Sony "Mastered in 4K" Blu-ray Titles May 14 and July 16

[rickah88]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

And if your wife is not just a football fan but also a hockey fan, I’m just now wondering if you got dinner last night….after the Pittsburgh Penguins loss in 2OT or….you munched on snack food to get through the night.

Well since my boys were never a factor this year, I believe I get meals out of pity.
I keep saying this: The Eagles and Flyers can't seem to win championships, but that doesn't stop them from being interesting and having movies made:
Silver Linings Playbook, and the upcoming Broad Street Bullies by Rob Zombie.
Winning it all is nice, of course...but it's good to be relevant.

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Hah, depends on one’s perspective. Are you a stakeholder?
http://www.media-server.com/m/p/5mpkzbfj

One way or another, gotta sell more Sony LCD’s - http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/fina.../12q4_sony.pdf
P.S.

Good luck in trying to hook up this hockey puck ….http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/7/419...k-media-player (and making it work) with a non-Sony tv, at least for the time being, unless plans change.

Well those numbers are a little over my paygrade, but I guess this is Sony pushing a lot of their chips towards the center of the table! Hopefully it pays off for them.

[Penton-Man]

Well those numbers are a little over my paygrade,

Just scroll down to the Home Entertainment & Sound (HE&S) paragraph at the bottom of page 4 to get the gist of it

but I guess this is Sony pushing a lot of their chips towards the center of the table! Hopefully it pays off for them.

You have no idea…..a lot of chips, with the campaign in high gear - http://www.bloomberg.com/article/201...fDmvBcKtk.html

But on a more jokingly whimsical note, let’s not forget Animalia gadgets for our pets…

FIRST LOOK: Sony Animalia gadgets for your pets - YouTube

[rickah88]

As always, great stuff Penton!

Well this is certainly is an interesting push. I wonder when the other studios will start to follow suit...or are they letting Sony walk out on the ice alone?
So a quick timeline VHS(1978)---->DVD(1995)---->blu-ray(2006)---->4k(2013).
So keeping with both the upgrade in technology AND the amount of time it takes to do it, I'm thinking 16k in 2016?

[GP Legend]

Originally Posted by dvdmike

I see those both as huge improvements

Improvements? Sure. Huge? No.

[themoviefanatic]

Originally Posted by rickah88

As always, great stuff Penton!

Well this is certainly is an interesting push. I wonder when the other studios will start to follow suit...or are they letting Sony walk out on the ice alone?
So a quick timeline VHS(1978)---->DVD(1995)---->blu-ray(2006)---->4k(2013).
So keeping with both the upgrade in technology AND the amount of time it takes to do it, I'm thinking 16k in 2016?

wait, where is DIVX and Mini-DVD?

[Maggot]

Due to an issue with my Denon player's and receiver's firmware(up to date) and whatever authoring process Sony has chosen that is causing video glitching with my Ghostbusters 4K disc, I have decided to buy another Blu-ray player as a backup. I have tested and have come to the conclusion that it's a firmware thing. I have found Denon to be rather slow at updating firmware and considering that as a consumer, I should be able to buy a product, take it home and just work. Too bad the industry doesn't test enough. I bought a player that has twin HDMI out, so I can shoot the video straight to the screen and the audio to the receiver. As my tests confirmed playing directly to the screen from my original Denon player worked and that a borrowed $99 dollar Panasonic played fine through the receiver with the same cables, I had no choice but to buy another player in hopes that I can make this work.

[Toptube]

Originally Posted by GP Legend

Being "optimized" for 4K tvs doesn't mean anything. It's equivalent to saying DVDs have been optimized for HDTVs. At the end of the day, these are still 1080p blurays. I personally think upconverting sucks. Blowing up an image past it's native resolution won't make it look better.

Ok so I think you are a little confused. Upscaling isn't about making something look better----I mean, it's not like they are adding detail or something. It is about retaining as much of the original detail and integrity as possible, when displayed on a screen that is higher resolution than the image being displayed.

Upscaling is done via algorithms that are based on many parameters and adaptive potentials. The more detailed and specific these parameters, the more processing power and time it takes to treat the image. A lot of upscaling is done based on best case scenario type parameters. Especially with scaling hardware that isn't particularly expensive.

It makes sense that a better quality image will upscale better than a lesser quality image. So these higher bitrate transfers are already a leg up in that sense. But you can also encode the image in such a way that it compliments upscaling processes better. So the image that is essentially procedurally reconstructed, looks better than if you just stuck some randomly encoded video through it. You may or may not have noticed, but a lot of recent DVDs look way better upscaled than older DVDs. There are reasons for this.

In Sony's case with these newe "Mastered in 4K" discs, they are basically offering a signal chain that allegedly is the inverse of the compression process to author the Blu-ray format. It sounds like it could be more like straight across decompressing, rather than procedural reconstruction. In other words, more like actually returning the lost detail, rather than just preserving what's there and making it larger.

Originally Posted by Tech-UK

Why have you edited my post for quoting. I clearly said its mainly down to them being struck from a 4k master, as 42041 said, why would they do new scans for the titles already scanned at 4k.

I was just cutting out the parts that weren't relevant to my response. I'm sorry if it seems like I misrepresented your meaning. That was not my intention.

Ultimately, my responses the past couple of pages have operated under the assumption that drastic changes to the image quality would require new scans. I.E. I thought Ghost Busters was blown out because the scan was poor. Not because somebody baked in dynamic contrast, after the fact.

I don't even know what my point is anymore, but I wasn't trying to attack you or anything.

