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I do still think Goodfellas is superior but the margin is slim and this is still another masterpiece from Marty & Bob.
The 4K UHD makes this film look the best it has ever looked. I would recommend this release without reservation.
I was totally floored by the 4K, such an epic experience and the quality they've reached after all these years is really something special. What a fantastic film.
Though certain films are a definite, the Indiana Jones & Godfather sets when they are released (although KOTCS will gather a lot of dust) I have the BTTF & Hitchcock ones earmarked for purchase within the year.
I have Alien 4K (reference, one of the best examples of the format so far) and Aliens & Alien 3 look very respectable up scaled from the original Alien Anthology Blu-ray set.
I do wonder though as the industry still does seem not to want to stick DVD in the bin (they really should).
It's ridiculous that here that stuff is only getting released on DVD, I'd snap their hand off for Steve McQueen's Small Axe film series on Blu-ray but the BBC have only chosen to release it on DVD here.
I think 4K will likely stay a niche product and likely unfortunately disappear if they continue to champion a format that is over 20 years old when a much better one came about less than a decade later.
I mean all you need to do is stop making the players, everyone has to then buy Blu-ray players, DVD upscale nicely on there but now streaming has become more prevalent they missed that one I'm afraid, why when they were so keen to kill off vinyl and then VHS, does bloody DVD's get a free pass??
Although I think us physical buyers get the last laugh when you don't end up owning anything when you download as where you supposedly bought it from lose the rights and also so streamers platforms like Netflix & Amazon Prime, films just disappear from their offerings.
I know at least when I want to watch a favourite, I just go to the shelf and pop in my player.
However, 4K sales might jump now due to these next gen systems making the format a bit more accessible.
4k Televisions will upscale any media. I know it's not Blu-ray quality, but for
example I'm more than happy with my Columbo dvd box set.
Physical home media like Blu-rays have become a niche for most people I think. I'll probably keep buying them until they are obsolete.
For me it's when I've increased the TV size that things started to look dicey.
My first HDTV was a 27", so the DVDs I watched like the Bond films all looked pretty solid enough. Blu-ray films looked only marginally better on a TV of that size, so back then I decided that blu-rays I wanted would only be titles I felt deserved it.
Eventually I got a 40" which was what compelled me to start replacing my DVDs with blu-rays because I started to see the format limitations on DVD. Now I have a 65" TV and oh boy do the DVDs not hold up. If I have any DVDs now it's only because there's no other alternative like my Star Trek: Deep Space Nine DVD set, as there's no HD version of that show.
There's also the availability of the films/shows I want to get. Endeavour, one of my favourite shows, is only available on DVD, and that's a TV show which is still in production!
People had no choice with vinyl and people still wanted to continue buying it, yet the industry wanted rid of it because CD's were cheaper to produce and more compact.
By the 90's they were producing barely any vinyl, one of the reasons that until the more resent resurgence in the format, that 90's vinyl releases were fetching a pretty penny on the 2nd hand market, in fact into the 2000's you could make some money if you had pressings from that period.
Clearly they didn't feel the faith in Blu-ray that they did in DVD, I suppose the jump wasn't as significant, from tape to digital
I guess if you aren't going to upgrade your TV you won't be bothered by DVD, although as soon as you go HD and above 40", you will notice the difference.
I don't think if a film is restored properly it should look like it was released yesterday.
The point of Blu-ray & 4K UHD Blu-ray in its best examples when restoring a catalogue title is restore it to as close as it looked in its original release.
I remember seeing some of peoples reviews of the The Godfather films when restored, people who seemed to think that the idea of the format was to make it look like the latest Michael Bay film, totally misunderstanding that the restoration was to make it look like it did on the cinema screen. They were horrified it didn't look like Transformers whatever.
I guess this is why the niche element comes in, what is the point upgrading things if you have no clue about this, so sticking to DVD makes sense I guess.
I know I'm a snob, I'm the same with audio, well worse but I love cinema like the majority of us do here. I'm far from having a disposable income to realise this to ridiculous levels.
The fascinating part of the internet is realising that as much as much as you think you might be devoted to something there will always be many others that will put you in the shade with their abilities to realise things from a materialistic point of view.
I have a respectable set up but it was realised for not much more than £1000.
True. I only meant that in the broadest sense--that some very films don't look "old" at all when viewed on a high-quality Blu-Ray. I have seen films from 1915 on Blu-Ray that do not look at all like what's expected from something filmed a century ago--their visual clarity was astonishing.
Now in a literal sense, something shot on film should NOT look like something shot yesterday, since that would mean making a celluloid look like digital video, and we're all familiar with horror stories of DNR abuse.
