor is it currently due to be released in Region B format). It will be released on Blu-Ray (Region A) and DVD (Region 1). The full details of the release will be available as soon as it's officially announced, so keep an eye on this page for updates: I'm confident most fans will be pleased with the final version of this addition to the Collection, even though it's not 4K.

While there's more to our reasoning than this, I found the interview our technical director recently did with Home Theater Forum Podcast fairly insightful on the topic of 4K (the question comes up about 16 minutes into the episode.)"

Here is the HTF Podcast interview with Criterion’s Lee Kline, where he discusses the 4K question, from last July.

My disappointment with his answer was that he focussed on “well, what are people watching the films on?” While legitimate at some level, with the rapid improvement in technology one wants to invest in media now that will show well as the displays become more accessible. I’ve been buying 4K UHD whenever possible — even though I don’t have the hardware — because I know I will upgrade my hardware later — and I want to support companies now who are doing the work in making the 4K UHD media available.

Unbelievable that they still keep referring people to that interview even when Parasite is getting a UHD.

Kline himself says he is not in charge of the decision making regarding formats. And the whole bit about how you can't see 4K on smaller screens is absurd. And even if smaller screens didn't benefit from the resolution bump (I have a 55 in TV and the difference is easily very noticeable) 4K has a lot to offer in terms of color and dynamic range (it would also help Criterion with their compression issues). At the end of that segment he even recommends that people buy Apocalypse Now on UHD.

What are we even supposed to take away from this? Films like Don't Look Now, Crash, Ran, The Elephant Man, Parasite (BP winner but still a foreign language film), and The Burning are getting UHDs. Many boutique labels are testing the waters and yet the most prestigious label gives bad excuses.

UHDs can be poorly encoded too. Studio Canal and Capelight for instance have recurring issues there. So UHD wouldn't help Criterion with their encodes, it would be another thing their authoring houses might be sub-par with. Especially as it would all be sourced from 4K materials, THE stuff they can't encode without issues on BD already.

But again, as usual : the issue with UHD sales is that they're not BD sales in market shares. A market that has plummetted on top of that so this smaller MS% is of a total market that has massively shrunk.
And even if it seems to be very different for catalogue labels, people should realise it might never be viable for Criterion to release stuff on UHD. Ever.

Encoding has generally improved with UHD. Look at something like the Apocalypse Now release where the same authoring house produced a terrible BD and a gorgeous UHD. Ofcourse anything can be screwed up but UHDs give you more headroom.

I don't think people expect boutique labels will have constant stream of UHDs like big Hollywood and European distributors. They just want to see more popular titles get the 4K treatment. Like I said even boutique labels that don't have Criterion's visibility and prestige are putting out UHDs just to test waters so I don't think it is impossible for Criterion to release one.

tenia wrote: Thu Apr 23, 2020 6:36 am UHDs can be poorly encoded too. Studio Canal and Capelight for instance have recurring issues there. So UHD wouldn't help Criterion with their encodes, it would be another thing their authoring houses might be sub-par with. Especially as it would all be sourced from 4K materials, THE stuff they can't encode without issues on BD already.

Actually, the authoring house Criterion use (Radius60) have proven quite adept at encoding UHDs, despite them regularly doing a poor job with BDs. They did Apocalypse Now for instance, which was terribly encoded on the new BD, but completely issue free on the UHD, despite being done for the same package.

Criterion are actually mostly going through Pixelogic now.
I had no idea Radius60 did AN's UHD. Did they also do the BD ? It... would make sense (sadly) considering how it looks but I don't think it'd be unheard of the UHD and the BD being encoded by 2 different entities.
Thid is good to know however they can encode UHDs that well. That's one more authoring house doing things good, which is always a good thing.

In 2016 Pixelogic bought Radius60.

bluesforyou wrote: Thu Apr 23, 2020 10:10 am I don't think people expect boutique labels will have constant stream of UHDs like big Hollywood and European distributors. They just want to see more popular titles get the 4K treatment.

That's not the lesson Criterion learned from Blu-ray

tenia wrote: Thu Apr 23, 2020 12:28 pm Criterion are actually mostly going through Pixelogic now.
I had no idea Radius60 did AN's UHD. Did they also do the BD ? It... would make sense (sadly) considering how it looks but I don't think it'd be unheard of the UHD and the BD being encoded by 2 different entities.
Thid is good to know however they can encode UHDs that well. That's one more authoring house doing things good, which is always a good thing.

Yes, as far as I know they did the whole package for Lionsgate.

Thanks for the info !

dwk wrote:In 2016 Pixelogic bought Radius60.

I was under the impression they were 2 different entities but you're indeed right ! My bad.

swo17 wrote: Thu Apr 23, 2020 2:39 pm

bluesforyou wrote: Thu Apr 23, 2020 10:10 am I don't think people expect boutique labels will have constant stream of UHDs like big Hollywood and European distributors. They just want to see more popular titles get the 4K treatment.

That's not the lesson Criterion learned from Blu-ray

I think people understand that every film on UHD isn't going to be viable for boutique labels since that strategy isn't even viable for major distributors. Even many popular catalogue titles are yet to be upgraded.

A thought: UHD really came out at an awkward time. BD came out in 2006 and we got PS3 in 2007 which boosted the adoption. UHD came out in 2016 and is going to have to wait until later this year (or maybe even later due to COVID-19) for a similar bump.

It wasn't so much PS3 that boosted its adoption than studios progressively siding with Sony on BD and ending the format war with HD-DVD.

tenia wrote: Thu Apr 23, 2020 8:56 pm It wasn't so much PS3 that boosted its adoption than studios progressively siding with Sony on BD and ending the format war with HD-DVD.

All the headlines back then told me it was the porn companies that did in HD-DVD.