Anyone here succumbed to 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray?

[Jurassic Shark 12,054]

12 minutes ago, Alexcremers said:

 

I guess you are right.

 

 

You guess? Is that an estimate?

[A24 4,331]

Well, there's always the chance that Chen secretly does agree with the estimates.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

So I'm watching Last Crusade on blu-ray on my 4K tele and it looks great, as did the first two films. What exactly am I missing without HDR? Because it doesn't look inferior to my HDR 4K discs in any noticeable way.

[A24 4,331]

 

There are no HDR 4K versions of Indiana Jones yet, right? 

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

No, but if there was, why would I upgrade when the regular blu-ray already looks great? If the home theatre enthusiasts' selling point is HDR and "object-based audio", then it better look friggin fantastic because if you told me what I'm watching now was 4K HDR, I'd probably believe you. It all sounds like a diminishing returns thing.

[Jurassic Shark 12,054]

30 minutes ago, Þekþiþm said:

object-based audio

 

What's that?

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

1 minute ago, Jurassic Shark said:

 

What's that?

 

Dolby Atmos and DTS:X.

[Jurassic Shark 12,054]

41 minutes ago, Þekþiþm said:

 

Dolby Atmos and DTS:X.

 

What's that?

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

8 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

 

What's that?

 

The new Pro-Logic.

[Jurassic Shark 12,054]

1 minute ago, Þekþiþm said:

 

The new Pro-Logic.

 

Describe it in terms of mono or stereo, please.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

It's like many stereos in front of you, behind you and even above you!

[Jurassic Shark 12,054]

6 minutes ago, Þekþiþm said:

It's like many stereos in front of you, behind you and even above you!

 

It surrounds us and penetrates us!

[crocodile 8,000]

Bought the Skywalker Saga set and watched The Phantom Menace last night. Boy, this doesn't look very good, does it? It's better than the Disney+ stream version though.

 

Got The Deer Hunter, The Elephant Man, Joker and Knives Out recently as well. I have yet to watch any of them but with everything going on right now there's no rush.

 

Karol

[Jurassic Shark 12,054]

What do you expect when it was filmed in little more than VGA resolution?

[crocodile 8,000]

1 minute ago, Jurassic Shark said:

What do you expect when it was filmed in little more than VGA resolution?

It was shot on 35mm... right?

 

Karol

[Jurassic Shark 12,054]

Not all of it.

[crocodile 8,000]

3 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Not all of it.

Yeah, only some material from the reshoots was done on digital because the equipment wasn't ready for principal photography. Just checked.

 

Karol

[Chen G. 3,949]

There's no scene in The Phantom Menace that jumps out as having been shot on a prototype digital camera. One has to wonder what that mythical digital footage is and what it amounts to.

 

Other than the CGI scenes, the footage never quite looks digital, in spite of George Lucas' best (i.e. worst) attempts to smoothen and denoise it so as to make it uniform with its two sequels.

 

If it doesn't look good, its probably more to do with the DI used on the film.

[Jurassic Shark 12,054]

5 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

One has to wonder what that mythical digital footage is and what it amounts to.

 

It's the end credits.

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

My theory about the DNR in TPM was that the uptick in resolution presented an issue with the visual effects which had been rendered at a lower resolution, similar to Jurassic Park. HD remasters reveal or create flaws that were otherwise never an issue. The DNR in TPM isn't consistent, however. It does that annoying thing where it flip flops between shots. However, I believe there was a method to the madness and it wasn't exactly to make it look like Episodes II and III, but rather help the digital effects hold up to the scrutiny of the high definition. 

[Manakin Skywalker 4,891]

1 hour ago, Chen G. said:

There's no scene in The Phantom Menace that jumps out as having been shot on a prototype digital camera. One has to wonder what that mythical digital footage is and what it amounts to.

 

We already have that information. The digital shots in TPM are when Qui-Gon is taking a sample of Anakin's blood. The adjoining shots of Obi-Wan analyzing it on the ship however were shot on film. You can very clearly tell the difference on the HDTV source... the shots of Qui-Gon are crisp and clear of much grain, and look identical to AOTC. However the adjoining shots of Obi-Wan are blurry and covered in grain and noise, as is the rest of the film. On the Blu-Ray and 4K release however there appears to be no discernable difference.

 

Here are the two shots in question:

 

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

I recall the scene of the blood sample looking very dark and grainy.

[Chen G. 3,949]

27 minutes ago, Manakin Skywalker said:

 

We already have that information. The digital shots in TPM are when Qui-Gon is taking a sample of Anakin's blood.[...]Here are the two shots in question:

 

So I’ve heard, but I’ve never seen any proof that it was indeed this particular scene. Plus, it never looked terribly digital to me. Certainly not in the way that Attack of the Clones looks.
 

The Obi-Wan shot looks softer because it’s in red: the magenta layer of colour film is always less sharp and captures less detail, and so red colours and scenes lit in red would alway look softer. It’s also why one uses blue or green screens for composites: those colours look sharper.

 

However, it does makes sense to use the digital camera for a night-time scene, so it’s certainly the prime candidate.

[Manakin Skywalker 4,891]

3 hours ago, Chen G. said:

So I’ve heard, but I’ve never seen any proof that it was indeed this particular scene. Plus, it never looked terribly digital to me. Certainly not in the way that Attack of the Clones looks.
 

The Obi-Wan shot looks softer because it’s in red: the magenta layer of colour film is always less sharp and captures less detail, and so red colours and scenes lit in red would alway look softer. It’s also why one uses blue or green screens for composites: those colours look sharper.

 

However, it does makes sense to use the digital camera for a night-time scene, so it’s certainly the prime candidate.

