Game of Thrones: The Complete First Season 4K UHD (2011)

[Ianzombie]

Originally Posted by ray0414

It is going to take a LONG time to regrade all 8 seasons in hdr. It is not a quick process. A 2-3 hour movie usually takes 1-3 weeks to grade in hdr depending on how many days/hours you work on it. So do the math and figure out how long an entire season will take. The times that by 8. Also keep in mind those people have other projects and jobs going on.

But you are presuming that there are not multiple groups of people working on multiple episodes at a time and that they have not been doing so for a long time already. For all you know they could have seasons complete, sure they could be up to date if they wanted to be. Depends how much money they are willing to invest, in what is still a risky venture.

Ill be waiting for a complete set to be announced. I have held off buying the blu rays for the same reason. Hopefully the UHD set will include regular Blu rays too.

[jh901]

Originally Posted by Akijama

You're single-handedly killing the purpose of international section with your placeholder threads for the NA section. Is it that hard for you to wait for the US links/announcement?

I can't understand what the rush is? Is there some reward for starting the most threads? Or for "breaking" news that isn't yet breaking?

Who are the moderators we can write to regarding this problem?

[jh901]

Originally Posted by Scottie

It seems like the best course of action would be to create a thread for an individual release and link every country's release for that title in the OP.

No, the best course of action is to keep all of the speculative release threads out of this section altogether. Why can't there be a "press release" (or other agreed upon support) rule?

[BluProofie]

Originally Posted by Vangeli

I always thought Game of Thrones was shot on film. Huh.

The original pilot was, but that was almost entirely reshot. Only a few brief bits of footage of that are in the final version of the first episode.

[stargazeruk]

Originally Posted by SwaGGInTheShadows

Ooooh gawwwwwwd....

Theres always one at every party..lmao

To be fair to the guy when Warner Home entertainment handle the video encodes they not been very good and they tend to squeeze 6 - 8 episodes on one disk and go overboard with over compressing when it comes to blu-ray so he does have valid concerns.

Thankfully at the moment HBO (and thankfully Warner Archive) don't seem to have Warner Home handle their encodes otherwise they would not have the high quality encodes we got now and probably have game of thrones on 1 - 2 disks max.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Pyoko

I don't think the initial conditions are great, seems like there's a big risk for quick and dirty conversions (to clarify I only meant catalog titles.)

With a photochemical finish it's easier, if it's a new scan you'll have to start from scratch, the grade should be relatively simple in order to be faithful (so even if you didn't have to, starting over might be feasible), and there's rarely a definite reference for how the film should look in the digital realm that you need to conform 100% to. Plus if you're paying for a new scan it's more likely you'll want the grade done properly as well. I believe this simplicity and freedom has the potential to yield better results.

With existing DIs it's largely the opposite. Modern grades can be incredibly complex and detailed with hundreds upon hundreds of masks, keys, tracks and very often there's a lot of look stuff like vignetting and degraining and regraining and sharpening involved.

So the question then becomes are you going to spend the time and money to re-do all that stuff from the raw files, or just try to re-tool the existing grading project for HDR, maybe try to extend the highlights a bit here and there like some SDR->HDR TV mode and then call it a day? Plus even if you wanted to redo it, you have it right there on black and white how it "should" look, so I can imagine that might also be a limiting factor.

I'm aware of how involved these modern grades are, how intricate they can be, but if someone of the eminence of Peter Doyle can bring it upon himself to regrade the Harry Potter movies in HDR (that he himself did for SDR back in the day) then maybe it's not such a lost cause, you know?

Even the trim pass out to SDR 709 isn't immune from exposing things like masks because movies aren't designed for 100-nits, 2.4 gamma and 709 colour either, I've lost count of the amount of times I can see a faint elliptical outline around a face or a figure that's blatantly being brightened against a dark background on regular Blu-ray. Two wrongs don't make a right, as I always say when people start worrying about HDR regrades, but with either SDR or HDR the potential is there to make this stuff look as well-integrated as possible, or they could botch it beyond measure.

Some botches are there, no doubt, but they are few, and for the most part I've been greatly impressed by how these HDR grades have brought most DI shows to life in a way that the Blu-ray simply does not do. I'm not saying that the HDR is inherently more accurate, I'm saying that the SDR Blu isn't a sacrosanct record of the original intent either. What lies on the original DI is invariably something intended for 14fL 2D projection first and foremost, with everything else derived from that core intent and (hopefully) adapted as best it can be, taking into account all the issues you describe.

[Elbie]

Originally Posted by OutOfBoose

The biggest TV franchise ever? Pff. Who needs all that money?

I remember seeing something about how the first season was shot with a 1080p camera and I haven't see that many TV shows make it over to 4K, so my optimism was low.

[pottyaboutpotter1]

Originally Posted by BluProofie

The original pilot was, but that was almost entirely reshot. Only a few brief bits of footage of that are in the final version of the first episode.

