Criterion and UHD

[mkozlows]

In fact, I'd argue that the sharp decline of discery is going to speed up that transition: If you aren't a total stickler for picture/sound quality and just want to watch a movie in "good enough" quality, you can do that via streaming. The Criterion Channel is excellent! The people who still are buying discs are those who get frustrated by the infelicities of streaming quality, and those people are not super-interested in suboptimal compromise formats like legacy Blu-ray.

...Except Blu-ray provides an upgrade over streaming.

There is a real difference between 1080p streaming and 1080p Blu-ray, yes, but it's not as large as the difference between 1080p Blu-ray and UHD-BD. So my argument is that pretty much anyone who's fussy enough to be bothered by 1080p streaming's lack of awesomeness relative to 1080p Blu-ray is also going to be bothered by 1080p Blu-ray's lack of awesomeness relative to UHD-BD. (And also of course, 4K streaming is a thing, and 4K streaming vs 1080p Blu-ray is just a matter of which trade-offs you prefer, since neither is purely superior to the other.)

But I guess you're an existence proof that I'm wrong, and there are people who care about varieties of 1080p while also believing they don't care about the larger jump to 4K, so hey.

[Boosmahn]

But I guess you're an existence proof that I'm wrong, and there are people who care about varieties of 1080p while also believing they don't care about the larger jump to 4K, so hey.

I do care about the jump to 4K, but spending all of that money all at once isn't feasible right now. Aside from the cost, I'm moving into a small apartment (if I'm being honest, a dorm) for the first time, and I don't have the space for a large setup.

[Noiradelic]

I don't see how they can't release a UHD for every new addition to the collection. Wouldn't everybody be waiting for the other shoe to drop if they didn't? I know I would. While it seems like UHD market is still mostly reserved for classics, I would think that's going to change over the course of the next couple years. Or maybe physical media really is nearly dead and I should be happy to get anything at all. I admit to being a little out of touch these days but I've also already bought 300+ movies twice from criterion alone. Trying to decide to wait for a UHD upgrade or jump on the 2k blu of the next Fassbinder (for example) title released by CC will really be maddening for me.

When they first started releasing BDs, they didn't release every title on the format. In 2009, the first full year after making the jump to BD, less than 40% of new titles received a BD release. By September 2010 they stopped releasing DVD-only titles altogether (not counting Eclipse of course). Given the massive changes in the home video market in the last dozen years and the economics of UHD, it'll be a long time before they go UHD only, if ever (they only got around to giving The Human Condition a BD this year, 11 years after the BD-era DVD release).

[dwk]

too bad that Crash came out "too early" (Arrow released a Ultra-HD; Turbine in Germany too I think- For "Walkabout" X4 by S.Sight they did not have enough money to release a Ultra-HD if I remember their reply). Criterion could have released a Ultra-HD. That said, they can catch up the "train".

WB may not have been willing to license UHD right last year (in fact Shout Factory said as much), so even if Criterion had been doing UHDs Crash likely wouldn't have been one of them. Just be happy that WB only have the US rights.

Criterion has their own 4K master of Walkabout and I fully expect it to get a UHD from them sooner rather than later (it was an early DVD and early-ish Blu-ray.)

Odd that the six qnnounced are all English language films and I wonder if UHDs are planned for the number of non-English titles that have gotten 4K restorations after Criterion released them on Blu-ray (like The Wages of Fear, Diabolique, Beauty and the Beast, Three Colors, The Double Life of Veronique, etc ) and/or 4k masters that are exclusive to the big boxsets (The Seventh Seal, all those Fellinis.)

[DimitriL]

I think that they will drop probably the DVD in favor of the blu-ray. After all, all Ultra-HD combo comes with a Blu-Ray, not a DVD. So, basically the packaging won't change (Blu-ray+Ultra HD) instead of Blu-Ray + DVD. At best a digital download ticket for those who don't have a Blu-Ray player so far.
I'm not against digital download, but when it's X4 transfer, a disk is much more reliable and cohesive with a X4 support vs Covid-internet slow-bandwidth connection than a X4 HD streaming.

I think there’s no way that they drop DVD. It’s still too important a component of their business with libraries and other institutions. And they’ll go dual-format with UHD/BD to save on the massive packaging costs. I don’t know what the UHD replication pricing is right now, but they said when they started their original dual-format experiment that packaging was overwhelmingly the biggest cost in disc production. Anyway, I see this being these being the two product lines from this point forward.

(I do wonder if UHD replication pricing dropped to a certain point where it finally made sense from a business perspective.)

[andyli]

The Red Shoes could be jawdropping in X4. But you need to have a big screen or a video-projector.
I was not aware of a new X4 restoration. Is Scorsese behind this new restoration ?

The Original Red Shoes Blu-ray was already from a 4K restoration. I've not heard of a newer one.

Criterion has their own 4K master of Walkabout and I fully expect it to get a UHD from them sooner rather than later (it was an early DVD and early-ish Blu-ray.)

Are you talking about the Second Sight 4k transfer? They are equally likely to put this one out on UHD.

