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I see better-resolved grain and a bit more detail in the Criterion, which is SDR in a HDR container according to fkid. The Carlotta’s brighter image is due to elevated gamma levels and they may have done a HDR re-grade which exacerbated the grain similar to BFI’s The Wages of Fear release.

It may be my computer monitor, but what I see looking at the 3rd last image of the post with the larger images (a picture of the teacher at his desk) There is a coat or something by his hat that I cant even see in the Criterion image and the pipe in the corner to the left of the globe, the bottom of it almost completely disappears in the Criterion image.

omegadirective wrote: Wed Jul 09, 2025 8:44 pm It may be my computer monitor, but what I see looking at the 3rd last image of the post with the larger images (a picture of the teacher at his desk) There is a coat or something by his hat that I cant even see in the Criterion image and the pipe in the corner to the left of the globe, the bottom of it almost completely disappears in the Criterion image.

That’s true re. the thing behind the hat. I’m curious to see how the film looks in motion. I have the Carlotta and even though some of the caps may appear more pleasant in comparison, I really didn’t like viewing that disc. Darker scenes in particular look awful with everything bathed in washed-out grey instead of showing nuances in the blacks. I actually like it most of the time if blacks are subtly raised as that’s more print-like (such as with Christopher Nolan’s films) but whoever did that restoration clearly went over overboard by several notches. Not sure if Criterion went overboard in the other direction but I’d rather have a stronger contrast with less shadow detail than drastically raised blacks.

I wonder how the Criterion 4K looks in this scene. The Criterion blu-ray is probably showing too much there, but the Carlotta grade is just ridiculous.

M-A wrote:I wonder how the Criterion 4K looks in this scene. The Criterion blu-ray is probably showing too much there, but the Carlotta grade is just ridiculous.

It's downconverted caps of a DV disc, it can't be taken at face value regarding the reproduction of the grading.

I don't know if it's just my television (an LG C9), which I've found to be great handling Dolby Vision and black and white up to this point, but I really dislike how The 400 Blows and Antoine and Colette looks in DV. The range in grayscale is so narrow that the whole thing is limited to dark grays. Not to the point like a bad down conversion like Les mistons (which I think looks even worse than how Citizen Kane's Blu-ray turned out btw), but it's just so ridiculously gray. Turning DV off it looks better and the range is wider. Grain also looks better in highlights, at least in the couple of scenes I spot-checked for now. Maybe because it's really SDR in a DV container?

Does anybody actually have Carlotta's? I'm curious how that one looks in Dolby Vision.

I've only seen the BD but it's IMO down to the restorations, and no DV will solve the poor choices made by Eclair.

It's a bit frustrating because the color films look fine in DV, outside of color grading.

Yeah, the work done by Hiventy on the color films is quite good, but the handling of the B&W movies by Eclair is one of their worst, within a string of surprisinly bonkersly bad grading choices (like for La guerre est finie and Le jour et l'heure). They're also doing stuff to textures in lower-lit elements in the frame that I vastly dislike, some kind of select grain management.

cdnchris wrote: Mon Jul 14, 2025 2:06 pm I don't know if it's just my television (an LG C9), which I've found to be great handling Dolby Vision and black and white up to this point, but I really dislike how The 400 Blows and Antoine and Colette looks in DV. The range in grayscale is so narrow that the whole thing is limited to dark grays. Not to the point like a bad down conversion like Les mistons (which I think looks even worse than how Citizen Kane's Blu-ray turned out btw), but it's just so ridiculously gray. Turning DV off it looks better and the range is wider. Grain also looks better in highlights, at least in the couple of scenes I spot-checked for now. Maybe because it's really SDR in a DV container?

Does anybody actually have Carlotta's? I'm curious how that one looks in Dolby Vision.

As I detailed earlier in the thread, I have the Carlotta and am excited to upgrade to the Criterion even if the master for The 400 Blows isn’t ideal. To answer your question straight away, Criterion’s master is indeed a SDR master in a HDR container, which someone on the other forum already found out as the average brightness is only 83 nits and Dolby Vision is a static container capped to 100 nits. It’s possible that they did this to protect themselves from the usual “why no HDR” comments this time as this set probably isn’t a guaranteed seller like Barry Lyndon.

