Halloween 4K UHD (1978)

[Noremac Mij]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

What I don’t get is that the compression on their UHDs of Beer Hunter, Prince of Darkness and They Live was fine, just fine. But then the latter two were ported across with the incorrect colour space, I guess Shout figured that if they got the colour right on the Halloweens they’d have to botch the compression to make up for it.

Seriously though, it’s staggering how something can have an average rate of nearly 80 Mb/s like H2 (with momentary peaks as high as 140 mb/s) and yet still render the grain so poorly.

You sure Shout! compressed those?

[dylrichard02]

On the stocking snafu front, Shout! underestimated it so bad that even their new DVD is unavailable until November.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Noremac Mij

You sure Shout! compressed those?

I’m not sure “they” compress anything, it just goes off to their usual authoring house, whoever that is. But whoever that is, they seem to be going backwards with their UHD encoding.

[Noremac Mij]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

I’m not sure “they” compress anything, it just goes off to their usual authoring house, whoever that is. But whoever that is, they seem to be going backwards with their UHD encoding.

What I’m saying is that the good compressions are most likely not theirs or their authoring house’s. Later release of Big Trouble in Little China has an identical encode to Arrow’s release. Leviathan was most likely prepped by MGM. Who’s not to say that The Deer Hunter was not done by Universal/StudioCanal? And so on.

[Jedihunter]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

What I don’t get is that the compression on their UHDs of Beer Hunter, Prince of Darkness and They Live was fine, just fine. But then the latter two were ported across with the incorrect colour space, I guess Shout figured that if they got the colour right on the Halloweens they’d have to botch the compression to make up for it.

Seriously though, it’s staggering how something can have an average rate of nearly 80 Mb/s like H2 (with momentary peaks as high as 140 mb/s) and yet still render the grain so poorly.

My point exactly the bitrates on these two discs are generally pretty great. And these issues shouldn't be present with rates as high as these at times. Like I said previously upon my viewing of the original I'm not sure if it's necessarily an issue with how the grain is rendered personally. To me it looks like DNR was used at times with how little to no detail is apparent on clothing at times. Like in those first screenshots that were shared here by aloop. While the motion in the scene is fairly quick at times. It still just reminds me of digital smearing like something from a laserdisc. Even more so in the reaction shot of Laurie and how her hair and face look as well as when she falls over the railing.

[andantelise]

Ugh... I'm kind of tired of purchasing badly compressed UHDs. When's the next time someone will get it right?

[mar3o]

Originally Posted by SpacemanDoug

from what another user said a few pages ago, it doesn't matter if it's a lossy transcode or if the old one was lossless, they sound pretty much EXACTLY the same, nothing worse or better

Is the mono track encoded as lossy or lossless on the new disc? If it's lossless, at least it didn't lose any additional quality from the previous encode (though why transcode it if they didn't alter it?).

[mar3o]

Years ago when I was complaining about the horrendous compression for discs like Psycho II and III, I saw gigantic chunks of random shapes constantly jumping around the screen throughout. This happened on many of their older discs. I've never even seen compression issues like that before or since from any other label.

[JediJones77]

I miss the good old days of wholesome video games for kids.

Halloween for the Atari 2600 - YouTube

[DR Herbert West]

Originally Posted by mar3o

Years ago when I was complaining about the horrendous compression for discs like Psycho II and III, I saw gigantic chunks of random shapes constantly jumping around the screen throughout. This happened on many of their older discs. I've never even seen compression issues like that before or since.

Their early discs are definitely worse.

[PowellPressburger]

Originally Posted by Noremac Mij

Shout! compression cannot be improved, ever, because their compressionist is intentionally botching every job. That’s the only intelligent explanation. He’s been doing this for many years and for hundreds of releases. If it’s just a matter of him learning, it would have happened a long time ago. A monkey could have learned this job by now. So what we have here is intentional sabotage.

I agree. Shout knows exactly what they are doing. They don’t care. If they did care they would be releasing demo grade discs. They aren’t. They are however licensing titles and giving us what we beg for, even though they won’t be optimal.

I wish I could just say, I will no longer support their shoddy practices. But I can’t because what other option is there. We just settle for what we can get.

[Noremac Mij]

Originally Posted by PowellPressburger

I agree. Shout knows exactly what they are doing. They don’t care. If they did care they would be releasing demo grade discs. They aren’t. They are however licensing titles and giving us what we beg for, even though they won’t be optimal.

I wish I could just say, I will no longer support their shoddy practices. But I can’t because what other option is there. We just settle for what we can get.

But just to make it clear, I think this is a tremendous release and the best this movie has ever looked like on home video. I’ve watched it several times already and it’s pure Technicolor eye candy. For me it’s all about the colours. If the colours are right, a lot can be forgiven.

[halloween5309]

Originally Posted by thebarnman

Yes, and it was with my first date.

yes i very young 6 maybe, and it scared me to death

[Captain.Monkey]

So whats the consensus compared to the lionsgate transfer?

It sounds like from the negativity here that it is worse or just the same?

[Noremac Mij]

Originally Posted by Captain.Monkey

So whats the consensus compared to the lionsgate transfer?

It sounds like from the negativity here that it is worse or just the same?

Lionsgate desaturated noisy sharpened nearly black and white transfer is a piece of garbage compared to this and is one of the worst UHD’s.

[Captain.Monkey]

Originally Posted by Noremac Mij

Lionsgate desaturated noisy sharpened nearly black and white transfer is a piece of garbage compared to this and is one of the worst UHD’s.

Really? I heard people liked the lionsgate one (havent watched my copy yet)

[Noremac Mij]

Originally Posted by Captain.Monkey

Really? I heard people liked the lionsgate one (havent watched my copy yet)

I can’t imagine why. There isn’t a single redeeming quality about it.

[Stanis]

Ordered this tonight, estimate date is 14th from amazon. And i dont even have a 4k setup

[DR Herbert West]

Originally Posted by Captain.Monkey

So whats the consensus compared to the lionsgate transfer?

It sounds like from the negativity here that it is worse or just the same?

Caps

[SpacemanDoug]

Originally Posted by Captain.Monkey

So whats the consensus compared to the lionsgate transfer?

It sounds like from the negativity here that it is worse or just the same?

to sum up what people are saying:

pros:
correct color timing, finer grain structure, theatrical mono track, extended and TV cuts, all the other special features

cons:
inconsistent encode (to the point of a few shots from the Lionsgate transfer looking slightly better, but this is very few and far between), filtered theatrical mono audio track

As for my opinion regarding the theatrical mono audio itself, it could sound a lot better yes, that's a given, but it's not absolutely horrible to me and is serviceable all things considered, and still far better sounding than the remixes

so while yes it is flawed, it's far better than any other edition that came prior and likely the best we're gonna get in a long time, the pros clearly outweigh the cons in this one