UHD Titles Worth/Not Worth Upgrading

[nicolas]

Kagemusha - Toho UHD:

Welcome to another daily round of phenomenal news, now regarding Kagemusha. Received it today and had to check immediately.

If that Criterion BD didn’t have these extras, I’d have thrown it in the trash by now.
High and Low was a BIG upgrade, but this surpasses even the highest of expectations.

The Criterion BD is unwatchable for today’s standards, at least for me. I gave it another try to see if I correctly remembered my initial experience. It’s so bad you never want to buy another release by Criterion ever again.

But that Toho UHD… my God. A ravishing disc. Another BD-100, 80 GB for the film, restored 4.0 PCM audio (another massive, massive upgrade from the perplexingly bad Criterion track) and very good encoding in highlights and tricky areas like deep red.

Finally, the colors. With pleasure I can confirm that the initial screenshots are in a wrong color space. Colors appear as they should - thank God. Nothing to worry about. I’ll try my best to make some sort of remotely appropriate screenshots after ripping the disc. You have to see how great this restoration looks.

Phew. I’m a little speechless here. This is another release that feels surreal when looking at the previous ones. If you get yourself a copy, I hope you enjoy a great gift by Toho. The film being held up in the Fox / Disney debacle doesn’t bode well for a re-release in the US, so this might be the only way for a while.

As I said yesterday, Seven Samurai can’t come soon enough.

[Crimlaw25]

Didn’t Paramount at one point own the U.S. rights to The Conformist? I still own the DVD along with Bertolucci’s “1900”.

[rrenault]

nic compares UK and US 4ks of Wings of Desire and the Curzon is better though not ideal either.

With this in mind, I do wonder if at times you aren't a bit too liberally throwing Criterion UHDs in the reference column so long as they aren't distinctively poor in some way or other. In other corners of the internet, I see people suggesting Criterion still haven't fully resolved their compression issues in the transition to 4K. Blow Out, for instance, is unquestionably reference quality and manages to hold its own alongside a David M encode, but Raging Bull, on the other hand, feels like a more than adequate 4K-sourced home video presentation of the film. It doesn't have any obvious compression issues, but it's hardly eye candy level (i.e. BFI's Get Carter, Arrow's King of New York), which is what I'm generally expecting from discs in the reference column.

I personally think the reference column should be reserved for "eye candy discs", even if one wasn't isn't necessarily in love with the film itself, but that's just me I guess. As in, would you consider buying this disc on strictly AV grounds, regardless of the quality of the content.

Granted, maybe we'd have to remove way too many discs from the top column if we were going to be this strict about it, so...

[nicolas]

nic compares UK and US 4ks of Wings of Desire and the Curzon is better though not ideal either.

With this in mind, I do wonder if at times you aren't a bit too liberally throwing Criterion UHDs in the reference column so long as they aren't distinctively poor in some way or other. In other corners of the internet, I see people suggesting Criterion still haven't fully resolved their compression issues in the transition to 4K. Blow Out, for instance, is unquestionably reference quality and manages to hold its own alongside a David M encode, but Raging Bull, on the other hand, feels like a more than adequate 4K-sourced home video presentation of the film. It doesn't have any obvious compression issues, but it's hardly eye candy level (i.e. BFI's Get Carter, Arrow's King of New York), which is what I'm generally expecting from discs in the reference column.

I personally think the reference column should be reserved for "eye candy discs", even if one wasn't isn't necessarily in love with the film itself, but that's just me I guess. As in, would you consider buying this disc on strictly AV grounds, regardless of the quality of the content.

Granted, maybe we'd have to remove way too many discs from the top column if we were going to be this strict about it, so...

Fair point, I totally agree with you there. In my opinion, Criterion has done quite well with their first couple of 4K’s in late 2021 / early 2022, as if proving the world that they can do it. The Red Shoes, A Hard Day’s Night and Citizen Kane look great but now it’s “business as usual” again with Pixelogic and their permanent low-pass filtering and occasionally horrendous encoding (Three Colors).

I’d vote for taking a look at these discs again and eventually change their category or at least add a disclaimer like many discs have and mention eventual issues.

[MichaelB]

Kagemusha - Toho UHD:

Welcome to another daily round of phenomenal news, now regarding Kagemusha. Received it today and had to check immediately.

If that Criterion BD didn’t have these extras, I’d have thrown it in the trash by now.
High and Low was a BIG upgrade, but this surpasses even the highest of expectations.

The Criterion BD is unwatchable for today’s standards, at least for me. I gave it another try to see if I correctly remembered my initial experience. It’s so bad you never want to buy another release by Criterion ever again.

But that Toho UHD… my God. A ravishing disc. Another BD-100, 80 GB for the film, restored 4.0 PCM audio (another massive, massive upgrade from the perplexingly bad Criterion track) and very good encoding in highlights and tricky areas like deep red.

