Disappointment at Choice of Titles

[Taat21]

I must admit I am disappointed with the quantity of titles that have been released in the US and UK. I would have thought they would have announced a lot more than they have considering there are going to be about 150 titles this year like they promised.

Any opinions?

[scorpiontail60]

Well if you want more upscales then be my guest but it seems like there isn't a flood of titles because they don't have all that many 4K masters available so they are only polluting the format with recent upscales of titles instead of just upscaling their entire back catalogs.

[sukraj]

Give them time I'm sure they will release more titles throughout the year

[Doctorossi]

Originally Posted by scorpiontail60

Well if you want more upscales then be my guest but it seems like there isn't a flood of titles because they don't have all that many 4K masters available so they are only polluting the format with recent upscales of titles instead of just upscaling their entire back catalogs.

This is only true in keeping with the current 'new releases' release philosophy. If the studios would introduce some catalog titles onto the format, there would be plenty of 4K masters to choose from.

[Cobolisdead]

Are you upset about the lack of catalog titles or new releases?

Personally, I think that there is great selection considering it has only been 49 days since the format launched. Give it a few more months. We will be drowning in titles by Christmas.

[HeavyHitter]

Originally Posted by Taat21

I must admit I am disappointed with the quantity of titles that have been released in the US and UK. I would have thought they would have announced a lot more than they have considering there are going to be about 150 titles this year like they promised.

Any opinions?

The 150 number could have been overly optimistic, but there is also still 8 months left.

[infiniteCR]

There's a lot of titles for how little its been out. Must show your support for the new format by buying all of the current titles so they know that you like the format and then they will continue giving you more better ones more of the time. This is how I got so many 3D titles and I am still waiting for the good ones to come out!

[Doctorossi]

Originally Posted by infiniteCR

Must show your support for the new format by buying all of the current titles so they know that you like the format and then they will continue giving you more better ones more of the time.

Sorry, I'm not going to buy movies I don't like so that studios can somehow infer that I want the movies I do like. I will buy must-own movies on this format, as long as they're released unmolested. And that's all I will buy on this format. The good news for the studios is that there are a lot of movies that I love.

[Taat21]

Originally Posted by HeavyHitter

The 150 number could have been overly optimistic, but there is also still 8 months left.

Warner where meant to be releasing 35 titles, and fox 100. And whatever Sony and Paramount release and Universal is coming in September. I just don't see it to be honest. Is Creed meant to be coming out?

[ray0414]

There are currently about 50 titles that have either been released or announced. Almost 60 if you include documentaries.

Not a bad start at all considering its only April.


And look at it this way, the longer the delay for big name catalog titles, the higher chance it has of coming with dolby vision in addition to hdr10. Even if a person doesn't have a Dolby Vision tv, you benefit because DV has extremely high standards for grading and the file sources so the entire disc should be superior than a regular hdr10 disc.

[larrs]

Originally Posted by scorpiontail60

Well if you want more upscales then be my guest but it seems like there isn't a flood of titles because they don't have all that many 4K masters available so they are only polluting the format with recent upscales of titles instead of just upscaling their entire back catalogs.

Agreed. This is going to be a slow uptake product set. The good news is we'll see Blu-Rays for a long, long time. The bad news is that we'll probably also see DVDs for a long, long time...

[CinemaScope]

It is early days, but the format does need some class A catalogue 4K titles, & there's quite a few to choose from, just look at the 4K list in the main forum. Funnily enough, a lot of the more recent films will be up-scales, as the special effects will have been done in 2K.

[bruceames]

The bottleneck right now is not the content, it's the players, and to a lessor extent, the HDR TVs. Only one player out there and it will be the only one available for several months. And it can't even be advertised so much because it sells out almost as soon as they are brought in. There needs to be a wider player base before they release a lot more titles. That will happen this fall.

It would be an overstatement to call this a 'soft' launch. I would say it's a 'test' launch. There is so many new variables involved with HDR, WCG and 10 bit depth, that it makes sense to hold back until some of the kinks are worked out. We won't be in a position to judge how well it might do until next year and even then it's going to be a slow-building format until HDR TVs become the norm (which should be in 2 years or so).

[Taat21]

Have MGM announced anything to do with releasing catalogue titles yet?

[bruceames]

Originally Posted by Taat21

Have MGM announced anything to do with releasing catalogue titles yet?

They really don't have much recent catalog to speak of, other than the Bond movies. And we won't see those until there is a larger player base out there to make it worth there while.

[bailey1987]

Originally Posted by bruceames.

They really don't have much recent catalog to speak of, other than the Bond movies. And we won't see those until there is a larger player base out there to make it worth there while.

Not much of one? what about all their musicals?

[CinemaScope]

Originally Posted by bailey1987

Not much of one? what about all their musicals?

Remember, Warner own all the MGM films up to the mid-eighties. The MGM we talk about now owns the United Artists catalogue. I don't think they've done much 4K mastering, a lot of the films they license out are from masters that are 10-15 old.

[bailey1987]

Originally Posted by CinemaScope

Remember, Warner own all the MGM films up to the mid-eighties. The MGM we talk about now owns the United Artists catalogue. I don't think they've done much 4K mastering, a lot of the films they license out are from masters that are 10-15 old.

oh.

[bruceames]

Originally Posted by bailey1987

Not much of one? what about all their musicals?

I meant recent catalog. I don't think any studio is going to roll out the deeper stuff right away. Harder to get filmmaker approval and, especially in MGM's case, the elements are not in good shape (not to mention few of them have even been mastered in 4k yet).

Oh, and regarding MGM's catalog, I refer to what they own now (post 1985 MGM, all UA, Orion, Cannon, and others).

[motorheadache95]

Every new format kind of has that awkward first year. I'm not sure if I'm ever going to be interested in 4K yet myself, but I remember the launches of both DVD and Blu-Ray pretty well and it took a while for them to get going and realize their full potential.

The first couple years of DVD you had some titles that just had a non-anamorphic port of the laserdisc master, plus the extras typically amounted to a few production notes you could read on a menu (which honestly seemed cool to me in 1997, but I never had laserdisc, so...)

Blu-Ray had a bunch of old, outdated masters too at launch (with Universal being the longest hold-out for releasing higher-quality catalog titles). Plus, often they would be stripped down editions without most of the extras from the DVD releases. And remember how a bunch of titles had 640kbps Dolby Digital audio because a lot of studios didn't make a lossless track and they couldn't use DD+ like the HD-DVD version?

I have a feeling Ultra 4K Blu-Ray will be kind of the same thing, where we look back on the first wave of releases as that awkward period where studios don't have the technology nailed down yet (2k upscaled titles, color-grading issues with HDR, etc.)