Carlotta’s is probably HDR though as the maximum light level in HDR10 is up to 911 nits and average 106 nits. Some of the highlights do look HDR-like in terms brightness and clipping also occurs as there’s not enough detail to properly roll them off. Some of the grain in OCN-sourced shots is also unusually crisp and luminous, which can be particularly noticeable against darker backdrops and a light source or the sky appears. So, in the end, this should indeed be a SDR base master with an additional HDR grade on top. This happens more often than I’d like with French labels but what can you do.

Regarding the black levels. Take this cap for instance: https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?go=1&a=0 ... 77&i=3&l=0. This shot comes roughly 30 minutes into the film. Gamma levels are ridiculously bad in the SDR-converted screenshot and slightly better in DV but still elevated and with as little detail as seen in the cap compared to the earlier BD. It’s just a terribly flat grade and looks that way at all times. I’m afraid Criterion couldn’t do much with that but if they found a way to make the black levels more film-like and have fine encoding throughout, I’d already be happy. The color films on the Carlotta are especially horrid encoding-wise but grading is fine with no gamma issues or anything to worry about that needed fixing.

Looking forward to your review(s) and screenshots!

I have the blu-ray set and the problem with Les Mistons does not seem as evident on my TV, although it could be that my setup is substandard.

One thing is clear though: the included book is far shorter and missing most of the entries from the DVD set. It only contains an essay from Truffaut and assorted essays on each of the films. All of the other supplementary texts have disappeared. For this reason, I think that I will keep my DVD set on display for reference use.

Any word on if there will be a replacement for the 400 blows Blu because of the issues with Les Mistons?
I watched the movies this weekend, and I'm just not as tech savvy as some on here.
The films all looked great, and I didn't notice anything in the darker blacks that took me out of the viewing experience as being too dark.

Watching The 400 Blows now and I'm really impressed with how dark the appearance of the film is without sacrificing the heavy grain present in classroom scenes, etc. Re: the image of Antoine overhearing his parents' argument that's linked above, it looked perfectly fine and much, much more like the Criterion BD than the Carlotta.

Have no doubt this could be better, but it's a lot better than the images I've seen of the Carlotta. Haven't put the other discs in yet, but the set is gorgeous, having never had it in DVD back in the day, they really used beautiful art for it throughout. The Blu-ray edition is notably much more narrow-spined than the 4K edition, so they're easy to tell apart while sharing the same art and packaging.

Might be controversial to say it, but: The 400 Blows, which I hadn't seen in about 20 years... turns out this is a pretty good movie. I know, I know. I'm as shocked to say it as you are to hear it.

Have been through all but Love on the Run at this point, and can state that the PQ is a good enough reason on its own to pick up the UHD set. All films look great despite the occasional French restoration quirks. No complaints whatsoever.

mfunk9786 wrote: Tue Jul 22, 2025 5:45 pm Have been through all but Love on the Run at this point, and can state that the PQ is a good enough reason on its own to pick up the UHD set. All films look great despite the occasional French restoration quirks. No complaints whatsoever.

That is heartening after all the middling reactions so far. I got spooked to the point where I haven't unwrapped it. Looking forward to the site reviews when they go up.

Svet will say it’s too teal compared to his cognac-blurred memory of seeing it projected theatrically, which he’s lying about anyway. Others will be incensed that Fidelity in Motion wasn’t involved in the encode. Same old stuff. Fact is, these are a massive upgrade from the DVD format and a no-brainer.

mfunk9786 wrote: Tue Jul 22, 2025 6:11 pm Svet will say it’s too teal compared to his cognac-blurred memory of seeing it projected theatrically, which he’s lying about anyway. Others will be incensed that Fidelity in Motion wasn’t involved in the encode. Same old stuff. Fact is, these are a massive upgrade from the DVD format and a no-brainer.

Hey! Put in a spoiler alert next time

I got the set today. After the Carlotta 4K and BFI BD of The 400 Blows, this is my second or third time with these restorations and thankfully this will be the last one. I don’t think it was mentioned before but Criterion actually handed the flawed mk2 master over to Prasad Corporation for "additional restoration" instead of working on it in-house. While Prasad have become renowned for their image restoration work, I think it’s fair for to assume that the additional grading work is predominantly implied here. All other masters, including Antoine et Colette, don’t have such credits beyond the original colorist.