Finally, the colors. With pleasure I can confirm that the initial screenshots are in a wrong color space. Colors appear as they should - thank God. Nothing to worry about. I’ll try my best to make some sort of remotely appropriate screenshots after ripping the disc. You have to see how great this restoration looks.

Phew. I’m a little speechless here. This is another release that feels surreal when looking at the previous ones. If you get yourself a copy, I hope you enjoy a great gift by Toho. The film being held up in the Fox / Disney debacle doesn’t bode well for a re-release in the US, so this might be the only way for a while.

Presumably, since I have an Oppo player, I have the option of adding English subtitles from a separate file? I've never put this to the test, but I can't see any reason why this wouldn't work, especially as it appears to have a Japanese subtitle option.

[Drucker]

Kagemusha - Toho UHD:

Welcome to another daily round of phenomenal news, now regarding Kagemusha. Received it today and had to check immediately.

If that Criterion BD didn’t have these extras, I’d have thrown it in the trash by now.
High and Low was a BIG upgrade, but this surpasses even the highest of expectations.

The Criterion BD is unwatchable for today’s standards, at least for me. I gave it another try to see if I correctly remembered my initial experience. It’s so bad you never want to buy another release by Criterion ever again.

But that Toho UHD… my God. A ravishing disc. Another BD-100, 80 GB for the film, restored 4.0 PCM audio (another massive, massive upgrade from the perplexingly bad Criterion track) and very good encoding in highlights and tricky areas like deep red.

Finally, the colors. With pleasure I can confirm that the initial screenshots are in a wrong color space. Colors appear as they should - thank God. Nothing to worry about. I’ll try my best to make some sort of remotely appropriate screenshots after ripping the disc. You have to see how great this restoration looks.

Phew. I’m a little speechless here. This is another release that feels surreal when looking at the previous ones. If you get yourself a copy, I hope you enjoy a great gift by Toho. The film being held up in the Fox / Disney debacle doesn’t bode well for a re-release in the US, so this might be the only way for a while.

As I said yesterday, Seven Samurai can’t come soon enough.

Sorry if it's been answered already but do these Toho releases have English subs?

[MichaelB]

I'm close to certain that they haven't (no mention in the specs on Amazon.jp, and par for the course for Japanese releases), which is why I asked whether an Oppo player would be able to add them.

(My understanding is that they can overlay SRT files provided there are existing subtitles on the disc already. Although, come to think of it, I can always experiment with a random 4K disc and SRT file, and I think I'll do that right now!)

[ryannichols7]

they don't have English subs unfortunately. Shochiku is the only Japanese studio that usually cares enough to put them on there. I was just in Japan a week or so ago and my girlfriend and I went to every Book Off store we could. every store had people unloading the old Kurosawa blurays (including titles like The Bad Sleep Well and Stray Dog which CC never upgraded) but even those didn't have English subs!

really comforting to hear about Kagemusha, a title that would obviously look great on the format. it presents an interesting conundrum if Criterion were to attempt to license that from Fox I feel like...Toho did the restoration, no? and it's widely known they're the ones that are hard to work with here. I feel like Fox/Disney wouldn't be as much an obstacle, though Criterion has still yet to license a UHD from them (and there certainly are candidates)

these may be the titles that get me to buy an Oppo player, though I'm very happy with the Panasonic 820. then again, getting these UHDs (even if I were to grab them on another Japan trip) would also be an expensive prospect ..

[MichaelB]

Pricewise, there's not much difference for the likes of me, as the discs are going to have to travel thousands of miles regardless of whether they're Criterion or Toho.

And I agree that the Fox issue may present a significant obstacle as regards a non-Japanese release.

[nicolas]

I have a Panasonic player which can’t add external subtitles unfortunately. If I had to buy a new one, I wouldn’t do it again precisely because it’s lacking that option.

Remuxing is great, without question, but I don’t like losing Dolby Vision when syncing subtitles to foreign UHD’s or even local ones that have an incorrect aspect ratio. Sure, I could save the layer but honestly, I don’t have the time and don’t want to put in the effort.

I’m currently busy timing English subtitles to the Toho discs. If anyone’s interested, I could upload these to OpenSubtitles for easier access.

[AxeYou]

I have a Panasonic player which can’t add external subtitles unfortunately. If I had to buy a new one, I wouldn’t do it again precisely because it’s lacking that option.

these may be the titles that get me to buy an Oppo player, though I'm very happy with the Panasonic 820. then again, getting these UHDs (even if I were to grab them on another Japan trip) would also be an expensive prospect ..

For Panasonic UB820/9000, RattleByte (based in Germany, ships worldwide) sells a region-free hardware mod that also adds external subtitle support. Some soldering skills are required though. I have it and can confirm SRTs work. However, subtitle rendering is very ugly and there's no way to adjust it.

