UHD Titles Worth/Not Worth Upgrading [Archive]

[tenia]

In the Heat of the Night indeed is SDR.

[denti alligator]

So what’s the story with Atmos? I have a 5.1.2 setup. Decided to add height speakers right above couch because it was easy and I could. No way I can do 7.1.2 or anything more fancy. Will a 7.1 Atmos soundtrack make use of my .2 height speakers or not? Does it matter? Sounds pretty good with some films, though of course most of what I watch is simply 1.0

[EddieLarkin]

The whole point of Atmos is to get away from discrete channels, to allow more flexibility in both the studio and the home. So there are no 5.1.2 tracks or 7.1.4 tracks etc. Instead an Atmos track won't be mixed to any specific channels, but to a virtual 3D room environment, seen here. That data will then be read by the system in the home to best reproduce where the sounds should come from using the speakers available. Naturally the more speakers you have, the more accurately a track can be played back.

[denti alligator]

Cool. Thanks for that explanation.

[Finch]

caps a holic: Kino vs Criterion - In The Heat Of The Night

Solid upgrade as expected but I'd personally not pay full price for better compression and a small uptick in resolution.

[Finch]

Singin' in the Rain added to OP

Is there any interest in me trying to keep a record of English-friendly UHDs that have not been released in the UK and/or US?

The Limey was released on UHD in France. The UHD is closer to the German Koch BD (the UK BD is in the wrong color space) and the French subtitles can be switched off. The bad news is that compression on the HDR10 layer has resulted in a lot of chroma noise as per a Blu-Ray.com user. No one has commented on the Dolby Vision.

[therewillbeblus]

Is there any interest in me trying to keep a record of English-friendly UHDs that have not been released in the UK and/or US?

If it's not too much trouble for you (I suspect you're already keeping your own tabs on this!) I'd be very interested. Not only are many of us region free and used to trying to keep tabs on releases from other countries, but if UHD are automatically region free I think this info of availability will apply across the board- literally

However, rather than keeping a record of all of them, I trust that you could do what you're doing just now and comb through what's good or not and keep them in the established separate categories... would that be easier to do, and just including a note in parentheses or bolded saying 'Danish import' or whatever?

[Finch]

Sony's 4k restoration of Heavy Metal added

[senseabove]

GeoffD's review of Singin' in the Rain

[Finch]

The new Hitchcock releases are now with a few folks and unfortunately the enclosed BDs are not upgraded. Early word is very positive on Shadow of a Doubt and Trouble with Harry.

[Finch]

cholly over at Blu-Ray.com thinks the Marnie UHD is mostly a good upgrade. Also, Gruv's pre-orders of the new Hitchcocks are still at $19.99 and the SIGNOFF20 code can be applied multiple times which took Shadow of a Doubt down to just over $16 for me after MD state sales tax was applied.

[Finch]

First review of Kino's A Fistful of Dollars UHD

They fixed the colors and the included BD uses the new transfer too so this qualifies as a solid upgrade (though, as the review acknowledges, another boutique label could best this with smart application of HDR). OP updated.

[Yakushima]

Arrow's UHD of "Wild Things" is absolutely spectacular and really increased my appreciation of the film.

[Finch]

The Trouble With Harry
Family Plot
Shadow of a Doubt

Marnie

I've not seen any feedback for Saboteur yet.

[senseabove]

Where are you finding reactions for those already? I’ve seen a few posts on the BR.com and HTF forums, but that’s about it.

[Finch]

That's where I saw them too.

For A Few Dollars More

Amazon's acquisition of MGM makes me wonder how likely it is that we'll get a competitive edition of the Leone trilogy with HDR/Dolby Vision added. Weren't Arrow rumoured to be doing them or being interested?

[dwk]

Amazon's acquisition of MGM makes me wonder how likely it is that we'll get a competitive edition of the Leone trilogy with HDR/Dolby Vision added. Weren't Arrow rumoured to be doing them or being interested?

I would assume that Arrow would be interested, but to the best of my knowledge there are no real rumors about any UK label doing those titles.

[Finch]

Nice review by Evolvist of the Marnie UHD

Saboteur added to OP

[Finch]

Word on the Liberty Valance UHD is not good. Seems like Robert A Harris at HTF got it right about a UHD disc, for once. Fuck's sake, Paramount.

[swo17]

But does this 4K release come with a Blu-ray that's an upgrade over the prior one?

[EddieLarkin]

Word on the Liberty Valance UHD is not good. Seems like Robert A Harris at HTF got it right about a UHD disc, for once. Fuck's sake, Paramount.

Actually, both that reviewer and RAH are wrong. Not about this disc looking crappy, but that it has anything to do with DNR or grain management. Those caps do not show anything like DNR on the UHD, instead it is typical poor compression. We've seen this lately with Paramount discs, Juice in particular. It's like they decided to hire the same amateur outfits Shout Factory sometimes use. And with Juice, even the Dolby Vision FEL layer couldn't fix the issues, like it mostly does on Shout's Halloween. It'll be a real shame if that's the case with Valance (the caps are only the HDR10 base, as it's not possible to capture the proper DV layer combined).

But does this 4K release come with a Blu-ray that's an upgrade over the prior one?

The Blu-ray caps in that review are not the old disc, which really was a DNR'd mess:

https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?a=2&x=52 ... 0&i=0&go=1

Instead they must be from the new disc packaged with the UHD.

[swo17]

That was my suspicion, meaning this could still be worth picking up regardless

[tenia]

I didn't know about Juice's UHD compression, which you don't even need to Ultra Zoom at 400% to see it's just wrong. Wow.

[EddieLarkin]

Yes, it's probably one of the worst cases ever. And it's nothing to do with the bitrate either, which is very high for a 90 minute movie. There is clearly something going very wrong with whoever is carrying out this work.

[tenia]

Yes, this is a case of not properly setting up the options of the encoder, though with such a high AVB for the FEL layer, I wonder how the base layer vs DV layer split might affect that.