UHD Titles Worth/Not Worth Upgrading [Archive]

[jegharfangetmigenmyg]

Thanks, Finch! I was thinking Criterion because they didn't even upgrade the old dvd to blu-ray, and because they have licensed a few UHD titles from Studio Canal. But again, it probably isn't a big seller, and a UHD would be pretty useless if they only import over the dvd extras.

[M-A]

Exactly (see how it only marginally bothers Criterion BD purchasers), but even then, there are I believe other things that'll come first in terms of impact on a disc release of a restored movie. I'm much more likely to take down 2 or 3 points because it's digitally filtered or the grading is absolute rubbish (in the sense of something way worse than a Ritrovata'd one). Encode ? I don't recall having taken more than 1 pt out of 10 for a problematic encode.

Don't get me wrong : again, it's always a shame to fumble the ball so close to the finish line, and I understand this being enough to turn the disc into a not-reference one. But in the grander scheme of things, I doubt it.

Regarding the Breathless 4K, parts of the film that are ~70Mbps look lovely and would be reference, but parts that drop to ~20Mbps (and there are so many of those - quite a good portion of the film sits at it) look worse than the included blu because of it, and the parts that drop to single digits bit rate (the lowest I saw was it dropping to 3.5Mbps) look like a youtube upload and look much worse than the included blu.

Given that, I don't see how it should be declared a solid upgrade, given that it looks worse than the blu for a good portion of the film. I think it fits right in with the other discs in the disappointing section. (Note that discs in the disappointing section are still better than the blus, which Breathless 4K is).

[Finch]

Breathless moved so we can move on to other titles

[Grand Wazoo]

this poster didn't notice any compression issues with the UHD of The Limey and the enclosed US BD is the best edition for that particular format, too. Solid upgrade only if you compare it to Lionsgate's own 2022 BD, for everything else, the top tier grade applies.

Is there a master list of Best Buy exclusive UHD discs akin to The Limey? When I search it's all mixed in with their 'exclusive packaging' releases but I'm interested in which movies are exclusive vs. all the steelbooks.

[Finch]

Quick rundown of early feedback on a couple of recently released films:

Severin's The Changeling reportedly has unnaturally red skin tones. I believe something similar was reported with their first pressing of Flesh for Frankenstein. No word on the exact root cause yet.

Early reactions to Kino's Dressed To Kill are very good. Faces are not elongated as on Criterion's first pressing and the green push is gone.

Randy Miller had a very positive review up for Criterion's Malcolm X UHD. He did provide a caveat that some of the prison sequences have had a very strong blue filter added which may be revisionist.

Feedback on Shout's Piranha is promising so far especially given the source limitations. No one has commented on the encode yet.

Contrary to first reactions, there is no green tint on Kino's The Usual Suspects UHD. The softness in the police station sequences is inherent to the source since they did an optical blow up of those images to hide an error made by a crew member. Reshoots presumably weren't feasible for lack of money.

Final ratings hopefully coming soon!

[rrenault]

Breathless seems like a shoo-in for a Criterion upgrade, at least.

I do have to wonder why after over a year's worth of UHD announcements from Criterion we have yet to get an upgrade of one of the "flagship/legacy" foreign titles...

I seem to think they rolled them out pretty quickly when Criterion adopted blu-ray.

[Finch]

Severin's The Changeling is unfortunately not worth getting.

[Finch]

Not a full on review (that may still follow) but Geoff D gives a full endorsement of Arrow's Videodrome 4k.

I'll add further comments to the OP once there is more feedback on just how much it improves over their Blu-Ray.

[Finch]

This post reiterates what earlier comments have been saying, so I don't think Shout's UHD of The Last Detail really merits a recommendation.

Groundhog Day is getting a steelbook reissue in January with Dolby Vision (explicitly noted on the back cover) and the original 2 channel stereo track added.

[rrenault]

This post reiterates what earlier comments have been saying, so I don't think Shout's UHD of The Last Detail really merits a recommendation.

I still have my Indicator blu-ray I 'blind bought' ages ago and haven't yet watched. I guess I'm still good with that.

[Finch]

caps of the Reservoir Dogs UHD which is a superior representation of the S35mm material than the Blu-Ray (no word yet on whether the enclosed BD is old or new)

[Finch]

Raw Deal feedback, including Geoff's, on page 5 of the film's thread

[Finch]

Links to caps a holic and reactions are in for In The Mood For Love and it only really seems to gain a small uptick in resolution. I'd find it hard to convincingly argue that this is a worthwhile disc even to the fans who do like the revisionist look of the new BD and the UHD. The first Criterion UHD you could justifiably (if not unexpectedly) call disappointing both for the lack of effort and pretty minimal upgrade.

[Finch]

The Usual Suspects

Reminder: the comparatively fuzzy looking office scenes are a limitation of how it was shot and fixed in post. Kino's disc is a good upgrade.

