UHD Titles Worth/Not Worth Upgrading

[therewillbeblus]

Chris' review
"As with all Cronenberg commentaries, it’s an intelligent and engaging track, well worth listening to, and possibly one of the more significant selling points for Criterion’s edition."

Surprisingly, there’s barely any coverage of the Lucas commentary which he did for the old Arrow BD release in 2015 already. No mention of its quality in the reviews on the other forum. I only found G. Tooze @ DVDBeaver praising it as “fabulous”.

I'm gonna assume those are very production/anecdotal tracks, whereas the Lucas is more scholarly/analytical. I am not a Cronenberg guy at all but know his commentaries are apparently really good. Chris remarked upon the split Arrow/Criterion approach in his reviews of the opposing editions of Crash too

That's very helpful ryannichols and nicolas (and Chris)! I'll probably just rent the Criterion from my lib to hear the commentaries the next time I wanna watch this movie twice in a row

[Maltic]

Lucas was on the set as well.

[academyratio]

La Haine Criterion 4K belongs in the red category. I watched the disc on release day and it's a surprisingly stunning disc with a great encode, which is a relief after seeing the poor compression from a few of their other new releases. I was actually prepared to be disappointed, and I'm glad I wasn't.

I think a lot of people will be very pleased this one. Sucks that Pixelogic/Nexspec can't bother to make all of their discs look this good, but it is what it is. I'm still very upset about Blood Simple.

[nicolas]

La Haine Criterion 4K belongs in the red category. I watched the disc on release day and it's a surprisingly stunning disc with a great encode, which is a relief after seeing the poor compression from a few of their other new releases. I was actually prepared to be disappointed, and I'm glad I wasn't.

I think a lot of people will be very pleased this one. Sucks that Pixelogic/Nexspec can't bother to make all of their discs look this good, but it is what it is. I'm still very upset about Blood Simple.

Great to hear your confirmation. It seems we finally have something to hold on to when it comes to La Haine after disappointing Studiocanal (FR) and Plaion releases (and from Criterion of all labels). The only possible improvement after this may be a potential BFI / FiM disc although it appears to me that this is far from guaranteed to happen as we already have the second English-friendly 4K versions of the film and BFI tend to be very selective about their upgrades.

[GoodOldNeon]

La Haine Criterion 4K belongs in the red category. I watched the disc on release day and it's a surprisingly stunning disc with a great encode, which is a relief after seeing the poor compression from a few of their other new releases. I was actually prepared to be disappointed, and I'm glad I wasn't.

I think a lot of people will be very pleased this one. Sucks that Pixelogic/Nexspec can't bother to make all of their discs look this good, but it is what it is. I'm still very upset about Blood Simple.

Great to hear your confirmation. It seems we finally have something to hold on to when it comes to La Haine after disappointing Studiocanal (FR) and Plaion releases (and from Criterion of all labels). The only possible improvement after this may be a potential BFI / FiM disc although it appears to me that this is far from guaranteed to happen as we already have the second English-friendly 4K versions of the film and BFI tend to be very selective about their upgrades.

Was there something particular about the Studiocanal release of La haine that makes you say it was disappointing? The only mentions of it in this thread suggest that it is a solid upgrade over the most recent Blu-ray. I have the SC 4k but haven't gotten around to watching it yet, and am trying to decide whether it is worth getting the Criterion instead.

[nicolas]

La Haine Criterion 4K belongs in the red category. I watched the disc on release day and it's a surprisingly stunning disc with a great encode, which is a relief after seeing the poor compression from a few of their other new releases. I was actually prepared to be disappointed, and I'm glad I wasn't.

I think a lot of people will be very pleased this one. Sucks that Pixelogic/Nexspec can't bother to make all of their discs look this good, but it is what it is. I'm still very upset about Blood Simple.

Great to hear your confirmation. It seems we finally have something to hold on to when it comes to La Haine after disappointing Studiocanal (FR) and Plaion releases (and from Criterion of all labels). The only possible improvement after this may be a potential BFI / FiM disc although it appears to me that this is far from guaranteed to happen as we already have the second English-friendly 4K versions of the film and BFI tend to be very selective about their upgrades.

Was there something particular about the Studiocanal release of La haine that makes you say it was disappointing? The only mentions of it in this thread suggest that it is a solid upgrade over the most recent Blu-ray. I have the SC 4k but haven't gotten around to watching it yet, and am trying to decide whether it is worth getting the Criterion instead.

