Rollerball 4K + Blu-ray

[Dan8700]

Rollerball 4K Blu-ray Ultimate Edition w/ remake on BD

Rollerball 4K Blu-ray

Capelight lads are releasing in December Rollerball, for the first time on UHD.
There will be two editions: a box with artcards and a booklet, and the regular one. We'll see if this features at least a new scan, if not a new resto..
Price is unbelievably high on both...

[dr727]

Originally Posted by Dan8700

Price is unbelievably high on both...

I saw some comments on Facebook stating a lower MSRP and that Amazon's price drops before release date (similar to a lot of boutique releases).

[dr727]

Release date for both editions is now March 27, 2020. (Submitted updates to database.)

[CouncilSpectre]

That artwork on the regular box goes waaaay beyond iconic. Every release of ROLLERBALL should use that!

[Member-222782]

I wonder if 4K is a good fit for this film. This and many other films from the era were shot with vaseline on the camera lenses as a stylistic choice. Brian DePalma shot many of his films at the time that way. Personally, not a fan of that look and not sure if I'll ever upgrade any of those films to 4K. That Rollerball set looks awesome, though.

[kippe]

Several early owners of the Ultimate Edition are reporting massive sync issues of both the German and English audio tracks.
Some seem to confirm this only for the UHD-BD, others also for the Blu-ray Disc.

[Dan8700]

Comparison.
The new resto looks amazing. First thing I notice is that 1.75:1 is the right ratio for this film (not at all 1.85) since several objects now fit in the frame perfectly (caps 6-10, for instance). The UHD and the new BD are very dissimilar though, I've never seen two transfers on the same release differ so much... and in some cases, the UHD is def. worse: for instance, in cap #4, the color of the sky goes from a perfectly natural sky blue to a filtered (and clearly wrong) aquamarine; on cap#7, there's a yellow tinge which is (fortunately) missing on the BD. Also contrast is too high on the UHD. In some other caps, the UHD looks a tad better, though. This is very odd. The framing too is different.
Anyway, miles better than the old MGM master...

Keep us informed about those audio issues, please, thanks in advance.

[samlop10]

It’s been repeated a million times but obviously there’s no such thing as repeating it too many times when it comes to this:

You can’t compare color or contrast of an HDR source when the screenshots have been converted to SDR, which has a different color palette and way less dynamic range. For all we know those colors and contrast don’t look that way when you actually watch the 4K disc on an HDR display. There’s a reason why 4K discs sometimes look botched when watching them on SDR displays. The only good thing those screenshots are good for, as far as HDR sources go, is for compression and fine detail. And even then, they’re just a handful of frames out of thousands and thousands of them.

[JimDiGriz]

Originally Posted by Dan8700

Comparison.
The new resto looks amazing. First thing I notice is that 1.75:1 is the right ratio for this film (not at all 1.85) since several objects now fit in the frame perfectly (caps 6-10, for instance). The UHD and the new BD are very dissimilar though, I've never seen two transfers on the same release differ so much... and in some cases, the UHD is def. worse: for instance, in cap #4, the color of the sky goes from a perfectly natural sky blue to a filtered (and clearly wrong) aquamarine; on cap#7, there's a yellow tinge which is (fortunately) missing on the BD. Also contrast is too high on the UHD. In some other caps, the UHD looks a tad better, though. This is very odd. The framing too is different.
Anyway, miles better than the old MGM master...

Keep us informed about those audio issues, please, thanks in advance.

What about compared to the Arrow release?

[Dan8700]

Originally Posted by JimDiGriz

What about compared to the Arrow release?

Hi, the Arrow is identical to the US disc, so 20 year-old master... this new German release is the first one to feature the new resto/scan. You might keep the Arrow for the supplements, tho.

Now that I think about it, do we have a list of the extras included on the German release?

[CelestialAgent]

Originally Posted by Dan8700

Hi, the Arrow is identical to the US disc, so 20 year-old master... this new German release is the first one to feature the new resto/scan. You might keep the Arrow for the supplements, tho.

