UHD Titles Worth/Not Worth Upgrading [Archive]

[tenia]

I have a feeling that those encoding that way haven’t got much interest in watching the actual disc themselves somewhere in the future when they don’t have access to the uncompressed master any more.

I think the truth is much simpler : as in any field of work, some are more skilled than others, and there can be combinations of not-that-skilled people ending up working for a not-that-challenging company (with mostly not-that-challenging consumers).
I'm quite that most mediocre encodes we're seeing have been through a standard QC, but either it was deemed good enough or the QC testers didn't even see there was something mediocre to begin with.

(same applies for reviews giving good scores to mediocre stuff : they're not trying to flatter the companies in order to keep their test discs coming, but mostly just aren't good enough to pick the issues up)

[cdnchris]

Criterion's Princess Bride 4k and Disney's Nightmare Before Christmas 4k both have playback issues, so you might want to hold off with purchasing until further comment from CC and Disney.

I checked my Princess Bride on my Panasonic and Sony players, and it played back fine during the scene that I've seen mentioned online (the fire swamp). I've also seen complaints that the glue holding the slip on the back pulls the ink off, but mine wasn't glued at all, so clearly it's all a crapshoot.

[dwk]

The glue pulling the ink off the back was an issue with the Blu-ray. So I am a little surprised that they would still be gluing the back sheet on.

[M Sanderson]

3 Days of the Condor has received a very good 4K restoration free of Paramount’s aggressive DNR and overall digital processing, thank God, but Kino’s encoding is extremely underwhelming. The encode looks like Curzon’s Three Colors encodes or the first post-FiM Vinegar Syndrome encodes, which means extremely high bitrates and exemplary grain and detail reproduction in normal light conditions but huge struggles in anything remotely bright. This is the case here and occasionally even stronger. For instance, walls next to lamps are so blocky it hurts. Example at 0:40:37 which lasts for multiple seconds. I haven’t seen the entire film yet but I’ve already noticed multiple instances. The same has happened with Serpico too, which caps-a-holic revealed in all its blocky glory.

I’ve often defended Kino’s doings due to their admittedly fantastic lineup on BD and UHD with classics we wouldn’t otherwise get from the studios. First the continuing audio issues (I have no idea about Condor) and now the encodes are concerning as well. Staying Alive is disappointing in HDR10 but good in DV. I don’t even want to look at Condor’s HDR10 layer when it looks so bad in DV.

Like Curzon, Kino doesn’t encode extras on the UHD and reserve an entire BD-100 for the feature, so there’s no reason to subject us to any encoding issues due to utter laziness by the encoder. I have a feeling that those encoding that way haven’t got much interest in watching the actual disc themselves somewhere in the future when they don’t have access to the uncompressed master any more. They can’t be collectors and enthusiasts like us who wish to have our favorites properly preserved.

For those interested in seeing an amazing encode of a 4K restoration presented on a BD-100 like Condor, choose Shout’s Hackers

I didn't know Vinegar Syndrome had changed who was encoding their discs. but it's clear they are completely unreliable with their UHDs. I had massive issues with Dead Heat, Death Wish 2, in particular in the lighter areas in which I was seeing bizarre anomalies; no issues whatsoever with Scanner Cop 1 and 2 and Ticks, which I found to be exceptional; and occasional irritations with From Beyond.

[nicolas]

3 Days of the Condor has received a very good 4K restoration free of Paramount’s aggressive DNR and overall digital processing, thank God, but Kino’s encoding is extremely underwhelming. The encode looks like Curzon’s Three Colors encodes or the first post-FiM Vinegar Syndrome encodes, which means extremely high bitrates and exemplary grain and detail reproduction in normal light conditions but huge struggles in anything remotely bright. This is the case here and occasionally even stronger. For instance, walls next to lamps are so blocky it hurts. Example at 0:40:37 which lasts for multiple seconds. I haven’t seen the entire film yet but I’ve already noticed multiple instances. The same has happened with Serpico too, which caps-a-holic revealed in all its blocky glory.

I’ve often defended Kino’s doings due to their admittedly fantastic lineup on BD and UHD with classics we wouldn’t otherwise get from the studios. First the continuing audio issues (I have no idea about Condor) and now the encodes are concerning as well. Staying Alive is disappointing in HDR10 but good in DV. I don’t even want to look at Condor’s HDR10 layer when it looks so bad in DV.

