The Limey 4K UHD (1999)

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Fat Phil

Oh for sure, it's definitely a bit squiffy as Andreas' caps showed. But the 1080p disc also has a crap encode so i'll take it as the best available presentation*

*for the time being.

You're my barometer for squinky HDR10 compression so I'll wait for your thoughts before contemplating buying this.

[johnpaul2]

Originally Posted by Fat Phil

Oh for sure, it's definitely a bit squiffy as Andreas' caps showed. But the 1080p disc also has a crap encode so i'll take it as the best available presentation*

*for the time being.

Oh yeah, the BD has some very crappy compression and it looks like the UHD isn't perfect either but this cap just doesn't have poor compression, it has some weird specific one on its upper side.

[DAT_JB]

Originally Posted by Fat Phil

Comparisons are up -
UHD vs Lionsgate 1080p

Looks nice. Ordered.

Did you have a chance to look at it?

Noticed a small price drop so thinking about getting it.

[Fat Phil]

Originally Posted by DAT_JB

Did you have a chance to look at it?

Noticed a small price drop so thinking about getting it.

Hoping to have a watch this weekend

[Fat Phil]

HDR10/Sony 65" X900E/Sony X800

Soderbergh's The Limey gets its third release in as many years - so do we finally have a worthwhile presentation? Yeeea.....no, no we don't. At least not in HDR10.

Each of the three has issues. The German 1080p release from Koch media uses a master from 'ye olden times. The Lionsgate's 1080p release in the UK actually uses the lovely remaster, but they've gone and borked the colours while authoring the disc (and dropped all the extras).

So what of the French 4K UHD release? Well, um, it's definitely the best. But that's damning it with faint praise. Because it's also a abominable shit-show of encoding incompetence. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if whoever encoded this disc is the same person or persons responsible for some of Studio Canal's steaming turds.

But first, positives. Well, it is the newer master and colours look far better than Lionsgate release, highlight detail is much improved and fine detail in general gets a welcome bump.

Unfortunately, grain has that digitised look and only sporadically resembles something truly organic - I can live with that though. What kills it for me is the chroma compression - it's truly diabolical. Coloured blocks (especially green) are just itching to manifest, especially obvious in open spaces like skies, windows etc. It may very well be improved by DV but the HDR10 is seriously compromised. Ugh. As always, your mileage may vary - viewing distance, screen size and how sensitive you are to this issue. Some people just can't see poor chroma compression even if it's dancing the Macarena in front of their eyes and that's fine. I envy those people.

So a missed opportunity to deliver a definitive release. We seem to be crawling slowly in the right direction in a "two steps forward, one step back" kinda way, but you have to ask yourself - How many more bites at the apple are we gonna get? Unless Lionsgate release a UHD, this is probably the end of the road. They did release Requiem For A Dream though so stranger things have happened.

I can't tell you whether you should buy it or not because everyone's got different sensitivities (and budgets). But as someone who owns all three, the UHD will be my go to for the time being. Even with it's shortcomings it's still better than the other two discs. Just temper your expectations.

[andreasy969]

Originally Posted by DAT_JB

I can now order the 4K from amazon.fr

Is it worth the 28€?

I will never recommend or advise against anything, I didn't watch completely yet. What I think? Yes, it is - as long as there isn't a better version that fixes the compression glitches anyway.

[AJAX]

Does the UHD have the commentary?

[Dubliner1]

Originally Posted by AJAX

Does the UHD have the commentary?

2 commentaries...

-Steven Soderbergh & Lem Dobbs
-Cast & film crew

[James Luckard]

So it appears, from the caps-a-holic comparisons, that this French UHD set does not have the desaturation issue the UK BD had. The colors look more like the old transfer on the German BD.

Do the colors on the included BD with the French set look roughly the same as the UHD?

I have a horrible feeling this may never get a disc in the US, and once I saw the desaturated colors on the UK disc, which I own, I couldn't unsee them:

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...=325936&page=4

One member, Laserline, came up with a theory of how the desaturation on the UK disc happened, it's in post #77

[cirik]

Originally Posted by James Luckard

Do the colors on the included BD with the French set look roughly the same as the UHD?