Now that I think about it, do we have a list of the extras included on the German release?

It has all the Arrow extras plus the new feature length documentary

[Dan8700]

Originally Posted by CelestialAgent

It has all the Arrow extras plus the new feature length documentary

Thanks, pal!

[mar3o]

Originally Posted by samlop10

It’s been repeated a million times but obviously there’s no such thing as repeating it too many times when it comes to this:

You can’t compare color or contrast of an HDR source when the screenshots have been converted to SDR, which has a different color palette and way less dynamic range. For all we know those colors and contrast don’t look that way when you actually watch the 4K disc on an HDR display. There’s a reason why 4K discs sometimes look botched when watching them on SDR displays. The only good thing those screenshots are good for, as far as HDR sources go, is for compression and fine detail. And even then, they’re just a handful of frames out of thousands and thousands of them.

So then why would all the other SD converted caps look great other than a couple shots? It seems more likely to me that some shots on the UHD just have some odd coloring issues. If the SD caps were screwed up they would all be screwed up, not just a couple of them.

[calum]

Originally Posted by Dan8700

Thanks, pal!

Also a featurette with Maud Adams. Our doc runs 85 mins.

[mar3o]

So why is nobody discussing the audio sync issues that apparently affect this release? According to posts in the US Rollerball thread, both the German and English audio tracks are out of sync on both the UHD and blu-ray, and they are supposedly deciding what to do about it. From the US thread:

"The German & English audio tracks are out of sync. It affects the UHD & the Blu-ray, and apparently the English audio is also out of sync for the "Bonus" Remake Blu-ray that's included in the UE as well. They've now admitted the flaw and are considering what to do regarding it."

[Dan8700]

Originally Posted by mar3o

So why is nobody discussing the audio sync issues that apparently affect this release? According to posts in the US Rollerball thread, both the German and English audio tracks are out of sync on both the UHD and blu-ray, and they are supposedly deciding what to do about it. From the US thread:

What's wrong here is they're discussing the issues of a GERMAN disc in the US thread... I guess mods should do something about this, but you know... forums.

[mar3o]

Okay, so there's some misinformation being spread about the German release over on the US thread. I tested all discs myself so I'll try to sort things out.

Firstly, the audio:

The UHD's English tracks are both out of sync - LPCM and DTS 5.1 The LPCM is off a bit more than the DTS surround track. The DTS is off by about -300ms and the PCM about -350ms/-400ms. The delay is consistent throughout, from the first scene to the last - it does not come and go.

The blu-ray's English PCM track is also off around the same amount, and is also consistent throughout the track. The English DTS 5.1 track is absolutely in perfect sync though on the blu-ray. There is absolutely no issue with the DTS surround track on the blu-ray.

I didn't check commentaries or the German tracks.

All extras on the UHD, blu-ray and blu-ray bonus discs are in perfect sync. No sync issues at all. I tested every extra and skipped through various parts of each. No sync issues with the extras.

Onto the picture/color:

Firstly, on a German review site, it is explained that they did a separate master for both the UHD and blu-ray. The blu-ray is not an HDR-SDR conversion. They used the same exact base 4k scan for both, but created 2 totally separate masters from the scan, each with separate shot-by-shot color grading. This is ideally what you would want. So each release gets it's own custom grading ideal for that format, without a quick conversion botching it up. Indeed, the colors, highlights and black levels are noticeably different between the two.

So where did they go wrong?

The blu-ray looks pretty stunning. A gorgeous remaster with very pleasing color. Faces are not orange. The color is perhaps a tiny bit more saturated than some may prefer, but overall the color looks excellent. Skies are a natural blue, white is white, blacks are deep. No obvious black-crush. Very balanced. Grain is evident and under control. Spectacular detail. Far better than Arrow's blu-ray, which I own and compared afterwards. That old disc had an orange/magenta push throughout, as many older masters do. Skies on the old blu-ray had an almost pink/magenta tint to them. The German blu-ray appears far more pleasing imo. Though the old Arrow is certainly not unwatchable, this new blu-ray is the one I would choose to watch going forward.