[swo17]

Not quite:

Hi all, just wanted to address the UHD queries. While we would have loved to release on 4K, sadly UHD production costs, from HDR grading to encoding, mastering charges and disc replication, are just too high and would be make it unviable for this release. We're constantly monitoring the UHD market and are hoping to release more on the format but have to be very selective with the titles we choose.

[dwk]

Are you talking about the Second Sight 4k transfer? They are equally likely to put this one out on UHD.

I'm not 100% sure, but I don't believe it is the same. Criterion's 4K master premiered in 2019 at the AMIA's The Reel Thing.

[tenia]

What percentage of current releases are sourced from 4K restorations? Certainly not all of them, and I don't know that there being one ensures a UHD every time, but we can dare to dream.

Not every 4k restoration can be released on UHD, especially when the market expectations are that UHDs have some form of HDR and seemingly not every 4k restoration has a HDR pass. I'm also unsure how older 4k restorations, like the ones from scans performed on Spirit DataCine, would render in UHD. They're already not ageing well on BD.
And of course, there's the financial rationale behind those, considering how expensive doing UHDs still seems to be (even if some labels seems to have found a way to release small batches of UHDs without losing much).

[andyli]

What percentage of current releases are sourced from 4K restorations? Certainly not all of them, and I don't know that there being one ensures a UHD every time, but we can dare to dream.

Not every 4k restoration can be released on UHD, especially when the market expectations are that UHDs have some form of HDR and seemingly not every 4k restoration has a HDR pass. I'm also unsure how older 4k restorations, like the ones from scans performed on Spirit DataCine, would render in UHD. They're already not ageing well on BD.
And of course, there's the financial rationale behind those, considering how expensive doing UHDs still seems to be (even if some labels seems to have found a way to release small batches of UHDs without losing much).

All valid points, though I wonder what it'd cost (both time- and money-wise) if one was to re-grade an existing 4k scan using some form of HDR. As for the viability of older 4k restos, The Red Shoes might be a benchmark to look out for.
EDIT: It remains to be seen whether Criterion makes it a rule to include at least the basic HDR10 for every UHD release. If you ask me, they should be free to leave out HDR when they feel it's the right thing to do.

[mhofmann]

All valid points, though I wonder what it'd cost (both time- and money-wise) if one was to re-grade an existing 4k scan using some form of HDR. As for the viability of older 4k restos, The Red Shoes might be a benchmark to look out for.

Would a re-grade really be necessary in any of these cases?
Even if the actual dynamic range (in terms of maximum brightness) at time of the grade remains unchanged, I doubt that any grading work happens directly with Rec. 709 constraints in place — I assume this is always a downconversion as part of the mastering process. So that conversion would simply be omitted, or replaced by a much more favorable conversion to the constraints of Rec. 2020.

Which IMO is anyway much more important, at least to me, than vastly increasing the luminosity of certain highlights. Sure, film negative has a much higher dynamic range than Rec. 709 can reproduce, at least in theory. But I wonder how much of that is left if one aims to carefully reproduce film copy projection conditions (e.g., “restore the film as it was visible to the audience projected at the premiere”).

And there’s always the resolution increase, in particular w.r.t. grain reproduction, which should not be underestimated assuming a very good raw scan.

[EddieLarkin]

But I wonder how much of that is left if one aims to carefully reproduce film copy projection conditions (e.g., “restore the film as it was visible to the audience projected at the premiere”).

Basically none, prints can be well replicated with just SDR reproduction. HDR is needed to fully represent the OCN, in the same way if you want to capture all of the spatial detail the camera caught you need to scan the OCN, not a print. Neither HDR grading nor OCN scanning has anything to do with restoring films to how audiences saw them.

[jedgeco]

What percentage of current releases are sourced from 4K restorations? Certainly not all of them, and I don't know that there being one ensures a UHD every time, but we can dare to dream.

Not every 4k restoration can be released on UHD, especially when the market expectations are that UHDs have some form of HDR and seemingly not every 4k restoration has a HDR pass. I'm also unsure how older 4k restorations, like the ones from scans performed on Spirit DataCine, would render in UHD. They're already not ageing well on BD.
And of course, there's the financial rationale behind those, considering how expensive doing UHDs still seems to be (even if some labels seems to have found a way to release small batches of UHDs without losing much).

All valid points, though I wonder what it'd cost (both time- and money-wise) if one was to re-grade an existing 4k scan using some form of HDR.

We know that Criterion has been doing HDR passes on at least some of their transfers for a couple years now (Lee Kline told Home Theater Forum that sex, lies & videotape; Blood Simple; and Rumble Fish all got HDR grading), so there's at least some catalog titles that Criterion has that are UHD ready (assuming rights issues exist).

I also don't expect 100% of future releases to have a UHD option. That said, to the extent that certain future titles don't get UHD releases because budget, rights, capacity, or other constraints, I'd really encourage the good folks at Criterion (if any of them are lurking here) to try to be as transparent as possible about that. I'm happy to continue to buy their future Blu-ray releases if they say that we shouldn't expect a UHD option, but I'll be much more hesitant to buy anything if I suspect a UHD is a future possibility.