The commentary on the first episode is quite revealing in that regard. They go in depth and mention when a shot from the original pilot is used, which characters were recast and how some scenes splice together new footage with the original pilot. I think they mention in one scene it being a mixture of footage from the original pilot episode and new footage of Michelle Fairley (as Catelyn was recast). In this scene, Sansa never appears in the same frame as Catelyn due to the reshoots (and anything you can see of Sansa is a stand in). It'll be interesting to see if the 4K master makes the jump from Pilot to new footage more apparent.

[BluProofie]

Originally Posted by pottyaboutpotter1

The commentary on the first episode is quite revealing in that regard. They go in depth and mention when a shot from the original pilot is used, which characters were recast and how some scenes splice together new footage with the original pilot. I think they mention in one scene it being a mixture of footage from the original pilot episode and new footage of Michelle Fairley (as Catelyn was recast). It'll be interesting to see if the 4K master makes the jump from Pilot to new footage more apparent.

The scene with Ned and Robert in the crypt is also from the pilot. It’s the only complete scene from it.

[pottyaboutpotter1]

Originally Posted by BluProofie

The scene with Ned and Robert in the crypt is also from the pilot. It’s the only complete scene from it.

There's two other complete scenes retained from the pilot;

Ned and Benjen discussing the Night's Watch ranger that Ned executed

Tyrion and Sandor talking in the courtyard before Ned and Robert head out to hunt. This is noticeable as Tyrion has golden blond hair instead of the dirty blond hair he would have in the full series. Theon also has blond hair in this scene; in the series they changed it to a dark haired wig (presumably to differentiate Theon from all the other characters with blond hair).

[BluProofie]

Originally Posted by pottyaboutpotter1

There's two other complete scenes retained from the pilot;

Ned and Benjen discussing the Night's Watch ranger that Ned executed

Tyrion and Sandor talking in the courtyard before Ned and Robert head out to hunt. This is noticeable as Tyrion has golden blond hair instead of the dirty blond hair he would have in the full series. Theon also has blond hair in this scene; in the series they changed it to a dark haired wig (presumably to differentiate Theon from all the other characters with blond hair).

Yeah, forgot about those. The footage of Sansa talking to Cersei and Catelyn is also from the original pilot.

[pottyaboutpotter1]

Originally Posted by BluProofie

Yeah, forgot about those. The footage of Sansa talking to Cersei and Catelyn is also from the original pilot.

Yeah that's the scene I mentioned before

[tyrok]

I was surprised when Epix announced they would be upgrading their Apps to 4K before much larger networks like HBO, Showtime and Starz. Hopefully they get this figured out before Season 8 starts.

[Aidenag]

As much as i want this, im already so many seasons into buying the bestbuy sigil blus that im not about to rebuy until the series is done, and a boxset is out and on a super sale. E.g. $100 or less for entire series.

[Nothing371]

all of the incest, rape, and torture scenes are going to look amazingly realistic in 4K UHD.

[Majoran]

Originally Posted by tyrok

I was surprised when Epix announced they would be upgrading their Apps to 4K before much larger networks like HBO, Showtime and Starz. Hopefully they get this figured out before Season 8 starts.

The release of this may be a good entry point for HBO to start streaming 4K as well. I’m sure it’s on their roadmap.

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by BluProofie

I’m fine with blu-ray for these. I imagine they’ll be similar to Westworld’s transfer.

Westworld's grade was done by the team that works on the show and reflects how they want it to look in UHD.

Originally Posted by FilmFreakosaurus

I doubt it because Sony is pretty much killing it on UHD Blu-ray so far. Warner is heavy handed with their filtering and noise reduction.

HBO content and film content aren't done by the same groups. The Blu-rays look absolutely amazing. I don't doubt the UHDs will take it up a notch.

[StingingVelvet]

Call me crazy but while I like this show I don't like it enough for 8 seasons of upgrades. Especially after Westworld, which I thought was an iffy UHD presentation, and the fact GoT was presumably designed for TV and not the higher range of theater presentations.

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by StingingVelvet

Call me crazy but while I like this show I don't like it enough for 8 seasons of upgrades. Especially after Westworld, which I thought was an iffy UHD presentation, and the fact GoT was presumably designed for TV and not the higher range of theater presentations.

They've had theatrical screenings and it's really a series of 10-hour movies. Production design and VFX and photography are better than a lot of major theatrical releases.

[Nothing371]

Originally Posted by StingingVelvet

Call me crazy but while I like this show I don't like it enough for 8 seasons of upgrades. Especially after Westworld, which I thought was an iffy UHD presentation, and the fact GoT was presumably designed for TV and not the higher range of theater presentations.

I have already done the 'buy all the individual seasons' thing. Even bought some of them a couple times for packaging. If they want people to buy these again then they can release the complete series in one 4K UHD set.