Originally Posted by Geoff D

It's not so much the '4K from scratch' aspect that 42041 is referring to, but rather the movies that have been finished on 4K Digital Intermediates. The DI is the finished digital record of the film, i.e. there's nothing to 're-scan'. The 4K source used for the new BDs of Battle LA or Amazing Spider-Man or Angels & Demons will be the exact same 4K source used for the old BDs. Ergo, any appreciable improvements in quality will be due to deficiencies in how the movie was originally mastered to Blu-ray (xv colour aside).

In some ways that's true even for the movies which have actually received new 4K scans; the blown out contrast of Ghostbusters and middling detail reproduction of Spider-Man haven't been 'fixed' via the magic of 4K, it's simply that they're brand new transfers with less fiddling. 4K is just a bonus.

For movies shot digital, this makes sense to me. Edit the movie, keep a raw cut that has no color grading or anything. Then apply all the grading and whatnot for the final product used to author copies.

But for film, are you saying the digital scans of films are are assumed perfect and they are just regrading the scans for a different result? Because I thought the point of this whole thing was to "remaster" these movies? So in that sense, shouldn't film based movies be rescanned with more care?

again, not attacking anyone. Just getting into the discussion.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Toptube

For movies shot digital, this makes sense to me. Edit the movie, keep a raw cut that has no color grading or anything. Then apply all the grading and whatnot for the final product used to author copies.

But for film, are you saying the digital scans of films are are assumed perfect and they are just regrading the scans for a different result? Because I thought the point of this whole thing was to "remaster" these movies? So in that sense, shouldn't film based movies be rescanned with more care?

again, not attacking anyone. Just getting into the discussion.

Well, it's not that DI's are "assumed perfect", quite simply they ARE the finished record of the film, irrespective of the capture medium. Decisions regarding colour, contrast, sharpness etc are all there, baked in to the DI. So the new Blu-ray of, say, Angels & Demons will have been mastered from the exact same 4K source material as the previous one. In other words, if there is a difference between the new and old Blu-rays it's because the presentation of the original was less than optimal (aside from out-of-spec changes like the new xv colour encoding).

But when they scan a film-based show from the original negative, the above variables aren't usually part of that image record, which is why the look of a home video version can change from transfer to transfer to transfer. The film must essentially be regraded, using things like archival positive elements and camera reports to get it looking as it should, along with input from the filmmakers, natch. That's in an ideal world, mind you, where everyone's happy to see their movie looking exactly as it did x amount of years ago. As we've seen plenty of times recently, some directors (and some studios in general) have no qualms about retiming their pictures according to modern tastes - or indeed whatever batshit insane idea they've had. Billy Friedkin, I'm looking at you...

[BozQ]

So I took the plunge and bought The Amazing Spider-Man 3D BD and Mi4K BD. Since I know this film had a 4K DI.
From my brief look on my not-so-optimal set up, I don't see much difference. Only because I thought the original release already looked very good! There may be some marginal difference in detail and colour contrast, but beyond that, I'd say don't double dip. Save your money for something else that can truly benefit from this Mastered in 4K line of products. Vote with your wallet.

We have to let these studios know that a good Blu-ray release can be done right the first time.

With all that is said and done, I don't regret getting this. And I might want to get Ghostbusters and Sam Raimi's Spider-Man.

[rickah88]

Originally Posted by Slikkbradd

wait, where is DIVX and Mini-DVD?

LOL! And Beta and probably a few other mediums in there. I probably should've called it a "basic" history of home media.

[Captain Mal]

Originally Posted by rickah88

LOL! And Beta and probably a few other mediums in there. I probably should've called it a "basic" history of home media.

Don't forget UMD's and their memory sticks. I laughed at UMD's when I first saw them - a bare bones movie on each disc that's more expensive than the DVD with special features. Better to just rip the DVD and put it on the memory stick.

[The Rider]

I hope Sony use now for all catalog tiles(even the normal Blu-rays, not only the mastered in 4K series) new 4K scans. For example Geronimo that have no release date.

[BozQ]

Since we're here, I want to know everyone's opinion on foreign dubs. Do any of you ever listen to dubs in lossless?

Do you think any of the video would've benefitted if only the original lossless track was included in the disc?

[HD Goofnut]

Originally Posted by BozQ

Since we're here, I want to know everyone's opinion on foreign dubs. Do any of you ever listen to dubs in lossless?

Do you think any of the video would've benefitted if only the original lossless track was included in the disc?

I never listen to dubs of any kind, period. It's an insult to the filmmaker IMHO. There are two exceptions though: Someone is blind and is unable to read subtitles or your native language is available in dub only without any subtitles.

[blu-ray_girl_fan]

Originally Posted by HD Goofnut

I never listen to dubs of any kind, period. It's an insult to the filmmaker IMHO. There are two exceptions though: Someone is blind and is unable to read subtitles or your native language is available in dub only without any subtitles.

There are some good dubs, though. The French dub for Disney's Beauty and the Beast is beautiful.

[HD Goofnut]

Originally Posted by blu-ray_girl_fan

There are some good dubs, though. The French dub for Disney's Beauty and the Beast is beautiful.

You know my stance: The original language is the original language.

[blu-ray_girl_fan]

Originally Posted by HD Goofnut

You know my stance: The original language is the original language.

I know.

But, this will blow your mind. Some movies have more than one original language, and I don't mean movies with characters that speak multiple languages.

[HD Goofnut]

Originally Posted by blu-ray_girl_fan

I know.

But, this will blow your mind. Some movies have more than one original language, and I don't mean movies with characters that speak multiple languages.

Okay, original spoken language(s) then.

[HeavyHitter]

Do we know of any other upcoming Sony "Mastered in 4K" titles coming at some point?

[tylergfoster]

"Breaking Bad" and Funny Girl were mentioned in the THR pieces. Also, Groundhog Day has been given a 4K restoration, which presumably will be released on home video at some point.