I remember being pretty surprised by how DR. NO looked the first time I saw it on HD. It looked like it was shot yesterday but only in the sense that the print was looked very clean and fresh, which is to be expected when going back to the original negative. Even then, it still had an inherent look that’s only unique to cinema of the 1960s. I think the restoration of THE GODFATHER also achieved that. Fresh like it was shot yesterday, but still undeniably a product of 70s cinema.
The properties of various film stocks help give that specific look to films from different eras--I suppose future generations will enjoy something similar when reviewing movies shot directly to video and classing them by advancements in digital technology, but I don't think video will ever have the warmth of film. Luckily that still comes through on Blu-Ray.
Film restoration really took its first major leap forward with the advent of digital scanning. Before then there was really only so much a restorer could do, especially when just touching the film put it at a terrible risk.
I have to say, Knives Out did a shockingly good job of emulating the look of film. It wasn't perfect but it was certainly the closest I've yet seen from a 100% digitally shot movie.
The film's cinematographer, Steve Yedlin, actually wrote a very interesting and detailed article about how he achieved it.
This is relevant to Bond in as much as he developed this process of making digital shots resemble film while working on Star Wars: The Last Jedi. A movie which, much like SP and NTTD, was shot mostly on film but still had a solid amount of shots filmed with digital cameras, for stunts, drone filming, and the like.
https://www.polygon.com/2020/2/6/21125680/film-vs-digital-debate-movies-cinematography
I apologise, what I meant like you said above as it would look like it did when it was shot without the dirt and anomalies of the day.
I guess that is why restorers say that it looks even better than it did in the day due to what the technology allows, Jaws seems another example of that, I couldn't hope for a better way to view my favourite film in a home environment.
I'l be interested to see how good the 4K UHD Blu-ray versions of the first 20 films look, I know you have kindly given us the comparison with the different formats down through the years and compared the I tunes 4K versions to them.
Although there is only so much I can see on my laptop so the proof is in the pudding as they say. I don't envisage grabbing the whole series again on the format but I will definitely upgrade OHMSS, I have the DC films and will grab NTTD when that eventually appears.
There might be some exceptions amongst them that I might consider like the first 4 Connery films and SWLM & the TD films, it will depend if there is much of a jump up. OHMSS looked fantastic on my 55" OLED from the Blu-ray and so do the other earlier films, so I might just stick with my James Bond Collection set and just grab OHMSS.
I think though as soon as you go there and you have the TV to appreciate it, HD and beyond, it is very hard to go back to SD after that. I love the leaps in quality that Blu-ray afforded when it is exploited to its best and anyone trying to say there isn't much difference, doesn't have a great TV or they need to go to the opticians, because there certainly is, also if you are going to go up to HD or UHD then no point sticking with a substandard TV.
This is how I feel as well. 4K looks great, but upgrade from 1080p to 4K doesn't come with the same wow factor as the jump from standard definition to high definition.
I'm blind in one eye so basically anything 720p and above looks amazing to me. However, HDR is the true game changer. Far better colours and colour contrast that make the image come alive, especially with some good HDR content. I'm glad it's starting to become more common.
The great thing about the old transfers is that video system issues aside the transfers were largely hands off until the DVD era where changing things really took off.
The best thing about the 4K releases for me will be the improvements made to the non-Lowry masters already release don BD and finally getting away from the awful things the Lowry team did to the series with de-graining and color timing etc.
For catalog titles the hard and sad par tis that while the picture is generally improved with each go round the audio is often not. That's what pushed me into becoming a Laserdisc addict. Getting into that format will really show you how to work with upscaling and analog video performance!
Tried it out last night on Skyfall and it looked amazing. The UHD version on Vudu is no slouch, but 4k bluray was just a notch above that. Can't wait to watch the rest of them.
It may not be the best 4k bluray player, but I'm glad I didn't jump the gun and buy one before christmas. I'm still going to look into a stand alone player eventually but this will get me by for a bit in a pinch. I appreciate all the feedback on the players you guys use. If I see a good deal I'll try to share it on here in case anyone else is looking for 4k bluray player as well.
Do they have HDR? Thought 4K with HDR was supposed to make things more colourful.
Spectre had sections recorded digitally precisely because they were destined
to be on 4K. It might explain why they look better than CR and QOS.
Not all 4k copies look fantastic, I recently picked up Jurassic Park in 4k, and
don't think it's a big improvement over the standard HD version, although I'm
sure experts can point out all the improvements.
With the software they have nowadays there should be no excuse for all 4k copies not to look fantastic ?
Unless a brand new 4K film out was done for a new master most titles after the digital changeover are going to be 2K upscales which means the vast majority of films since only a small fraction are ever completed let alone finished at 4K resolution.