Like Curzon, Kino doesn’t encode extras on the UHD and reserve an entire BD-100 for the feature, so there’s no reason to subject us to any encoding issues due to utter laziness by the encoder. I have a feeling that those encoding that way haven’t got much interest in watching the actual disc themselves somewhere in the future when they don’t have access to the uncompressed master any more. They can’t be collectors and enthusiasts like us who wish to have our favorites properly preserved.

For those interested in seeing an amazing encode of a 4K restoration presented on a BD-100 like Condor, choose Shout’s Hackers

I didn't know Vinegar Syndrome had changed who was encoding their discs. but it's clear they are completely unreliable with their UHDs. I had massive issues with Dead Heat, Death Wish 2, in particular in the lighter areas in which I was seeing bizarre anomalies; no issues whatsoever with Scanner Cop 1 and 2 and Ticks, which I found to be exceptional; and occasional irritations with From Beyond.

I think Death Wish was the first one that FiM / David Mackenzie didn’t encode and immediately there were problems. I don’t have many of their UHDs mostly because I’m not a fan of the films but secondly due to the underwhelming encodes. I’ve tried Thriller and it’s beautiful and horrendous at the same time. Showgirls however looks enormously impressive, much better than any of the international alternatives. I’ve since tried Unbreakable by Godfrey Ho and really liked the encode here too. Either they changed authoring houses again or they’ve given instructions to the encoder to precisely optimize the masters. Currently they’re among the top labels in terms of UHD encodes. Hope this continues.

[M Sanderson]

I don't know why websites are giving such good reviews for badly encoded releases. Poor 4k encoding is an enormous distraction. It's a reminder that Blu ray, and some of the better DVDs, are still essential. Even makes you yearn for Blu rays that are from dated, off the shelf masters - because at least the image is stable.

Sometimes websites are reviewing the transfer and not how successfully it is rendered onto disc.

A number of releases, not just VS but they are the worst offender (I'm already sceptical about importing Criterion discs ever again), I'm looking for candles and characters I've not noticed with cigarettes, because there is so much weird digital smoke (this is how these issues seem to resolve on my system) blowing around.

Nobody has expressed frustration with Criterion's Devil in a Blue Dress. For me, far too many squares and rectangles appearing on Denzel's face and clothes. I imported that and Thelma and Louise, which may have been colour corrected away from the original colour scheme (looks great, but "off" at the same time) for £100.

[tenia]

I don't know why websites are giving such good reviews for badly encoded releases. Poor 4k encoding is an enormous distraction. It's a reminder that Blu ray, and some of the better DVDs, are still essential. Even makes you yearn for Blu rays that are from dated, off the shelf masters - because at least the image is stable.
Sometimes websites are reviewing the transfer and not how successfully it is rendered onto disc.

As I wrote above, it's likely they simply don't perceive the issue. For them, there's no issue to report, so here you go. So it's not a matter of "reviewing the transfer and not how it is rendered onto disc" (actually, in most cases, these websites also fail to point issues tracing to the master itself - which is how discs using dated and/or problematic masters can still get good scores in 2023, including from people who definitely should know better), just that they either don't know what to look at or fail to notice there is anything to look at to begin with.

To some extent however, I can understand how some type of compression issues, especially depending on their intensity, can be overlook-able. However, when it's so intense and intrusive it makes the film texture pulse and flicker, it's hard to me to understand how one can miss that.

But while it's a shame, some reviewers simply aren't as eagle-eyed as others.

[5meohd]

I'm chomping at the bit to hear about the Second Sight Crimes of the Future encode...

Has anyone seen a proper review, or notice of an incoming review?

[AxeYou]

Likely an FiM encode because they retweeted this: https://twitter.com/hmv_PrincesSt/statu ... 3797364071 on https://twitter.com/FidelityUHD

[nicolas]

I'm chomping at the bit to hear about the Second Sight Crimes of the Future encode...

Has anyone seen a proper review, or notice of an incoming review?

I have the LE and only spot-checked it as I’ve rented the film earlier this year. As usual with Second Sight and Fidelity in Motion, it’s UHD at its finest. I don’t have the US Decal version which is apparently also surprisingly excellent after a very mediocre BD, so maybe it’s the same encode but in any way, Second Sight did a wonderful edition. Sound is also phenomenal like with It Follows.