[tenia]

Precision that's important : it's not Criterion who did the HDR pass on the Soderbergh.

[dwk]

Are you sure?. Soderbergh said he asked Criterion to do it and Lee Kline talked about how efficient Soderbergh was during ing the HDR grading process.

[CyRo3]

Yes, I think you're correct in that it's likely a matter of perspective. In any case, the consumer has options. We shall see if they go with: DVD, Blu-ray, and UHD/Blu-ray. If this is the case, then everyone is happy. Some folks on another forum were dumping water on today's announcement because I think they're afraid of purchasing a UHD/Blu combo with no Blu only option.

I deeply feel those people. I am perfectly happy with blu-ray, and I do not want to have to buy a dual-format set just to get the blu. I’m still waiting for them to decouple a bunch of their blu-ray/DVD dual formats just because I don’t like the extra bulk packaging for something I won’t use.

It’s all speculation right now, but if the price point is higher or the packaging is extra all for the 4K disc without an option for blu-ray alone, I will have to pass on buying these titles. I will be disappointed, especially for The Piano, but, again, I would just want the blu-ray, and paying more or getting a thicker box when shelf space is super valuable at this point is just not worth it.

[jedgeco]

Are you sure?. Soderbergh said he asked Criterion to do it and Lee Kline talked about how efficient Soderbergh was during ing the HDR grading process.

The original quote is open to interpretation:

And then we have someone like Steven Soderbergh who, after we worked on Sex, Lies, and Videotape said "I want to do an HDR pass", and we said, "yeah, okay". So he came in here and...I remember saying to him first, I was like, you know, "what do you want to enunciate with HDR, because you basically have muted highlights in most of the movie?"....

I take this to mean that Criterion had already done the HDR grading and that Soderbergh asked if he could "do an HDR pass" personally on the work they'd already done. But it could mean that the HDR would not have been done but for Soderbergh's request.

The rest of the interview segment also implies that Criterion has in-house HDR grading capabilities.

[dwk]

Here is the relevant quote from this interview with Soderbergh

So for instance, even though we might’ve ingested the movie at 4K 10 or 12 years ago for the Sony Blu-ray, the scanners that exist today are a lot better – and now we have HDR. So even though, in this case, it was just coming out on Blu-ray, I requested, and Criterion agreed, to create a 4K HDR version of the master in preparation for a time when either Criterion starts making those kinds of streams available or there’s a decision down the road to put out a physical 4K HDR Blu-ray. I wanted to be ready for all of that.

[schellenbergk]

This is truly exciting news.

Personally - I'm probably not going to "upgrading" titles I already own on Blu. However, I'm psyched about "Red Shows" and "Citizen Kane" - since the copies I own are on DVD from the early 2000s and are due for an upgrade.

But generally I'll hesitate upgrading from Blu to UHD - will probably only upgrade titles that I still have on DVD.

[senseabove]

Just to throw another log on the fire: the main reason I haven't made the UHD jump is that I just don't have the space for a TV. My living/viewing room is built around a projector, and I'd need to completely re-arrange the room, including finding a different place for a wall-mounted shelf that my record player needs thanks to my very old, very bouncy wooden floors, in order to get a flat surface wide enough to hold a TV where the TV would need to be. So making the upgrade is probably just going to have to wait for a long-delayed move. But I've already been tending toward dual-format releases when they're available, and even went for the Dawn of the Dead standard UHD set, despite having no way of playing it as of yet, in that sole case where I felt compelled to make that choice sooner rather than later. So I, for one, selfishly hope they stick dual format so I don't have to choose between purchasing the best version that I can't watch yet or the inferior version that I can, like I did with Dawn of the Dead.

[tenia]

Here is the relevant quote from this interview with Soderbergh

So for instance, even though we might’ve ingested the movie at 4K 10 or 12 years ago for the Sony Blu-ray, the scanners that exist today are a lot better – and now we have HDR. So even though, in this case, it was just coming out on Blu-ray, I requested, and Criterion agreed, to create a 4K HDR version of the master in preparation for a time when either Criterion starts making those kinds of streams available or there’s a decision down the road to put out a physical 4K HDR Blu-ray. I wanted to be ready for all of that.

My memory was telling me those HDR restorations were done outside Criterion, hence my post, but I clearly was wrong.
This means that it's likely previous 4k SDR restorations could be subsequently regraded in HDR for UHD releases by Criterion (which I suppose will be the case for The Red Shoes except if there has been a new 4k restoration since the previous one but I don't think so).

[Furstemberg]

After this introductory slate, do we think forthcoming UHDs will be split evenly between upgrades and new titles, or more one than the other?

[DimitriL]

After this introductory slate, do we think forthcoming UHDs will be split evenly between upgrades and new titles, or more one than the other?

My feeling is that it’s gonna be ever-so-slightly tilted towards upgrades, simply because they probably have a bunch of backlogged candidates ready to go.

[andyli]

My guess is that 4k restorations with existing HDR grading, such as The Elephant Man and Don't Look Now, are their priority.

[FrauBlucher]

What's the chances that Criterion or anyone else release silent films in UHD?