The UHD on the other hand looks pretty poor imo. Color is less saturated, and skewed towards yellowish/almost greenish. Skin tones are often yellowish. Shot 4 on caps-a-holic indeed looks just like the cap - the sky, the clouds, the whole shot has a yellowish/almost teal, sickly tint. It looks terrible. The sky is blue and clouds are white on the new blu-ray. In shot 7 her face is yellowish on the UHD but much more natural-toned on the blu-ray. The whole UHD has this yellowish push in general. It's overly-bright and harsh in many shots. Some scenes have very harsh glare from lighting, whereas the blu-ray is far more balanced with no glare. Blacks are more like grey in many shots on the UHD, where they are black on the blu-ray. Grain is finer and looks nice on the UHD. Detail is slightly better than the blu-ray, but not enough to justify watching it with the poor colors, poor blacks and harsh glare.

I'd say I was very pleased with the blu-ray's picture, and very disappointed by the UHD's picture. This is a perfect example of a release where the new blu-ray far outshines the UHD.

Compression looked fine for me in motion for both discs, but my set is only 55". I certainly didn't notice any large compression issues.

Bonus disc:

The blu-ray bonus disc is fine - all features are in sync in English. One thing to note about the new documentary on the bonus blu-ray - most of it is English interviews, but there are a few segments where there are foreign-speaking parts (speaking about other films), and the foreign-speaking parts only have German subtitles, not English. So beware of this.

So the UHD and blu-ray should be recalled due to the audio sync issues, but at least for now the blu-ray DTS surround track is perfectly fine, and sounds great.

Overall, a really mixed release. A poor UHD mastering imo, combined with audio issues on both main discs. The blu-ray is rather stunning in terms of the separate remaster it received. The bonus doc is great but some parts aren't in English with no English subs.

Perhaps Arrow will take what they have done and go from there with their own release, but they don't do UHD yet, and the blu-ray's image is spectacular already. It's the UHD that disappoints, and I wonder if there's any fixing that master. At least they could provide English subs for the new documentary and get the audio tracks in sync.

[mar3o]

Originally Posted by Dan8700

What's wrong here is they're discussing the issues of a GERMAN disc in the US thread... I guess mods should do something about this, but you know... forums.

I don't see anything wrong though with comparing releases and discussing them. How else can people talk about which release is better, or the differences between them, if they can only talk about them in their own threads?

[jayembee]

All this is interesting and bizarre. I just (finally) got my copy from Amazon DE. Last night, I played the UHD, with the 2.0 audio. Now, I have a pretty basic 4K player: an LG BPM-35. I didn't notice any sync issues. And I thought the picture looked nice and detailed -- better than the Twilight Time BD. Color was a bit wonky though. A lot of the times, flesh tones looked a little too much on the reddish side, but at other times they looked fine. The other color oddity I noticed was that grass seemed off, more often looking like astroturf rather than real grass. I assume that the color issues were due to my player not having HDR, but apparently not.

[pino]

Originally Posted by mar3o

I'd say I was very pleased with the blu-ray's picture, and very disappointed by the UHD's picture. This is a perfect example of a release where the new blu-ray far outshines the UHD.

Thanks for your balanced review and saving me the time checking out the UHD myself.

I was thinking about getting the UHD, although I already bought the regular blu-ray mediabook. HDR caps on a SDR monitor are always hard to judge and especially in this situation where there is so much (negative) discussion going on. But you convinced not to get into the 'order and return' hassle.

Although they didn't get the UHD right, I will be very happy with my remastered blu-ray of Rollerball. Other people should be too. Anyone who was discouraged by all the comments can purchase the regular blu-ray with confidence. And no, I don't work at Capelight.