[cdnchris]

Criterion's Princess Bride 4k and Disney's Nightmare Before Christmas 4k both have playback issues, so you might want to hold off with purchasing until further comment from CC and Disney.

I checked my Princess Bride on my Panasonic and Sony players, and it played back fine during the scene that I've seen mentioned online (the fire swamp). I've also seen complaints that the glue holding the slip on the back pulls the ink off, but mine wasn't glued at all, so clearly it's all a crapshoot.

Well, I spoke too soon: finally sat to watch it and mine starts glitching after they kidnap Buttercup and it Freaks out up until the eels show up.

[jegharfangetmigenmyg]

I don't see it mentioned in the list, and couldn't find anything by searching, so: Is Plaion's release of Teorema as good as the their other titles? I see a couple of gialli in the reference disc list.

[senseabove]

nicolas reported on the other forum, in summary, that it's incorrectly labeled as Dolby Vision despite being only SDR, has soft Italian and no English subs, appears to be a different scan than was used by Criterion with notably different colors, and is decently if not spectacularly encoded.

(I'm curious about it, but there's not really anything else I want to import from Italy... Would happily piggyback on someone else's order, if it would help.)

[jegharfangetmigenmyg]

Thanks! Odd that the color timing is again different from the new Criterion release... I'm considering, but will have to find a solution to the no English subs issue. But I just now see that a patch has been created to play srt's on the Panasonic 820. Will test, and if it works I think I'll try this out. Wondering, though, if syncing is needed for the subs as well, because then it's suddenly a lot of work! Also wondering if the region lock means that Criterion or some other studio is planning s 4K release.

[nicolas]

Thanks! Odd that the color timing is again different from the new Criterion release... I'm considering, but will have to find a solution to the no English subs issue. But I just now see that a patch has been created to play srt's on the Panasonic 820. Will test, and if it works I think I'll try this out. Wondering, though, if syncing is needed for the subs as well, because then it's suddenly a lot of work! Also wondering if the region lock means that Criterion or some other studio is planning s 4K release.

I don’t think Criterion has any more Pasolini films on their slate in the near future, the Pasolini 101 set is as comprehensive as it can get for them. I wish they’d done a UHD of the 4k restoration of Salò despite the heavily yellowed tint but they surprisingly chose to omit that one entirely even on BD in the set. I got the Italian BD earlier in the year and it’s not the best but still better than the very old Criterion master. Regarding Teorema, I wouldn’t hold my breath either. Carlotta in France have done a few of the films included in the 101 set although not always with the new masters Criterion received. I believe they weren’t allowed to access them. Same with Plaion in Germany who released an even smaller box. Overall, the whole Pasolini handling has been very inconsistent and unfortunate in my opinion. (Dario Argento is similar. If it weren’t for Arrow and Plaion especially we wouldn’t have gotten any of his films in 4K despite nearly all having received new restorations last year).

[dwk]

I dont think the omission of Salo from the Pasolini set was that big of a shock. None of the MGM held Pasolini films were included, so it likely was a licensing related decision (who knows if it was Criterion's or MGM's decision.)

[senseabove]

In my (admittedly limited) experience of applying found subs to other sources, in the best case you'll only need to make slight adjustments to account for production bumpers that might be different across releases. At least for BD/UHD, you're not having to account for PAL/NTSC differences, so as long as you're not dealing with different edits, it's not complicated. If you can rip an accompanying BD, which should be the same timing wise, and use that in VLC to figure out your + or - adjustment, it's relatively simple to use Jubler to bump subtitles a little bit in either direction. Which, admittedly, is more work than just popping in a disc...

Maybe we could crowdsource it a bit and add a "synced external subs for import UHDs with no English subs" section to the first post...

As for the region lock, I assume it's a mistake. UHD is, per the standard, region free, so I would think there should be no contractual significance to it. Seems safe to say that Criterion won't be getting around to an upgrade with their two releases of Teorema in the past 4 years, and safe to say it's too risky a title for the BFI to release a 4k.

Really wish we could get some caps to compare, but I've yet to see a rip pop up on back channels.

[A Tempted Christ]

Really wish we could get some caps to compare, but I've yet to see a rip pop up on back channels.

Here you go.

