UHD New Releases, Reissues and Upgrades

[Fus1on]

The Sirat 4K is great! It has Dolby Vision and Atmos and the extras that are on the Neon BD. But be warned in case you don’t know already, the film received a DNR pass which can be very noticeable from time to time. The 4K encode fortunately is very good and doesn’t exacerbate the digital sheen more than already present. Like The Smashing Machine, this is another recent film that was shot on 16mm and then de-grained by the filmmakers. It’s not as if someone’s forcing them to shoot on film, let alone a grainier format if they don’t want the textures that come with it. Anyway, the 4K is recommended over a BD release as the finer grain of the former camouflages the DNR a little better.

Where should I place both of these on the contemporary list? They're both very good 4K releases for what they are, even though they have DNR applied that makes them look worse than they otherwise could be.

[nicolas]

Outbreak (Shout) - caps. This is one for the “Good in DV” category. The HDR10 encode isn’t bad but the FEL layer noticeably restores high-frequency detail that’s missing from the base layer.

[Finch]

Bowfinger (Shout) caps

[nitin]

was the brief repeating shot error ever fixed by Sony on District 9?

[Finch]

Not to my knowledge.

[nicolas]

Eraser (Warner) - caps & impressions
Scream 4 (Lionsgate) - avoid. Terrible release. The Lionsgate Limited Steelbook has a different disc with exclusive bonus discs and apparently another poor encode but they also messed up the DV metadata and made that disc unwatchable with DV enabled.

[therewillbeblus]

Such a bummer, since Scream 4 is by far the best of the franchise

[nicolas]

I agree. One would've assumed that this would be the one that gets the best video presentation instead of the Paramount-handled installments.

It's especially offensive that Lionsgate is now compromising so blatantly when they've done so much to position themselves as a boutique label. It's bitterly ironic that they're charging boutique prices for such poor products when they've effectively given away some of their best releases of the early 4K era for free. $9.99 for their 6-disc Apocalypse 4K set comes to mind. I also despise their new practice of making some special features exclusive to a Lionsgate Limited disc but that's me speaking as someone who's got to import these via a reseller.

[therewillbeblus]

So would you recommend just getting the blu-ray, or is the 4K still better?

[nicolas]

So would you recommend just getting the blu-ray, or is the 4K still better?

The new BD is also inferior to the old disc. Luckily, the French release is coming soon. Fingers crossed that it'll be the one to get.

[Finch]

Day of the Dead (Shout) caps and a few remarks on the audio tracks

[Finch]

Them! (Shout) caps

[FrauBlucher]

This came from Tarzi on the latest Shelf Space episode... cue to 26:12

Q: There's a lot of talk of encoding issues on your 4Ks. I've noticed occasional macro blocking myself. Does this concern you guys for future releases? Any chance of working with a company like Fidelity and Motion?

Tarzi: Uh, no. Uh, first of all, I think a lot of it is because there's players, certain machines have problems with certain types of encoding. Um, we tested on three or four different machines, so we don't see any issues. I'm sorry that people are experiencing that. Um, we're not going to go to a company that's going to charge us uh three or four times more we'll be paying for um authoring and encoding. Uh it's um it's already a very you know acquiring a film and putting it out on 4K is just it's a very expensive procedure and for us to instead of continuing final ways of subtracting from our cost now go back and adding. No, that's something we will never do now.

[tenia]

Amazed that they still think that the "it's the player" argument will still fly in 2026, especially when it's bothering so many people that it can't be player-dependant.
Oh well, what to expect from a label who already said they can't do proper QC because it'd be too long and cost too much.
I guess people just need to remember what they're paying for.

[Finch]

UK label Visions (from distributor Vertigo) might be worth keeping an eye on. They ported Dogma over for the UK and their Slither UHD has a Fidelity in Motion encode. Dogtooth is coming up next, and Orbit have a 4K listing for Aug 17th for Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie.

Edit: additionally, UHDs of Strictly Ballroom in July and The Hunt For The Wilderpeople in August

[nicolas]

Thanks for the hint! Looking forward to Strictly Ballroom. I remember Baz Luhrmann talking about the 4K restoration during his Elvis press tour in 2022. Hopefully he didn’t mess with the grain. Dogtooth is already out and unsurprisingly better than the Kino release. I did see some very minor chroma artifacts but there’s no doubt that someone skilled worked on it too as the very fine grain resolves beautifully. Hopefully they continue like this!

[dwk]

Scream 4 (Lionsgate) - avoid. Terrible release. The Lionsgate Limited Steelbook has a different disc with exclusive bonus discs and apparently another poor encode but they also messed up the DV metadata and made that disc unwatchable with DV enabled.

Of course, the first time I decide to pre-order from them, the dosc is fubar. What the hell am I supposed to do with this crappy disc.

[nicolas]

It seems that they don’t allow customers to return their purchase. You can only hope that they’ll replace the disc or watch in HDR10. Just like with Kino discs, you shouldn’t be missing out on much as the Dolby Vision layer doesn’t seem to restore noticeable detail that the poor encode took out of the base layer despite its huge size. In your place, I’d sell it online and import the French 4K instead, which is said to be much better.

[dwk]

Selling is such a pain.

So annoyed that the last four things I pre-ordered have been screwed up one way or another (the Rambo set, Scream 4, Scream's Day of the Dead and Arrow's The Killer, which, thankfully, they have fixed.)

[nicolas]

I’m with you here re. selling. I still prefer it to keeping discs that I’d never watch again with pleasure because of errors like that. In this case, I can imagine that there’s a market for the LL Scream 4K because of the exclusive bonus features. International people can’t get Lionsgate Limited editions except for resellers anyway.

Day of the Dead has disappointing audio, right? Second Sight are hopefully able to address this.

[dwk]

Yeah, sounds like Day's audio is a mess (I haven't spun the disc yet because I am planning to watch all of Romero's films in order later this year.)

[Mark L.]

Day of the Dead has disappointing audio, right? Second Sight are hopefully able to address this.

Can anybody sum up the audio issue? I can only read the bluray forum threads for so long without wanting to claw out my eyes.

I’m also starting to doubt this is coming from Second Sight. Surely they would have hinted at it even obliquely by now.

[vanshady]

Day of the Dead has disappointing audio, right? Second Sight are hopefully able to address this.

Can anybody sum up the audio issue? I can only read the bluray forum threads for so long without wanting to claw out my eyes.

I’m also starting to doubt this is coming from Second Sight. Surely they would have hinted at it even obliquely by now.

We have a summary here https://www.bestblurays.com/film/5654-d ... -dead-1985

[dwk]

The "Original Mono track" isn't the original track, it is the slightly censored dub from the Anchor Bay DVD.