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Originally Posted by GeoffOliver
I’m sure the OCN would look better, but I really don’t see what’s wrong with scanning an interpositive. *shrugs* Isn’t it basically a direct print of the negative? It’s certainly the next best thing. I assume they do it because it’s cheaper, and IIRC already has most of the colors timed. Maybe Universal won’t let them do OCN scans. I believe the 4K OCN scan of The Thing was commissioned by Universal themselves, not Arrow.
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What Shout does is what I consider misleading, and they have a history of it - advertising original 2.0 tracks when they're downmixes, advertising they've found uncut negatives and then later disclosing weeks later that they're cut after the pre-orders roll in (Silent Night, Deadly Night) and advertising 4k scans without any mention of the source, leading some to hope/believe that the scans are from the original negative when they aren't.
Look at the recent Shout Lifeforce steelbook release - also a 2k scan from an IP (for the preferred director's cut). The Arrow blu-ray of that cut looks better than the new Shout release. And then Shout botches it with an audio issue that plagued their previous release of the same cut of the film - even though it was a new scan.
I bought Shout's The Thing, only to buy Arrow's later and realize that Arrow's is better. Factor in years of serious compression issues on many of the titles I own by them. Psycho II has awful compression issues throughout, as does many of their older titles. The Arrow release is the same source but has no compression issues so it looks much better. At least their compression has improved. But I'm very skeptical of anything Shout puts out these days, and it's their own fault.