I don’t have any old BD of the film, my first edition was the SC 4K but I looked at the old master on the Criterion Channel before I bought that version and thought it was worth it. The problem with the Studiocanal is the encoding, which is disappointing in the highlights and otherwise solid. Skies don’t show much, if any grain and when traces still resolve in DV, it’s all macroblocking. In other scenes, the grain literally dissolves away in a shot. This is difficult to describe unless you see it in person. For example, you have a sky that makes up roughly 1/3 of a frame with the other 2/3 being the foreground with characters, scenery etc. down below. Within that sky area, you see traces of grain in roughly half of the image portion and the other one is fully devoid of it. It’s obviously not that mathematically precise but along these lines. This is particularly egregious in some early scenes with the characters walking around in the suburbs. I‘ve never seen anything just like that on a 4K restoration, but it’s common in bad, old, blown-out DVD / HD masters. I’m not saying the 4K restoration isn’t new or anything like that, it’s just the encode that has all these problems. The German Plaion UHD is a little better, but not much. When I got that one I thought I had the definitive version since they usually deliver very good encodes and subsequently blamed the highlight issues on the master. This could have absolutely been the case considering it’s Studiocanal and everything was done in France. (The French labs they commission have ruined the 4K restorations of multiple of the classics they own). Now, with Criterion showing some grain across the entire sky (screenshot on the other forum: https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php? ... stcount=29), I’m confident it’s all an encoding problem and the master itself is at least solid or even excellent.

The look on the SC is comparable to what many Kino Lorber 4Ks look like since they switched authoring houses. Stalag 17 also cuts off the grain when it comes to skies but at least it’s the entire sky and not half of it.

I assume it was primarily the restoration itself and a lack of reviews / opinions that got the SC UHD on the “solid upgrade” list at the time.

[ChunkyLover]

Paths of Glory (MoC) & superior import

Kino's encode on Paths of Glory is apparently pretty solid actually but MoC's package (encoded by Fidelity) is simply more comprehensive (Adrian Martin commentary, video pieces & a booklet with Glenn Kenny essay and Kubrick quotes compared to Kino's lonely Tim Lucas commentary)

Worth nothing that Eureka's disc also uses Criterion's mono track rather than what Eureka used for their original BD/is on Kino Lorber's UHD. This is good news as the Criterion track is much superior (Criterion first, Eureka/Kino Lorber second):
https://vocaroo.com/1kNukFRv9xnm
https://vocaroo.com/1lTorwClBjfe

Edited for Kino Lorber clarification.

[swo17]

Worth noting!

[Finch]

Thanks for that, CL, adding the audio notes to OP!

[nicolas]

Paths of Glory (MoC) & superior import

Kino's encode on Paths of Glory is apparently pretty solid actually but MoC's package (encoded by Fidelity) is simply more comprehensive (Adrian Martin commentary, video pieces & a booklet with Glenn Kenny essay and Kubrick quotes compared to Kino's lonely Tim Lucas commentary)

Worth nothing that Eureka's disc also uses Criterion's mono track rather than what Eureka used for their original BD. This is good news as the Criterion track is much superior (Criterion first, Eureka second):
https://vocaroo.com/1kNukFRv9xnm
https://vocaroo.com/1lTorwClBjfe

I hope M A or AxeYou can chime in and confirm whether the track of the old R1 MGM DVD is superior even when compared to the Criterion audio. Would be wonderful to have a solid Criterion (and now Eureka 4K) track for one without their trademark filtering.

[M-A]

Yep, the old MGM DVD is still better than the Criterion's audio

[therewillbeblus]

It's surprising to see Titanic listed as Disappointing. It looks marvelous to my eyes. Actually, all the Cameron discs seem fine except True Lies (which is the only one not worth owning anyways!) I'm sure some tampering is there, but isn't as obvious to me in the dark muddy depths of Aliens and The Abyss, while it shines obnoxiously in a brighter movie like True Lies - still, Titanic is fantastic

[AxeYou]

ChunkyLover's audio samples above are pretty illustrative. In addition, here's a 4-way spectrogram comparison of Paths of Glory because I triple-dipped : https://slow.pics/c/RLCWnNsL

All synced to Eureka UHD for a straightforward comparison. Not level-matched, but clearly, as M-A stated, MGM DVD is the winner, while Kino UHD is the most filtered.

Btw, Adrian Martin's commentary on the Eureka UHD has a hard cutoff at ~13 kHz, presumably due to AC-3 compression at 112 kbps. In contrast, Eureka's own 2016 BD has full range: https://slow.pics/c/uCUcyQd5

[Finch]

With the Kino audio the most filtered, should it be downgraded to the blue tier?

[AxeYou]

Given that Kino's video is pretty good and that plenty of releases in the red tier don't have the best audio, I guess Kino arguably still deserves the red, just with a caveat. But, your list, your call, Finch

Btw re. Three Colors:

The Three Colors Trilogy (Curzon) (UK import) (caveat: no original audio)

The Three Colors Trilogy (Curzon UK > Criterion US) (better encode on the UK set across all three films + documentaries in HD)

I finally watched all three films in motion on both Curzon & Criterion. Caps really do fail to tell the full story here: Curzon has so much chroma noise floating around that I ended up settling for Criterion's slight filtering. As such, I don't think Curzon deserves the red tier here, and not even as a "better encode" than Criterion. As for the Criterion, even with filtering, we can still find grain clumping together now and then. Nothing egregious, but enough to distract and disappoint the discerning viewer. I'm so glad I caught the DCP screenings a few years ago.

