The Hobbit Trilogy 4K UHD Extended & Theatrical (2012-2014)

[crackedknee]

Originally Posted by Juan127

So i guess i should wait to redeem the codes for both Hobbit and LOTR? I usually put these into iTines so my old man can watch them all on his OLED and he wont stand for them to be in SDR lmao... spoiled rotten!

you can redeem them now in MA and get UHD. As long as your iTunes account is connected to MA, the movies will port UHD to iTunes.

[Juan127]

Originally Posted by crackedknee

you can redeem them now in MA and get UHD. As long as your iTunes account is connected to MA, the movies will port UHD to iTunes.

thanks bud!

[Synchg]

Originally Posted by FritzKubrick

My impression after having seen the trilogy now in 4K is that it looks over sharpened rather than having higher resolution. Some scenes look good, some OK and a few look weird. Close ups of faces have artifacts which you get with low res or when you over sharpen stuff.

yeah i only skimmed thru battle of the five armies on UHD, and i didnt like the look. hopefully my new tv will resolve that but maybe it just doesnt look good to me. very digital camera looking and oversharpened.
i immediately put on the blu ray extended 3D afterwards on the same scene/chapter and much preferred how that looked if that makes any sense.

[XavierTheaterPotato]

Originally Posted by FritzKubrick

My impression after having seen the trilogy now in 4K is that it looks over sharpened rather than having higher resolution. Some scenes look good, some OK and a few look weird. Close ups of faces have artifacts which you get with low res or when you over sharpen stuff.

That kinda makes no sense to me, why not utilize the higher Resolution even if you're upscaling it? I'm no tech guy so what do I know? Otherwise while I was testing I was worried that maybe I had faulty discs, but I also noticed it on a 4K stream trying to test that out so it had to be the movie. Thanks for the Clarification!

[FritzKubrick]

I thought the second movie looked the best and the third the worst. Don't know if it has something to do with how they were shot.

[Pagey123]

I will state clearly and up front that I do not enjoy The Hobbit trilogy nearly as much as the LOTR series. But no need to go into details, as that would be beating a dead horse...as the flaws are pretty much agreed upon. But, the flaws aside, I have to say that I never enjoyed the video quality on these as much, even though they are, by definition, sharper and more modern. The added "dreamy haze" or "gold/sepia fantasy sheen" applied was just too much for me. It would be like taking the original "golden/Autumn" haze applied to Rivendell only in Fellowship, and then bathing the entirety of all 3 LOTR films in that. Again, that's just my feeling, some might not mind.

However, even with all of that said, I will take any excuse to spend more time in Middle Earth, and I will eventually pick these up. For now, however, I have my LOTR UHD set in hand, and I am negotiating with the wife the early opening of the Sony 800 series UHD player she got me for our anniversary about 10 days early, lol.

[Mamaluigi24]

There is a huge mistake in the credits of BotFA. When Gloin appears, his actor is not credited. I don’t know if it does the same with the theatrical version, I watched the extended.

Edit: Just to clarify, I bought the North American version. If you bought it from somewhere else and don’t have that problem, please tell me.

[R3P0]

So far I've watched Unexpected Journey and Desolation both look fantastic in 4K. I've never been a huge fan of the hobbit trilogy however desolation looks absolutely incredible. Smaug almost looks like he was completely redone for this.

[cheez avenger]

Yeah, just finished Desolation and it rocked. Man, you can almost see very individual gold coin in Smaug's lair. Where the BD may have had the gold piles look like soft serve ice cream, you can now see the geometry of the shapes. You have circles, ovals, and everything in between the plunder.

I'll be watching BOTFA tomorrow!

[3eccaTron]

Originally Posted by Mamaluigi24

There is a huge mistake in the credits of BotFA. When Gloin appears, his actor is not credited. I don’t know if it does the same with the theatrical version, I watched the extended.

Edit: Just to clarify, I bought the North American version. If you bought it from somewhere else and don’t have that problem, please tell me.

I just checked the iTunes versions as it was quicker than putting in the discs and you are right. The theatrical version has his name and the extended doesn’t! So strange...

[Powerful]

Originally Posted by R3P0

So far I've watched Unexpected Journey and Desolation both look fantastic in 4K. I've never been a huge fan of the hobbit trilogy however desolation looks absolutely incredible. Smaug almost looks like he was completely redone for this.

