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david hare wrote:

tenia wrote: I think that's both good news and not so good news. Assuming - who would know? - it's in safe hands like David MacKenzie's the new 2k and encodes should be very good.

Hi David

Just to clear something up - my credit in the booklet for this set is a misprint. I wasn't involved with BFI's Otto P set. Not that I want to intentionally distance myself from it or anything (I haven't seen it but I'm sure it's good) - just to set the record straight.

Quickly going back at this one, source wise : it now seems clear to me that Where The Sidewalk Ends isn't from the latest 4K restoration but was sourced from an older source.
Twilight Time has used the newer 4K restoration for their release, and now Wild Side in France will use too for theirs next month. Here are a few comparative caps between the BFI disc and the upcoming Wild Side one.

I think I prefer the rougher and different gamma with deeper blacks BFI release!

While I usually prefer higher-contrast looks, it looks like the BFI is overly contrasted, while the newer restoration isn't too dull looking (compared to, say, stuff Eclair sometimes does).
But I only have screened quickly through the disc so far, so I'll see what happens when I watch it entirely.

These are the same HD masters used for the dvds. Where the Sidewalk Ends is the best of the lot, Whirlpool in particular has a lot of warping and judder (also on the DVD). The 4k restoration for Where the Sidewalk Ends on the TT disc is pretty good but suffers from the usual Fox approach of (IMHO) taking out too much of the grain and digitally flattening the blacks in particular.

The forehead and neck area on the first screencap is really waxy on the new release.

That seems quite exaggerated.

Me exaggerating or the screen capture?

You saying it's waxy. The grain might have been filtered a bit but there still is visible texture, which is why I certainly wouldn't find this waxy.

Looks quite digital on the neck area under his right ear to me. Don’t know whether it looks better in motion, but it does not appear to be any sort of upgrade from that comparison.