 

This information comes from TheStarWarsTrilogy.com, from the same people responsible for the 4K projects. One of them is working on a theatrical print of TPM. Also, the frames that I've posted aren't the best example. Other dark shots also reveal a lot of noise, while these shots contain very little. It's obvious that a digital camera was used. If you were to see the entirety of the HDTV version of the film you'd be able to easily tell that scene is unique.

[mstrox 6,651]

That Qui-Gon scene has always stood out very clearly from the rest of the film, visually.

[crocodile 8,000]

Watched Attack of the Clones last night. Looks better...but worse...if you catch my meaning.

 

Karol

[Chen G. 3,949]

The issue with Attack of the Clones is that out of the stated 1080p resolution, they were probably only getting around 1.6K at the most, so its a pretty big upscale to 4K. Plus, its only 8-bit colour so it was never going to benefit much from HDR.

 

I hear Revenge of the Sith fares much better, though.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

It takes a lot of computer power to achieve true 1080p. I'd love to see TVs that can yield that kind of super high resolution image some day. But you'll need to replace your whole DVD collection with new blue laser discs, as they call them, which have the capacity to fit all six SW movies on one disc at DVD quality!

[crocodile 8,000]

Watching Revenge of the Sith now. Big jump in picture quality. Almost flawless.

 

Karol

[A24 4,331]

Completely digital!

[Manakin Skywalker 4,891]

I always found it odd that the older SW films are always DNR'd to hell, meanwhile the newer films are covered in grain. You'd think it'd be the other way around. I was just watching bits of TROS and it is super grainy in some spots, but in a good way. Human faces don't look like silly putty.

[Chen G. 3,949]

JJ Abrams made it a point to shoot VII and IX on film (just like he pandered to puppetry fans with a puppet Maz in The Rise of Skywalker) but I wouldn’t call it particularly grainy. It just didn’t undergo the DNR that Lucas did to the originals.

 

Episode VIII was a mix of film and digital, with grain simulation on the digital footage. DP Steve Yedlin made it a point to prove to the watching audience that they wouldn’t actually be able to tell the difference, even within a single given scene. Due to using a variety of film and digital formats, all three sequel films mix spherical and anamorphic formats, which I’m less than happy about. 
 

Rogue One was digital and anamorphic. Sith was digital and spherical.

[Manakin Skywalker 4,891]

I'm curious to see what the new OT scans looked like before DNR was applied. Probably excessively grainy to a degree, but probably somewhat better than with the DNR.

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

The 4K versions are DNR'd?

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

Most Joe Blow Disney+ subscribers would have no idea how 35mm film is meant to look. They're more likely to complain.

[A24 4,331]

Is film grain that visible on a laptop?

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

I remember it could be prominent on my old Compaq 17 inch CRT monitor from 1999. That baby could yield stunning results from DVDs, even ones where film grain was visible. But mine was obviously more high-end than the average consumer grade gear.

[Chen G. 3,949]

7 hours ago, Manakin Skywalker said:

I'm curious to see what the new OT scans looked like before DNR was applied. Probably excessively grainy to a degree.

Probably. To say that, with a film like Star Wars, one scans the “original camera negative” is a bit misleading. In a film so laden with optical effects, the “original camera negative” is in many sections one generation away from a true camera negative, and therefore contains much more grain AND much less detail.
 

It would be curious to know just how much resolving power the 4K version really has. Stills from a 4K scan of slow, well-exposed Super-35mm resolve 3.2K. But those kinds of slow stocks didn’t exist back then, and the composite shots will resolve less still. Probably still more than 2K, though, hence why it still looks better in 4K.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

Sure but when you scan film at lower resolutions and play it back on a 4K screen, that "blow up" process can cause noticable digital artifacting where grain can look squarish rather than naturally rounded like it would at a fresh 4K scan of the elements.

[Chen G. 3,949]

Yeah, you always want to scan a piece of film at a resolution where the pixels are smaller than the grains.

[Jurassic Shark 12,054]

2 hours ago, Chen G. said:

Probably. To say that, with a film like Star Wars, one scans the “original camera negative” is a bit misleading. In a film so laden with optical effects, the “original camera negative” is in many sections one generation away from a true camera negative, and therefore contains much more grain AND much less detail.

 

Unless they rebuild the film from scratch, which is something Lucasfilm probably would consider.

[Chen G. 3,949]

Seems like waaaay too much work.

[Jurassic Shark 12,054]

In George's spirit, they wouldn't miss a chance to mess with the films further.

[crocodile 8,000]

Watching the original SW now. Overall, it is a pleasant looking transfer (all things considered). Definitely the best it has ever looked on home media. It doesn't mean there are no issues but it was worth getting on disc as the Disney+ version isn't as good.

 

It's interesting to see how worn out the informs are. And Vader's helmet too.

 

Karol

[Jurassic Shark 12,054]

13 minutes ago, crocodile said:

It's interesting to see how worn out the informs are. And Vader's helmet too.

 

Well, it's a B-movie. They couldn't afford new ones.

[Chen G. 3,949]

It was always a much cheaper-looking film than The Empire Strikes Back. That’s not a slate against Lucas, it’s just the way it is: Empire had three times the budget, and was made with a lot of the special effects techniques and production crew already in working order.

[crocodile 8,000]

The funny thing about watching this film now in 4K is that the "cutting edge" CGI from 1997 now looks so shitty. The contrast between the 4K quality of the majority of the fil and the low resolution of these clips is hilarious.

 

Karol

[Jurassic Shark 12,054]

It cannot be worse than it was in cinemas in '97.

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

Looked great.

[1977 1,743]

16 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

It cannot be worse than it was in cinemas in '97.

 

Looked fine in mine. Perhaps your cinema was broken?

 

Some of the opticals looked pretty dodgy though.