The other option is to wait for JohnyL on Avforums to release a purely software-based mod. Currently in beta testing. I believe he also found a way to make SRTs look better.

Some of you may know that there used to be a third option called regionfreedom that was notoriously hostile to perspective customers. They appear to be no longer in business.

[nicolas]

I have a Panasonic player which can’t add external subtitles unfortunately. If I had to buy a new one, I wouldn’t do it again precisely because it’s lacking that option.

these may be the titles that get me to buy an Oppo player, though I'm very happy with the Panasonic 820. then again, getting these UHDs (even if I were to grab them on another Japan trip) would also be an expensive prospect ..

For Panasonic UB820/9000, RattleByte (based in Germany, ships worldwide) sells a region-free hardware mod that also adds external subtitle support. Some soldering skills are required though. I have it and can confirm SRTs work. However, subtitle rendering is very ugly and there's no way to adjust it.

The other option is to wait for JohnyL on Avforums to release a purely software-based mod. Currently in beta testing. I believe he also found a way to make SRTs look better.

Some of you may know that there used to be a third option called regionfreedom that was notoriously hostile to perspective customers. They appear to be no longer in business.

The Software-based option would be interesting and huge if it works and improves the SRT layout!
I hope everything works out well but I’ll definitely wait for reviews and first impressions before committing. I’ve never modified devices like that before, so before damaging the player I’ll be a little more cautious.

[samlop]

A) 4 (MKV/BDMV) -> 1 (to Profile 8)
B) 4 (MKV/BDMV) -> 1 (to Profile 7)
C) 4 (MKV/BDMV) -> 2 (to Profile 8)

Are any of these correct to put back the FEL data back into the Base Layer and get the better compression when playing it back and/or taking screenshots (like you showed with Total Recall)

No. Those are still standard DV formats. With Profile 7 you retain (separate) BL, EL, and RPU (tone mapping metadata mostly) in the remuxed output. With Profile 8, you discard the EL. Most file-based playback devices can’t handle EL btw, because they lack a second HEVC hardware decoder to simultaneously decode the EL video stream, in addition to decoding the BL stream.

To take screenshots with full FEL, navigate to “6) MODE.M= MIXED: Remove/Measure/Plot/Audio/Player and more...”, then “8) MODE.8= Screenshot comparisons maker (DoVi_baker and Libplacebo)”. If all your tools are in place, the script will demux the BL, EL, and RPU, and then launch AvsPmod with DoviBaker scripts pre-loaded. Hit F5 and you’ll be able to view the FEL video stream.

That makes sense. Thanks! I will try that.

[Finch]

I'm not sure I follow the eye candy argument. Raging Bull with the close ups in the boxing ring and Schoonmaker's wonderful editing isn't "eye candy" (I personally am not a fan of the film overall, finding it easier to admire than to like)? I will admit, however, that Pixellogic's low-pass filtering lately has made me more hesitant. I would certainly want to wait to see how Criterion handles the Kurosawa 4ks as I'm sure it can only be a matter of time when they get ported over. Thing is, assuming that the low-pass filtering was the only strike against a Criterion 4k of High and Low, that disc would still look significantly better than the old BD and qualify for the top tier which, let's not forget, has not just true reference quality discs but also releases that may not be perfect but are nonetheless spectacular upgrades. Hopefully though, they'd bring their A game to the Kurosawas.

[Finch]

Question for Nicwood: I did add the Curzon Wings of Desire in the superior import column while not moving either disc to the solid or reference disc tiers yet. Does the Curzon advance enough on the Criterion (I didn't get that impression from your comparison personally) that it merits getting moved into a higher tier than the CC, and in comparison to the most recent BDs, do both qualify for the top tier because of the improvements over the BDs? It would seem to me that in spite of their flaws, both UHDs are good enough to be solid upgrades at least.

[Finch]

More UK users got their People under the Stairs 4k and reported they too could not play the film due to region locking.

Matt89 is among the first US/Canadian members who's watched the film and likes the presentation.

[nicolas]

Question for Nicwood: I did add the Curzon Wings of Desire in the superior import column while not moving either disc to the solid or reference disc tiers yet. Does the Curzon advance enough on the Criterion (I didn't get that impression from your comparison personally) that it merits getting moved into a higher tier than the CC, and in comparison to the most recent BDs, do both qualify for the top tier because of the improvements over the BDs? It would seem to me that in spite of their flaws, both UHDs are good enough to be solid upgrades at least.

I just gave the Curzon another look and it honestly deserves the top tier status. It frequently is eye candy with only the last 5-10% missing for utter perfection. The issue is all in the highlights but I’ve seen worse. Their Three Colors 4K’s are much worse. Criterion is significantly worse than the Curzon in all these “5% highlights” yet also inferior in normal-looking skies which the Curzon achieves beautifully. In addition to all that is the low pass filter. I’d say the Criterion is a solid upgrade to their own BD, the German Studiocanal 4K-remastered BD (which is atrociously encoded), solid in general as well and the Curzon a top-tier disc.

