criterionforum.org

Hell yes, I wondered why they hadn’t licensed it yet. Fantastic and downbeat movie, and proof that Veronica Lake could have been considered as more than a sex symbol if she’d been given more opportunities like this

Well, over at the Blu-ray forum, the Kino Insider is getting defensive about a couple issues with their Silence of the Lambs UHD (the first 20 minutes is in the wrong color space and the 2.0 track is a downmix of the 5.1 remix and isn't the original track.)

Kino is fully committed to a volume strategy at this point, which makes it a numbers game on whether whichever release of theirs you pick up has issues or not (and, to be fair, most don’t). I’ll take the risk since they are digging deep into studio vaults and releasing a LOT of movies that are never gonna get another chance like this

More OOP based on previously being in the "While Supplies Last" sale and now no longer appearing on the website:

The Killing of Sister George (1968) (BD) (DVD still available)
Running Wild (1927) (BD) (DVD still available)

I definitely thought the saturation looked off - either too low or too sickly green as has been reported (I did some little adjustments to correct it in the TV settings so didn’t notice the issue went away). It is definitely noticeable and in any normal situation should reasonably have been caught in QC - but Kino’s approach to this set of UHDs seems to have been getting to these movies first rather than doing them right (hence the rush to something like Great Escape without an HDR pass when there’s clearly another label that would probably be open to doing one for it if they could have a year or two to loop back to it). I of course love them doubling down on UHD with so many releases on the docket so quickly but I cannot say I will feel bad if this turns into an extremely expensive replacement program (as the error seems to be on Kino’s end, they would then be out the costs of remastering the UHD transfer and the still pricey 4K disc production costs).

It seems like the same error is present on the On Demand version from MGM, so is inherent to the master they received. Though they should have noticed.

More OOP based on previously being in the "While Supplies Last" sale and now no longer appearing on the website:

A Game of Death (1945) (BD) (DVD still available)
Invitation to a Gunfighter (1964) (DVD) (BD still available)
Killer Force (1976) (DVD) (BD still available)
Loophole (1981) (DVD) (BD still available)
The Marrying Man (1991) (DVD) (BD still available)
Trapeze (1956) (BD) (DVD still available)

KLI has confirmed on the other forum that you basically have to suck it up and that they won't be replacing their SOTL UHD. The Criterion Blu-Ray it is then for anyone that wants the entire film in the correct color space and the correct original 2.0 track. I don't like the film enough to want to own it and I appreciate the cock up was at MGM's end but their attitude towards customers who have presented incontrovertible evidence is pitiful. I, for one, won't be buying any Kino product until it's been out for a few weeks and there is enough of a consensus that the disc in question is not compromised. dom is right Kino do release films other labels won't touch but their volume strategy also means buying without checking on forums first is not totally without risk. And their representatives really can go fuck themselves.

Another poster pointed out that KL were given what is pretty clearly an ancient DVD master for their release of Pool of London and no one noticed. It's almost hard to believe that anyone in the home video business could look at this and think "yeah, that's surely the HD master we were promised"...

I’m galled at them not only refusing to acknowledge the error on SotL, but then actually trying to order the posters to stop asking about it! What a miserable excuse for public relations. I own one Kino disc and, well… I think that’s enough. I don’t support shitheels if I can avoid it.

Kino got to Kino.

While the evidence is plain to see, Kino will (and have) point to the fact that supposedly 'professional' reviewers have given it glowing reviews - 5 stars from Svet, another rave at DVDBeaver... If they were discerning enough then Kino might be more inclined to take issues like this seriously as ultimately their main concern is if it will affect sales.

I actually wonder, in the sense that it has been made clear that Kino work volume over quality and are not staffed enough for more QC (which itself makes me roll my eyes as someone working as an industrial engineer for a decade now - you either are staffed to do things right or shouldn't do them at all), but also that several labels are taking quality seriously enough that they never needed to be impacted by bundles of bad reviews (and, I suppose, a dip in sales) to realise corrective actions were needed.

Moreover, let's face it : even for such a technophilic medium such as UHD, out of whatever thousands copies Kino pressed, how many will be sold to people who couldn't even spot the issue when shown to them in the most obvious manner ? And how will think it's not really acceptable ?
Fortunately, not all labels think like this, otherwise there would pretty much never be any continuous technical improvement since so few people can spot it.

I'd say it rather enlightens about the priorities with such a company and where the quality bar is set.

This is why people on forums annoy me when they post stuff like "I didn't see anything wrong, I was enjoying the movie."

Orlac wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 11:01 am This is why people on forums annoy me when they post stuff like "I didn't see anything wrong, I was enjoying the movie."

What the guy actually said was:

I must have very low standards (or duff equipment), but it looked fine to me; maybe I was enjoying the film too much to focus on the transfer.

Which seems to me to be a completely reasonable response, not least because he took the trouble to qualify it from the start. It certainly didn't deserve that level of aggression on your part.