Yes, they are very similar in that regard so it's obvious to me that Lionsgate messed up with colors on UK BD disc.
But as andreasy969 pointed out French BD has horrible compression issues, it's a lot worse than what you can see in these UK BD screencaps

[James Luckard]

Originally Posted by cirik

Yes, they are very similar in that regard so it's obvious to me that Lionsgate messed up with colors on UK BD disc.
But as andreasy969 pointed out French BD has horrible compression issues, it's a lot worse than what you can see in these UK BD screencaps

Yikes! Sounds like I should hold out a bit longer for a decent BD to replace my UK BD.

Thanks!

[Dubliner1]

Originally Posted by James Luckard

Yikes! Sounds like I should hold out a bit longer for a decent BD to replace my UK BD.

Thanks!

That's what the 4K disc is for

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Dubliner1

That's what the 4K disc is for

James is not enamoured of the four of kays.

[johnpaul2]

Originally Posted by James Luckard

Do the colors on the included BD with the French set look roughly the same as the UHD?

It seems that the French BD and UHD don't match with each other in terms of grading.
However, I've compared the French BD with the UK BD caps provided ealier on this topic and they don't match with each other either. This means we pretty much have 1 master and 3 presentations of its grading. Yay.

Originally Posted by Dubliner1

...why would they go to the added expense of doing a new BD? They probably figure people who are interested in the best video quality have already made the move to 4K...and those still happy with standard 1080 BD's are not so critical or fussy about pq.

With a UHD market around 5% (3 in France) and a BD market at 20% instead, this still leaves a lot of people interested in a better video quality but not (yet) by 4K aisde. There are quite a lot of remasters I'd love to have gotten on BD (from Sony or Paramount, in particular).

[cirik]

Originally Posted by johnpaul2

It seems that the French BD and UHD don't match with each other in terms of grading.

If you correctly tonemap UHD to SDR/Rec. 709, then French BD and UHD are quite similar in terms of color grading.

But this is not the case in those UHD screenshots from dvdclassik.com.

Just compare this dvdclassik shot from French UHD - https://i.slow.pics/6KciLwBp.png
To andreasy969 one - https://postimg.cc/hJSWWrsK

[bladelia]

Available to ship to Uk from Amz.FR finally.

[Geoffrey Firmin]

Originally Posted by cirik

If you correctly tonemap UHD to SDR/Rec. 709, then French BD and UHD are quite similar in terms of color grading.

But this is not the case in those UHD screenshots from dvdclassik.com.

That's not fair, it is true to say that there are some differences between the media players in terms of management of color space convertions. One can easily highlight this differences by using a BT 2111 test pattern: it can be download at this link in HEVC, the BT 2111 ( HDR 10/ BT 2020 test pattern) is explained by ITU at this link. Play the HEVC stream convert to rec709 sdr, made a capture with your media player ( VLC, MPC/madvr, 5K player, DVDfab 6), analyse the colorbars pattern with XnView and you will see that none of them is accurate to tonemap BT2020 HDR 10 to 709 SDR, with 5 or 6 points disparities on secondary colors ( yellow, cyan, magenta). But in any case, that could explain the huge amount of red (30 points !) difference between the BR HD and the UHD on that shot:
French HD
French UHD
UK HD

[cirik]

Originally Posted by Geoffrey Firmin

But in any case, that could explain the huge amount of red (30 points !) difference between the BR HD and the UHD on that shot:
French HD
French UHD
UK HD

And here is French UHD done with madVR (beta v126 with unchecked compromise on HDR tone & gamut mapping accuracy).

http://www.imagebam.com/image/882f3f1371418831

Now it's much closer to French BD, isn't it ?
I wont argue that madVR is 100% accurate but it's much closer colorwise to what I'm seeing on my calibrated TV compared to dvdclassik UHD screenshots. And I don't mean just that one shot but all of them.

But my point is that on my calibrated TV set (LG OLED C7 + OPPO 203) French BD & UHD are quite similar in color grading but dvdclassik comparison shows something completely different in that matter. And IMO it's just wrong and misleading.

[cirik]

Some screencaps of French BD disc.

[James Luckard]

Originally Posted by cirik

Some screencaps of French BD disc.

Thanks so much! Some of those frames are identical to the ones at caps-a-holic, so I compared the UK BD to the French BD.

The color looks more accurate on the French BD, but I see what everyone means about the poor compression on the French BD. Pity.