We also shouldn’t forget that the Criterion only has SDH subtitles (I checked to make sure) and the replaced Curzon has both normal ones and SDH, in addition to a 2.0 PCM track, although I’m not sure if that’s a simple downmix or actually an OG track. The 5.1 has been remastered by Wenders’ team from the original stems so no problem there with any of the discs, but maybe the 2.0 is a decisive factor for some.

Edit: Forgot to add something about the occasional mushy blacks. I believe these are inherited in the restoration and not Curzon’s issues. They render colors and blacks well in other scenes. I think this has been overblown, even I hopped on that train but to my defense that was before I’ve seen the same restoration on the Criterion as well.

[Finch]

Thank you for that feedback, OP updated with WoD entries.

[Finch]

Taking SDR conversion into account, toggling between those Night of the Hunter screenshots of the Kino 4k and CC BD, this doesn't strike me as an significant advance. The 1.85:1 ratio appears to be correct as there is documentation showing it was exhibited at 1.85:1, though UCLA's choice of 1.66:1 for their restoration which Criterion used doesn't feel off necessarily. I like the grain better on the Kino and the audio is reportedly better but that's it. Couple that with the IMO terrible original theatrical artwork and the near complete lack of extras on the Kino against the Criterion, I think I'll pass on the Kino 4k for now even at sale prices and wait and see if MGM licenses the film to Arrow again or another UK label within the next year.

Night of the Hunter (Kino)

[MichaelB]

When I oversaw the Arrow edition, I had a brief correspondence with Robert Gitt, who oversaw the UCLA restoration, and he was convinced that 1.66:1 was the optimum ratio, and my own tests suggested that he was right. It may well have been exhibited at 1.85:1, but there's also documentation demonstrating that Night of the Demon was exhibited at 1.85:1, and that's definitely too tight at that ratio. (The BFI reckons 1.75:1 is the optimum ratio for that film, and I agree.)

[hearthesilence]

Thanks for the tip - I'll probably pass on this UHD then. FWIW, someone posted elsewhere that they believe their Blu-rays looked better on HD monitors than 4K monitors, and I was inclined to agree - with that in mind, it's been easier to pass on less appealing UHD's when I already had an excellent Blu-ray (particularly one from the same master but encoded at HD resolution).

[AxeYou]

Thanks Finch and Michael. I’ll probably cancel my order as well.

See if MGM licenses the film to Arrow again or another UK label within the next year.

Out of the Kino-MGM 4Ks, has any landed on 4K in the UK or elsewhere? I can’t think of one off the top of my head.

[Finch]

Not a Kino 4k but Robocop was the last MGM 4k for the UK I think. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[M Sanderson]

excellent work, AxeYou

Thelma and Louise (Criterion) Chris's review

thanks for the alternative take on Thelma & Louise, which Svet over at BR dot com had suggested was incorrectly colour graded.

does anyone think he is overcompensating in current reviews, for perhaps failing to acknowledge previous controversial grading jobs, for some of the earlier Criterion releases?

any other reviews for Thelma & Louise, on the calibre of the encoding?

[EddieLarkin]

Out of the Kino-MGM 4Ks, has any landed on 4K in the UK or elsewhere? I can’t think of one off the top of my head.

I get the impression MGM is now unwilling to licence UHD titles in the UK. Robocop is the last (only?) MGM title available from a boutique on UHD in the UK, and I guess that is because Arrow may have picked up the UHD rights at the same time as the BD (their remastered BD was released only 10 months before they finally went UHD), it being such a big title. They have since upgraded nearly all of their major BD titles to UHD now (i.e. those that were first released in an LE box with book), with MGM titles like Carrie and The Last House on the Left being notable exceptions. That the boutiques in the US seemingly have very easy access to MGM stuff for UHD only adds to the impression that something is going on with MGM when it comes to the UK.

When I oversaw the Arrow edition, I had a brief correspondence with Robert Gitt, who oversaw the UCLA restoration, and he was convinced that 1.66:1 was the optimum ratio, and my own tests suggested that he was right. It may well have been exhibited at 1.85:1, but there's also documentation demonstrating that Night of the Demon was exhibited at 1.85:1, and that's definitely too tight at that ratio. (The BFI reckons 1.75:1 is the optimum ratio for that film, and I agree.)

It's worth noting that Kino's new master shows more side information than the Criterion does (and even moreso than the Arrow, which was not the same master as the Criterion). So any experimental cropping of those masters to 1.85:1 (especially the Arrow) is not going to be an accurate reflection of how tight Kino's may be.