To be fair, it's a totally acceptable response as it qualifies the level of expectations and the awareness of it, but they usually are phrased as sarcastic and a way to make those who saw the issue and mentioned it as nitpickers, pixel-peepers and other armchair-expertise-related names, ie they're the ones who should be happy with what they're getting, not the other ones who can't spot the issue hence why we shouldn't care about the issue.

I remember a note from an AVS Forum user stating "Not seeing the problem is different from the problem not existing". Those comments are often a way of relativising the visibility of the problem and thus the existence of the problem itself, at least how much attention should be given to it.

But either there is a problem or there's not. There's one here, and that's that. Everything else is just a matter of whether you care or not about it, if it's a problem big enough for you or not.
But there's still a problem no matter what.

And of course, it makes from a wonderful deterrent for labels not wanting to be more careful technically : 99% of the people can't spot the issue, so the issue is negligible and those who spotted it are just looking for trouble.

I had a discussion a few days ago that ended up with the other person using this kind of line to ridicule me. "I hope you can still watch movies in a normal fashion". Well yes, but that still doesn't prevent me spotting issues so if I can do both, why should I stop ? Just because he can't ?
(Yes, that discussion was extremely laborious and frustrating considering the rhetoric I got served)

For the benefit of those who didn't follow my link, the poster that Orlac/[Redacted] was berating so needlessly aggressively was talking about the BFI's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which as far as I'm aware doesn't suffer from any technical problems over and above the fact that it's an elderly transfer from less than optimum materials. Which I'd argue is a different situation from the Silence of the Lambs one, which would appear to be an unambiguous technical cock-up that should have been spotted at the QC stage.

I'd argue the origins of the limitations doesn't change much to the matter. In the end, these arguments are most often a way to shrug the shoulders at the limitations and suggest to move on because it's not so bad, just focus on the damn movie and stop looking at the technique so much.
It matters so little that this quote could perfectly fit Silence of the Lambs (and I'm quite sure there are equivalents of it for this one on the Internet, just like there often have been for most of Kino's - and others' - problematic discs).

So there's the cost of replacing the disc and then the cost of actually fixing the issue. If memory serves, the last issue they fixed was for Lust, Caution, which entailed reinstating I think four burned-in subtitles. I believe there was already a file ready that had them, meaning the only cost was to replicate a new version of the disc and ship it out. In other cases where someone might have to perform a little more surgery, is Kino in a position to do that themselves, or are they reaching back out to their source to do it? Is that source flat out telling them no, or are they quoting a cost for it that Kino doesn't think is worth paying?

With the SOTL issue, as Calvin notes, the fact the same problem is present on the streaming version in HDR would indicate the master itself has been clipped, in which case Kino would not be able to correct the issue themselves (nor did they cause it). They would have to get MGM to acknowledge the problem and then have them pull the relevant files and essentially redo those 20 minutes, from a stage before the error was introduced. It was always a long shot to be honest and would take a far more scrupulous label to communicate with MGM and get it corrected than Kino. If we take them at their word they can't even see the issue.

Personally I could live with it. But the fact the disc is also missing the superior 2.0 mix (as identified by Moshrom), means I'll be sticking with the Criterion and waiting to see if a UK/EU label manage to licence the film for a definitive release.

The issue is that following this rabbit hole, it means that each time a technical issue happen upstream, we're bound to get a problematic disc nevertheless, because Kino doesn't have the money to manage to fix something they haven't caught in the first place and that is not their fault anyway.
Not only I tend to think that other labels would have been able to manage this issue, but it means that we have to accept getting faulty discs from Kino because they, what, just sometimes can't do better anyway ?

Imagine applying this to, say, an appliance manufacturer. "Well, we do produce microwaves but whenever a supplier screws up, you just have to deal wity the defective microwaves because we just have the money to buy the parts and assemble them, not deal with defective parts".

You can't just be organised for cases where everything is fine, you also has to be able to deal with possible issues, be staffed for this but also be able to financially or contractually handle it.

swo17 wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 2:25 pm So there's the cost of replacing the disc and then the cost of actually fixing the issue. If memory serves, the last issue they fixed was for Lust, Caution, which entailed reinstating I think four burned-in subtitles. I believe there was already a file ready that had them, meaning the only cost was to replicate a new version of the disc and ship it out. In other cases where someone might have to perform a little more surgery, is Kino in a position to do that themselves, or are they reaching back out to their source to do it? Is that source flat out telling them no, or are they quoting a cost for it that Kino doesn't think is worth paying?

And Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, but, again, in that case they just had to put the actual 4K transfer on the disc.

The Lust, Caution fix was something I half-joked about, saying they only fixed it because Universal had the corrected version, which lead to the Kino Indsider calling me a moron over at the Blu-ray forums.

And there's always the WOMAN IN THE MOON and SPIES debacle, which Kino refused to acknowledge was even an issue until they admitted their error in the fine print of the massive SILENT LANG box set, and I've never purchased anything from Kino since without carefully checking the reviews.