[Finch]

Waiting on more feedback for Escape from Alcatraz and Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. On the former, Paramount appear to have degrained the image a little and not encoded the disc well so that Kino appear stuck with what they were given. TCM 2 appears to have the same issues that plague at least some of Vinegar Syndrome's releases: the encode is not great and skin tones still seem to be overly red at times though it is allegedly not as much of an issue on TCM 2 as with other VS titles.

A few users have gotten their copies of Sony's re-issue of Starship Troopers which they say looks marvelous in Dolby Vision. The HDR grade has not been compared to the old disc yet.

[rrenault]

Links to caps a holic and reactions are in for In The Mood For Love and it only really seems to gain a small uptick in resolution. I'd find it hard to convincingly argue that this is a worthwhile disc even to the fans who do like the revisionist look of the new BD and the UHD. The first Criterion UHD you could justifiably (if not unexpectedly) call disappointing both for the lack of effort and pretty minimal upgrade.

I know none is English-friendly, but are the French and German WKW UHDs entirely of disappointing quality, or do some still qualify for the solid bracket?

[dwk]

Links to caps a holic and reactions are in for In The Mood For Love and it only really seems to gain a small uptick in resolution. I'd find it hard to convincingly argue that this is a worthwhile disc even to the fans who do like the revisionist look of the new BD and the UHD. The first Criterion UHD you could justifiably (if not unexpectedly) call disappointing both for the lack of effort and pretty minimal upgrade.

I know none is English-friendly, but are the French and German WKW UHDs entirely of disappointing quality, or do some still qualify for the solid bracket?

They use the same masters, so you can do the math.

[mhofmann]

Links to caps a holic and reactions are in for In The Mood For Love and it only really seems to gain a small uptick in resolution. I'd find it hard to convincingly argue that this is a worthwhile disc even to the fans who do like the revisionist look of the new BD and the UHD. The first Criterion UHD you could justifiably (if not unexpectedly) call disappointing both for the lack of effort and pretty minimal upgrade.

I know none is English-friendly, but are the French and German WKW UHDs entirely of disappointing quality, or do some still qualify for the solid bracket?

They use the same masters, so you can do the math.

While they all use the same master, the French release has massive DNR and is terrible, while the German release appears to have a slightly less green tint in the grading. Depending on viewpoint, this might put the German UHD release slightly in the lead.

[Finch]

Indecent Proposal (Kino/Paramount) (if compared to the old BD)
Indecent Proposal (if compared to the new BD from the same source)

page 4 has caps from andreas and here are caps a holic comparing the UHD to the old BD. Pity it's not in service of a better film but Geoff is probably onto something that Paramount seem to fiddle with the films more the more popular they are. Which, if true, doesn't bode well for the likes of Chinatown!

[FrauBlucher]

Here is the first review I've seen for Casablanca. It's Robert Harris so take it with a grain of salt

[jheez]

Here is the first review I've seen for Casablanca. It's Robert Harris so take it with a grain of salt

Just got the 4k yesterday and I think the 4k looks really nice. The 70th anniversary blu-ray looks nice too, to be fair. The 4k has very noticeably better grain, contrast, and compression. Whereas there's either a lack of grain or it gets kind of stuck on the blu sometimes, the grain looks much more natural in motion on the 4k. All in all, I think it's about what we would have expected from this film and WB. It's similar to what we got with Citizen Kane 4k, where the grain looks better, but it already had a good blu-ray to begin with. The difference between the 4k and blu is far larger with Casablanca than Citizen Kane, however. This difference may be due to more/better HDR on Casablanca?

[Finch]

Just got the 4k yesterday and I think the 4k looks really nice. The 70th anniversary blu-ray looks nice too, to be fair. The 4k has very noticeably better grain, contrast, and compression. Whereas there's either a lack of grain or it gets kind of stuck on the blu sometimes, the grain looks much more natural in motion on the 4k. All in all, I think it's about what we would have expected from this film and WB. It's similar to what we got with Citizen Kane 4k, where the grain looks better, but it already had a good blu-ray to begin with. The difference between the 4k and blu is far larger with Casablanca than Citizen Kane, however. This difference may be due to more/better HDR on Casablanca?

Would you say it's a reference disc even set against the 70th Anniversary BD, jheez?

[Finch]

Piranha reviewed here

[Finch]

No one has done a detailed review (yet) but there have been no complaints about compression and there is a consensus among those knowing the film inside out that Kino's disc of Dressed To Kill eclipses all previous BDs. The only thing the CC BD has going for it is some exclusive stuff but Kino have ported over all MGM and Arrow extras and added some of their own. Arrow might do their own version down the line but there's no chance in hell you get it for $17.99 (unless you're happy waiting for another year and a half for the standard edition to go down in price) like you would with the Kino in their next sales.

[jheez]

Casablanca

Would you say it's a reference disc even set against the 70th Anniversary BD, jheez?

Yes