[AxeYou]

Infernal Affairs Trilogy HK UHD (w/ English subs) > FR UHD (no English subs) > Criterion BD

I think the HK UHD is a "superior import" but honestly all releases look horrible with both bad mastering and compression. Also note that the HK set does discard the OG 5.1 mixes in favor of Atmos remixes. (Of the two Atmos remix options, the Cantonese one is more original; the Mandarin one is a dub and sounds very much like a dub.)

My post on BR:

PQ wise, the HK set may have an ever so slight edge over the FR one to my eyes, despite having a much lower bitrate. But honestly, they both look bad. And it's not just from bad masters, but compression artifacts on top of them.
- https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?a=2&x=64 ... 1&i=4&go=1
- https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?a=2&x=45 ... 1&i=5&go=1

^ These caps are from Part III, because the restorations of Parts I & II are so scrubbed that there's literally no fine detail, and the FR and HK sets seem to be identical there. Plus, the caps of the FR set is more blown out than the HK one, despite both being tone mapped to 100 nits. Maybe the gradings are different, or maybe CAH applied different mappings when taking the two sets of caps (not uncommon).

Follow-up by professorwho:

To me it looks like the FR UHDs had the gamma set incorrectly, or were intentionally raised to "pop" more for the first two films. Not that this would be the best way to validate accuracy, but when comparing the UHDs to the Criterion BDs, the [HK] UHDs are closer in terms of brightness. However, the third is generally closer on the FR UHD, though that isn't consistent (take darker shots which are closer on the HK UHD, while brighter lit shots are closer on the FR UHD). Very odd. I'll probably go for the HK set myself, but the third film's oddities and lack of original 5.1 mixes are unfortunate downsides.

And by nic:

I think the HK set is the best one we’ll get of these films in a while. “Best” is relative when looking at the DNR but I can see myself enjoying the HK versions the most.
Based on the caps, this certainly looks like another case where a higher bitrate (on the French release) doesn’t equal a better image. Some reviewers (even here on this site) still don’t know this in 2023 when we’ve seen so many examples.

Additional comparison of HK UHD against CC BD (Part III) shows an appreciable uptick in detail: https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?a=2&x=40 ... 1&i=5&go=1

At least for BD/UHD, you're not having to account for PAL/NTSC differences

23.976 vs 24 fps still pops up sometimes with BD/UHD. Small difference but it can cause a shift of a few seconds by the end of a film. Criterion always encodes at 23.976. Some other labels, e.g. Kino (probably depending on authoring house), tend to prefer 24. I use Subtitle Edit to correct these.

Maybe we could crowdsource it a bit and add a "synced external subs for import UHDs with no English subs" section to the first post...

That would be great. Btw Mobe1969 on BR has been making quite a few of them: https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=360569 but probably not a lot that this forum is interested in.

[tenia]

I'm not sure if it applies for the FR UHD or the HK one but the audio tracks for Infernal Affairs BD on the FR BD is also way too loud and clipping.

[nicolas]

Infernal Affairs Trilogy HK UHD (w/ English subs) > FR UHD (no English subs) > Criterion BD

I think the HK UHD is a "superior import" but honestly all releases look horrible with both bad mastering and compression. Also note that the HK set does discard the OG 5.1 mixes in favor of Atmos remixes. (Of the two Atmos remix options, the Cantonese one is more original; the Mandarin one is a dub and sounds very much like a dub.)

My post on BR:

PQ wise, the HK set may have an ever so slight edge over the FR one to my eyes, despite having a much lower bitrate. But honestly, they both look bad. And it's not just from bad masters, but compression artifacts on top of them.
- https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?a=2&x=64 ... 1&i=4&go=1
- https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?a=2&x=45 ... 1&i=5&go=1

^ These caps are from Part III, because the restorations of Parts I & II are so scrubbed that there's literally no fine detail, and the FR and HK sets seem to be identical there. Plus, the caps of the FR set is more blown out than the HK one, despite both being tone mapped to 100 nits. Maybe the gradings are different, or maybe CAH applied different mappings when taking the two sets of caps (not uncommon).

Follow-up by professorwho:

To me it looks like the FR UHDs had the gamma set incorrectly, or were intentionally raised to "pop" more for the first two films. Not that this would be the best way to validate accuracy, but when comparing the UHDs to the Criterion BDs, the [HK] UHDs are closer in terms of brightness. However, the third is generally closer on the FR UHD, though that isn't consistent (take darker shots which are closer on the HK UHD, while brighter lit shots are closer on the FR UHD). Very odd. I'll probably go for the HK set myself, but the third film's oddities and lack of original 5.1 mixes are unfortunate downsides.