I’m mentioning Antoine et Colette as that film’s also been shot in black & white and was mastered by the colorist who tinkered with The 400 Blows. On the Carlotta, the film is also presented in 4K Dolby Vision and looks terrible with its flat grayscale and even worse black levels than 400 Blows. Criterion corrected the gamma levels to OLED-deep, inky blacks, which makes the film better watchable but it’s still a botched master that buried so much detail in the grade.

fkid on the other forum pretty much summed everything up in his post re. The 400 Blows and the improvements Criterion made. I also think that it’s a considerable improvement over the previous iterations. Black levels are better and Criterion toned down the occasionally excessive Carlotta HDR highlights I described earlier in this thread. It’s a more even presentation and despite the less ideal source, they made the film look better than anticipated.

I’d only like to expand a bit on the HDR situation after having compared Criterion’s BD in the new set, which is actually not the old disc recycled and therefore also sourced from the 4K restoration. In SDR, I feel like Criterion’s gamma adjustments and the more limited dynamic range of SDR don’t fuse together that seamlessly. While it depends on individual shots, scenes and lighting conditions, I was bothered by occasionally striking contrasts between some surprisingly bright and luminous highlights in SDR and the restored inky blacks. Of course, the imperfect master is partially to blame for that situation but in all honesty, even if the HDR/DV pass is static on paper and essentially a container, I really appreciated that it toned down the highlights for a more restrained look despite an overall decrease in luminance. I watched this in a dark room and gravitated to the 4K HDR version rather quickly. I’d recommend buyers to test what they prefer as there’s no clear answer in my mind.

Both discs are really good encoding-wise and improvements over the other discs.

Same thing for the color films. Carlotta’s encodes were terrible with heavy blocking in the highlights and pervasive chroma noise. Criterion / NexSpec did much better and only occasionally struggles with skies. Grain is finely detailed and it doesn’t look filtered. Grading is debatable and particularly whether all three subsequent films (shot years apart by two cinematographers, one of them being the legendary Néstor Almendros) have roughly the same visual identity. Still, colors are adequately balanced with variations in the (yellowish) hues, there are no tints, black levels and shadow detail is excellent.

With all hurdles considered, this set turned out better than anticipated and in my mind is worth it for the strong improvements they made for The 400 Blows.

I compared Les Mistons between the BFI and Criterion 400 Blows discs. I suppose if you're watching the Criterion in isolation, you may or may not notice a problem, but side by side, the BFI image is visibly superior. It's also curious that the film's score on the Criterion disc starts with like a 15 second intro not present on the BFI version. The pitch also seems to be different between the two discs

swo17 wrote:I compared Les Mistons between the BFI and Criterion 400 Blows discs. I suppose if you're watching the Criterion in isolation, you may or may not notice a problem, but side by side, the BFI image is visibly superior. It's also curious that the film's score on the Criterion disc starts with like a 15 second intro not present on the BFI version. The pitch also seems to be different between the two discs

That’s quite some differences for a short film. I do hope Criterion recognizes the demand here and fixes the issue. Then we can do a proper assessment of the new restoration.

There will be no replacement discs for Les Mistons. Criterion does not consider it to be in error.

dvakman wrote: Wed Jul 23, 2025 11:50 am There will be no replacement discs for Les Mistons. Criterion does not consider it to be in error.

How do you know this?

omegadirective wrote: Wed Jul 23, 2025 1:36 pm

dvakman wrote: Wed Jul 23, 2025 11:50 am There will be no replacement discs for Les Mistons. Criterion does not consider it to be in error.

How do you know this?

Somebody on the other forum emailed Mulvaney, but the it's unclear whether he was specifically denying error with Les Mistons on the BD that contains it. So nothing definitive as far as I know. As far as I remember it usually takes a while before they acknowledge such things.

Criterion wrote me directly and told me they see no problems with Les Mistons and it is as intended.

Well, in that case I hope Les Mistons looks better on my screen than what macacca posted as a comparison with the BFI, because that is egregious.