I've been so put off by how ugly the hobbitses movies were but I might just have to get that ultimate set next summer and check them out with how good everyone is saying they look now

[Wes_k089]

Originally Posted by FritzKubrick

My impression after having seen the trilogy now in 4K is that it looks over sharpened rather than having higher resolution. Some scenes look good, some OK and a few look weird. Close ups of faces have artifacts which you get with low res or when you over sharpen stuff.

I completely agree. I watched the whole trilogy this week and I thought the PQ was very inconsistent. Sometimes it looked great, with tons of fine detail, and other times it looked over-processed.

I didn't realize these are native 4K masters (according to its product listing here), because I assumed they were 2K upscale based on what I was seeing.

[evoof]

Originally Posted by Wes_k089

I completely agree. I watched the whole trilogy this week and I thought the PQ was very inconsistent. Sometimes it looked great, with tons of fine detail, and other times it looked over-processed.

I didn't realize these are native 4K masters, because I assumed they were 2K upscale based on what I was seeing.

Where did you get the idea that these are native 4K masters?

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by evoof

Where did you get the idea that these are native 4K masters?

Probably whatever rubbish Bill Hunt is coming up with.

[Wes_k089]

Originally Posted by evoof

Where did you get the idea that these are native 4K masters?

It says so on the product listing, https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/The-H...lu-ray/254855/

That was my only reference. My bad.

[Pieter V]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Probably whatever rubbish Bill Hunt is coming up with.

On The Hobbit Bill doesn't know.

Was captured digitally in the Redcode RAW codec (at 5K resolution, in dual-strip 3-D, and at 48 fps) using Red Epic cameras with Zeiss Ultra Prime and Angenieux Optimo lenses. It was originally finished as a 2K Digital Intermediate at the 2.39:1 aspect ratio for wide theatrical release. For this new Ultra HD master, Park Road Post (a New Zealand post facility owned by WingNut Films) appears to have utilized the original RAW files for live action footage (without VFX) and upsampled the VFX (rendered at 2K) to create a new 4K Digital Intermediate.

Nah, these are just straight upscales.

[Spearmint701]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Probably whatever rubbish Bill Hunt is coming up with.

Not everything is Bill’s fault Geoff.

When are your discs coming in?

[pottyaboutpotter1]

Originally Posted by Pieter V

On The Hobbit Bill doesn't know.

Nah, these are just straight upscales.

I can't believe people think they'd be bothered to make a new 4K DI just to have the live-action shots without any VFX (which must number in the low hundreds for the entire trilogy) in true 4K.

People really underestimate just how much VFX there is in The Hobbit. Not just CGI orcs, goblins, trolls, dragons and armies, not just CGI locations, backdrops, set extensions, not just CGI fire, smoke, ash, snow etc but also the VFX compositing for the scale differences between humans/wizards/elves and dwarves/hobbits. For example, every shot where Gandalf is with Bilbo and the dwarves? VFX shot. It would be a huge wasted effort as less than 10% of the trilogy would benefit from it.

The entire trilogy has at least 5,971 VFX shots (likely more) compared to 2,780 for Lord of the Rings with the visual effects supervisor confirming that at least 22,000 shots with some form of VFX were made for An Unexpected Journey compared to 18,000 shots for Return of the King (his definition of a 'shot' is likely different to others, explaining the huge difference). The shots without any VFX in the trilogy will number less than 1,000. It would just be a wasted effort to make a new DI to have those shots in 'true' 4K.

[pottyaboutpotter1]

Watched Desolation today. Wonderful transfer. The new colour grading looks fantastic too, especially on the Smaug scenes.

One huge benefit is how the new audio mix does a much better job at mixing the Wilhelm scream into Thrain's death scene. I'd have much preferred it to have been removed, but it's mixed in a lot better now and a lot less distracting. The original mix made it incredibly loud and made the scene almost comical.

[bradnoyes]

I had only watched The Hobbitses once and it was right after I got my first OLED back in 2016. Didn't remember much about them until I started watching An Unexpected Journey last night and then it all came flooding back to me--I don't really like these movies! Haha, anyway. I thought the disc looked good for what it is. Feels more like I'm watching a videogame than a film but it has some genuine eye candy, make no mistake. I doubt I'll ever watch any of these again after finishing out the set but I'm still going to do my best to try and enjoy the next two movies.