Studio/Distributor/Label TIER LIST

[VoltaicBlood]

I'd love to see some rankings/tier lists from those avid reviewers here- from what I gather from my forum viewing, it seems like places like Arrow and BFI are top tier and then you have some solid middle ones like criterion kino sony, and then some inconsistent/mediocre ones like universal etc. I'd like to know more since I don't know the history/patterns of a lot of these distributors/releases. Maybe post your rankings and try to update every year or so? That would be super helpful and interesting to read! Thanks!!

[Juan de Internet]

My opinion is that some distributors have consistent house styles (in some cases multiple house styles) but a lot of how you rank objective differences depends on your subjective criteria and priorities. And some boutique distributors mostly just distribute the transfers provided to them, rather than do them themselves, so their style is only as consistent as their suppliers are. Also some distributors are regional.

I can only speak for myself, an American. I tend towards purist considerations, but I'm not dogmatic about it and enjoy discs that cater to my particular taste. Note: I have no Shout live action discs and only one Arrow, so they're not in the list.

1. Warner Archive
2. Criterion
3. Warner Bros.
4. Kino Lorber
5. Sony
6. Disney
7. Universal
8. Lionsgate
9. Paramount

Notes:

Warner Archive does the best restorations overall, with careful cleanup, tasteful noise reduction and sharpening, good encoding, and color grading that while tending sometimes too "home video" nevertheless matches my personal tastes.

Criterion, which usually just inherits its transfers, is less consistent than but similar in attitude to Warner Archive.

Warner Bros. tends to apply less careful noise reduction, color grading, sharpening, and encoding than Warner Archive, while still sharing some family resemblance. The best overall of the Hollywood major studios.

Kino Lorber tends to do a great job with being conservative, but I gather that's basically because they mostly just slap what they get on a disc. Even as a purist it's distracting all the hairs, damage, etc. on their transfers. As a purist I am sometimes unhappy with their HDR "enhancements" and other questionable choices that can likely be traced back to the transfer. But in another dimension of quality that has nothing to do with the image, Kino's philosophy means it's the dump truck of Blu-ray distributors and they get bonus points for that. They release more of the classic movies I want than even WB and WA.

Sony sets a very high quality bar for its transfers - and then nearly ruins it all with a dated and egregious amount of sharpening. And sometimes overly-brightened transfers.

Disney is both inconsistent in some ways and consistently sloppy in other ways. They don't seem to care about the purist or home theater enthusiast crowd.

Universal is sometimes okay and sometimes horrendous, both in ways similar to Paramount, but maybe slightly less extreme. Some of the worst encoding I've seen at times.

Lionsgate's lows are lower than Universal's but its highs can be pretty good - if still not even as good as Sony in my experience.

Paramount is the worst of the majors. The frustrating thing is you can see how good the source materials are and yet they ruin disc after disc with their candy-coated, detail-smeared nonsense. And they're not even consistent at it. The John Hughes Collection is all over the place, from really good (Pretty in Pink) to "what were you smoking?" (She's Having a Baby).


So I suppose if you insist on tiers, I'd make three:

Tier 1 regularly puts out discs that improve upon the source. This is everything above Kino.

Tier 2 puts out mostly what it gets. This is Kino.

Tier 3 regularly ruins the source with heavy-handed tampering. This is everything below Kino.

[dylrichard02]

Just in terms of labels I have collected and their A/V quality in my estimation;

Second Sight
Sony
Indicator
Arrow
Warner Archive
Warner Bros
Vinegar Syndrome
Universal
Scream Factory
Lionsgate
Criterion
Kino Lorber

Of course in terms of what films they put out, I would say my tastes lie with Scream Factory, Arrow, and VinSyn mostly.