A little more detail and nic agreeing with this take: https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php? ... tcount=172

Also (IIRC someone mentioned this before) Curzon does feature the OG audio. It has LPCM 2.0 on all three films. It's Criterion who dropped the 2.0 for 5.1 remixes.

[nicolas]

Given that Kino's video is pretty good and that plenty of releases in the red tier don't have the best audio, I guess Kino arguably still deserves the red, just with a caveat. But, your list, your call, Finch

Btw re. Three Colors:

The Three Colors Trilogy (Curzon) (UK import) (caveat: no original audio)

The Three Colors Trilogy (Curzon UK > Criterion US) (better encode on the UK set across all three films + documentaries in HD)

I finally watched all three films in motion on both Curzon & Criterion. Caps really do fail to tell the full story here: Curzon has so much chroma noise floating around that I ended up settling for Criterion's slight filtering. As such, I don't think Curzon deserves the red tier here, and not even as a "better encode" than Criterion. As for the Criterion, even with filtering, we can still find grain clumping together now and then. Nothing egregious, but enough to distract and disappoint the discerning viewer. I'm so glad I caught the DCP screenings a few years ago.

A little more detail and nic agreeing with this take: https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php? ... tcount=172

Also (IIRC someone mentioned this before) Curzon does feature the OG audio. It has LPCM 2.0 on all three films. It's Criterion who dropped the 2.0 for 5.1 remixes.

All 4K editions of the Three Colors Trilogy are flawed in one or the other way.

Regarding the 2.0 mixes, are you sure these are original mixes and not downmixes á la Kino? Their Wings of Desire’s 2.0 is a downmix, which made me take all of their subsequent 2.0’s with a grain of salt.

Comment I found from MichaelB about the original audio on this page: https://www.criterionforum.org/forum/vi ... eo#p791175

[AxeYou]

Hmm idk if Curzon's 2.0 on Three Colors are downmixes. Someone on another forum told me the Miramax DVDs had the best 2.0 tracks. I'll compare them against Curzon's when I get a chance! I'll also check whether the new 5.1 mixes have identical rears, i.e., Dolby Stereo's L/C/R/S config in a modern 5.1 container.

[tenia]

It's surprising to see Titanic listed as Disappointing. It looks marvelous to my eyes. Actually, all the Cameron discs seem fine except True Lies (which is the only one not worth owning anyways!) I'm sure some tampering is there, but isn't as obvious to me in the dark muddy depths of Aliens and The Abyss, while it shines obnoxiously in a brighter movie like True Lies - still, Titanic is fantastic

The 4 Cameron remasters are all different shades of problematically obtained.

Titanic, and Abyss to a certain extent, "looks" good only because both the photographies and most likely the original scans allowed for the Park Road Post treatment to work relatively well with them. They do remain, however, problematic reworks of past works that lack what a traditional new work would allow. In the case of Titanic and Aliens, there even is legitimate grounds for recommending to keep the BD and upscale it, since in the end, considering the new remasters are reusing them, and they're reusing them in an intrusively filtered way at that, it makes for a more transparent result anyway.

Even in the case of Titanic, the Park Road algorithm do create a few issues, basically turning an already filtered picture into something even more unnatural, both smooth and sharp but in a select way that doesn't match anything achievable photochemically. On top of that, HDR and WCG are limited because no upstream work has been redone to allow a wider use of their capacities. And on top of that, Titanic has a couple of missing lines on its Atmos track. As such, if Picnic at Hanging Rock goes into the disappointing section, it seems fair (though maybe a tad on the harsher side) for Titanic to end up there too.

The Abyss is quite close in aspects, though there is no backup BD, but at least it seems like the underlying scan allowed for a better result (and also a non-limited use of HDR and WCG).

Then, Aliens is an obvious rework of the previous master, that wasn't even 4K, and whose scan wasn't even 4K. Not only there is a backup BD, though the 2009 master was already a Lowry-processed-obtained one (meaning the new master is filtered on top of a filtered source), but it says a lot as to the quality bar setup for such a result, and how you can even achieve it with a 2K master.

And then True Lies is just a mess that nobody should ever defend.

[rrenault]

Regarding The Three Colors Trilogy, the Criterion set has some pretty egregious macroblocking, especially if viewing in HDR10.

Based on this alone I'll settle for admittedly distracting chroma noise:

https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?a=1&x=64 ... &i=11&go=1

The Curzon discs don't have any blocking as egregious on what's in the above image. I'm not saying the Curzon discs aren't flawed, although I think The Double Life of Veronique is actually the best looking of their four Kieslowski releases.