And by nic:

I think the HK set is the best one we’ll get of these films in a while. “Best” is relative when looking at the DNR but I can see myself enjoying the HK versions the most.
Based on the caps, this certainly looks like another case where a higher bitrate (on the French release) doesn’t equal a better image. Some reviewers (even here on this site) still don’t know this in 2023 when we’ve seen so many examples.

Additional comparison of HK UHD against CC BD (Part III) shows an appreciable uptick in detail: https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?a=2&x=40 ... 1&i=5&go=1

At least for BD/UHD, you're not having to account for PAL/NTSC differences

23.976 vs 24 fps still pops up sometimes with BD/UHD. Small difference but it can cause a shift of a few seconds by the end of a film. Criterion always encodes at 23.976. Some other labels, e.g. Kino (probably depending on authoring house), tend to prefer 24. I use Subtitle Edit to correct these.

Maybe we could crowdsource it a bit and add a "synced external subs for import UHDs with no English subs" section to the first post...

That would be great. Btw Mobe1969 on BR has been making quite a few of them: https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=360569 but probably not a lot that this forum is interested in.

Thanks for another great overview of the Infernal Affairs HK UHD set. Despite the issues I’m still looking forward to it due to the hopefully significant improvements in the PQ department in the way CAH showed. The lack of the 5.1 mixes is unfortunate but I’m okay with it if the Atmos tracks are not “Atmouse” mixes with the high- and low-end filtered out. Going from 5.1 to Atmos is technically a lot less dramatic than from a mono track. I must say that f.ex. Texas Chainsaw Massacre sounds superb in Atmos itself but when seen with the grungy images, the dissonance is astonishing. In Infernal’s case, I hope this won’t be a problem with too many new and badly mixed sound effects. As we know, Asian companies are the worst offenders by far. Ideally, we’d get a good review before the restock goes live.

Regarding subtitles, I have synced subtitles for all non-English and German UHDs (and many BDs too) I post about in this thread. I tried uploading to opensubtitles.com but couldn’t get it to work. Their new site is apparently still in beta and it doesn’t support uploading yet. The old site is still on but I’ve read that it’s been hacked in the past and data you enter is more at risk to get compromised there. I haven’t signed up because of that. I’m not too familiar with sharing / hosting sites like Google Drive, which Mobe1969 from BR.com uses. Once there’s a user-friendly solution, I’d be glad to provide my subs. OpenSubtitles would be exceptional as they’re integrated in many third-party players and services like Infuse (Apple TV) and Kodi. That means you don’t have to merge the subtitles into the ripped MKV file of the video. You’d just play your film via the platform and service of your choice, select the correct subtitle track and you’re good to go.

[AxeYou]

I’ve been gravitating towards https://subscene.com/ lately. Less integrated with various players sure, but in my experience it’s easier to find what I’m looking for there. For example, the uploaders usually attach a note on how they processed the subs (OCR’d, corrected, taken from streaming, SDH, etc) and that info is visible on the search results page. Not to mention downloading is dead simple, unlike OpenSubtitles which made you jump through hoops last I visited them.

[nicolas]

I’ve been gravitating towards https://subscene.com/ lately. Less integrated with various players sure, but in my experience it’s easier to find what I’m looking for there. For example, the uploaders usually attach a note on how they processed the subs (OCR’d, corrected, taken from streaming, SDH, etc) and that info is visible on the search results page. Not to mention downloading is dead simple, unlike OpenSubtitles which made you jump through hoops last I visited them.

Thank you for the recommendation, I’ll take a look at the site and consider uploading there until OpenSubtitles figure everything out.

[Finch]

Carlito's Way, Ring and Blood and Black Lace from Arrow added as reference discs, the latter has had the framing fixed from the old BD. Carlito's Way has the original audio track and more extras but the Universal 4k is no slouch either and a lot cheaper.

[Finch]

nic mentioned on the other forum that Potemkine's Lost Highway 4k is actually well encoded in DV, so French customers can safely get it unless they already imported the Criterion which does not appear to exhibit the low pass filtering of some of their other discs.