[Finch]

I'll leave the Kino of Paths of Glory in the red then and add a comment to the OP.

[nicolas]

It's surprising to see Titanic listed as Disappointing. It looks marvelous to my eyes. Actually, all the Cameron discs seem fine except True Lies (which is the only one not worth owning anyways!) I'm sure some tampering is there, but isn't as obvious to me in the dark muddy depths of Aliens and The Abyss, while it shines obnoxiously in a brighter movie like True Lies - still, Titanic is fantastic

The 4 Cameron remasters are all different shades of problematically obtained.

Titanic, and Abyss to a certain extent, "looks" good only because both the photographies and most likely the original scans allowed for the Park Road Post treatment to work relatively well with them. They do remain, however, problematic reworks of past works that lack what a traditional new work would allow. In the case of Titanic and Aliens, there even is legitimate grounds for recommending to keep the BD and upscale it, since in the end, considering the new remasters are reusing them, and they're reusing them in an intrusively filtered way at that, it makes for a more transparent result anyway.

Even in the case of Titanic, the Park Road algorithm do create a few issues, basically turning the picture into something not very natural, which is both smooth and sharp but in a select way that doesn't match anything natural. On top of that, HDR and WCG are limited because no upstream work has been redone to allow a wider use of their capacities. And on top of that, Titanic has a couple of missing lines on its Atmos track.

The Abyss is quite close in aspects, though there is no backup BD, but at least it seems like the underlying scan allowed for a better result (and also a non-limited use of HDR and WCG).

Then, Aliens is an obvious rework of the previous master, that wasn't even 4K, and whose scan wasn't even 4K. Not only there is a backup BD, though the 2009 master was already a Lowry-processed-obtained one (meaning the new master is filtered on top of a filtered source), but it says a lot as to the quality bar setup for such a result, and how you can even achieve it with a 2K master.

And then True Lies is just a mess that nobody should ever defend.

I’d also argue that all of these Cameron films suffer from color grading that is sometimes severely revisionist. I watched them on streaming 4K (Titanic on disc) and my first negative impression of a new shot / scene was mostly due to the grading before I sensed and took issue with the AI tinkering. The Abyss is especially striking with its strong, digitally infused, steel-like texture nearly throughout but Aliens isn’t much better. The golden hues of Titanic fare better (True Lies as well) but it’s still unnecessarily tampered with in comparison with the 2012 BD and the raw 35mm scan in exteriors. If we consider Ritrovata and Eclair masters disappointing because of the grade alone, it seems reasonable to do the same with the Camerons as they’re uniformly graded without proper consideration for the original analogue source. Shame that we don’t have old, better BDs of Abyss and True Lies to go back to.

[therewillbeblus]

Thanks for the explanation guys! I’m glad my eyes aren’t quite as sensitive (read: knowledgeable to be sensitive), but then again, I’m grateful to at least be able to see why

True Lies is just a mess that nobody should ever defend.

[tenia]

I believe that, in the end, it's both a matter of eye sensitivity to these but also how, well, those filters are supposedly applied in a way that should trick us. I don't think anybody made those with the goal of making the movies look awful, so to some extent, they should be combinated in a way that can be found quite fine.

And Titanic most certainly isn't a particularly egregious contender. It's quite clear that True Lies stand aside in a bad way, and I'd argue that having a backup BD allow to pinpoint how manipulated Aliens' PQ now look, but Abyss doesn't have that, and Titanic isn't that bad. The rumor is that these remasters have been done during the process' learning curve, True Lies being the first one and thus acting as a guinea pig (amazing that nobody thought it might be worth redoing once the process was stabilized, but that's another story), and Titanic being the last one, which would, honestly, fit the results on screen.

But they all look manipulated to some extent, all of them not without negative collateral damages, hence being disappointing in the grander scheme of things. Most of them aren't any, say, Terminator 2, though. But I do hope not a single other movie ever has to suffer this kind of process.

[therewillbeblus]

Yes, it's becoming increasingly frustrating to feel like you're gambling when spending so much money to upgrade a disc, especially when you unconditionally support the company, or movie being released with preorders. There's an expectation of a similar, reciprocal regard for the customer, by the company ensuring the discs come out as intended. So the current system actually supports hesitation on the consumer, which doesn't support the company in gaining financial returns quickly to help with ongoing production costs. Not to say that people (including me!) aren't still taking these risks, but it feels like a lose-lose situation all around. If this winds up leading to a pattern of healthy aversion with delays of gratification leading to an overall increasing indifference or dwindling enthusiasm, I can see UHD's unpredictability contributing in some small way to the further decline of the physical media market

[rrenault]

On a side note, Carlotta in France are releasing In The Realm of the Senses on UHD. If it’s done by FiM it should be a beauty.