Black Panther 4K UHD (2018)

[LordoftheRings]

Is Black Panther better in analog stereo audio hi-fi sound?
Let me check that out ...

[imsounoriginal]

I'd bite the bullet on the crush if it still delivers those lovely colors and highlights, especially in the Korean segment. FWIW I do remember that early raid on the jeep convoy being dark in theaters as well (standard 2D DCP).

[fighthefutureofhd]

Exactly! Those scenes in theaters were dark. Nothing wrong with the 4k presentation of them. They were the same as in theaters.

[Geoff D]

The movie always had impenetrable darkness in certain scenes for sure, I'm saying that it's had those black levels pulled down even more, like plenty of other UHDs I could mention, and it's such a distraction to me that it's unwatchable.

[fighthefutureofhd]

Well I never noticed it. The scenes in the movie in 4k are identical in their black levels as they were in the movie.

[imsounoriginal]

Weird. I've seen this twice and thought it looked great both times. Shame about that audio though...

[Geoff D]

I hope we get some UHD comparison caps of this soon, and preferably with lots of darker scenes as well as those with brighter highlights, hint hint.

You guys like how it looks and that's cool, I can't tell you what you like just as you can't tell me what I like, but it makes the darker scenes look so flat and ugly on my TV. The ambush scene is one thing, but even in the apartment it's like they're in the black hole of Calcutta or some shit and that scene didn't look that bad in the cinema.

[imsounoriginal]

In that very first scene? Yeah that might've been a little darker than theaters, but not to any devastating extent (IMO). Definitely curious to see some caps.

[Geoff D]

Photos are always a terrible way of gauging darker material but here's a snap of the BD vs the UHD, both have had their exposure boosted to try and capture the blacks so don't take anything else you see to be indicative of the actual image quality:

BD, note how King T'Chaka's hair nicely rolls off into darkness with a bit of shadow detail therein:

[Show spoiler]

UHD, note that how his hair now has this massive blob of black nothingness with a really 'hard' delineation between the brighter parts of his forehead and the back of his hair.

[Show spoiler]

This happens to any semblance of a darker point in the scene too, on the walls, clothing, faces, etc. And you can't see it in that shot because I've brightened the exposure so much but his face is SO much brighter than his hair because of the power window they used to punch him up a bit, it looks so unbalanced in terms of light and dark it's almost comical...and I'm figuring that's not what they were going for in that scene?

I'm not saying that the movie shouldn't be dark in spots, I'm saying that this black crush is purely a technical issue owing to this goddamned trend of drastically raising the gamma WHEN IT DOESN'T NEED TO BE RAISED. On a low nit TV then this imbalance wouldn't seem to be nearly so obvious but on mine, yikes. I thought Disney got it out of their system with Guardians 2, seeing as that was their first UHD and Thor 3 and Last Jedi were unaffected, but now it's back with a vengeance. [edit] And as that shadow detail has been clipped away at the source level then there's nothing I can do with my settings to bring it back. I'll give this a viewing in Dolby Vision as & when I'm able to do so, see if that helps any.

[imsounoriginal]

Ah, I thought having a low-nit panel would make me more susceptible to something like this, but I see what you're saying. 'Tis the curse of the light cannon lol

[tigerali]

Originally Posted by Hardback247

How do I do that?

Same question for me. Do I futz around with my AVR?

[Hardback247]

Originally Posted by tigerali

Same question for me. Do I futz around with my AVR?

Maybe it's the Dolby Digital 7.1 Plus option in the Audio menu?

[fighthefutureofhd]

I'm not seeing any of that Geoff on my presentation. Could it be you got a defective disc? Maybe the disc is different overseas vs domestically?

[Sky_Captain]

He's got the US disc.

[whitestang06]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

I hope we get some UHD comparison caps of this soon, and preferably with lots of darker scenes as well as those with brighter highlights, hint hint.

Here's a couple of screengrabs, at 1080p, to illustrate what's going on with the blacks. (Done from a short clip)

Standard Blu-ray
http://imgbox.com/SK0Wxn1M
http://imgbox.com/TLMp9HFt

UHD
http://imgbox.com/3MJS28DX
http://imgbox.com/2LuZ6TZ5

[fighthefutureofhd]

I can't tell a difference.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by whitestang06

Here's a couple of screengrabs, at 1080p, to illustrate what's going on with the blacks. (Done from a short clip)

Standard Blu-ray
http://imgbox.com/SK0Wxn1M
http://imgbox.com/TLMp9HFt

UHD
http://imgbox.com/3MJS28DX
http://imgbox.com/2LuZ6TZ5

You little beauty, thanks! Look at Chad Boseman's hair and beard, clipped away to a black void on the UHD, as are the creases and folds in his hoodie, and look how posterised Martin Freeman's shoulder is in the left foreground. In the other shot look at Freeman's shoulder on the right, all that detail nuked away to sheer black, and again the foreground element looks very 'hard' and posterised. I thought Universal were bad enough for this shit but DIZNEE Y U GOT 2 DO IT???

Still, I took my own advice re: low nits being a help rather than a hindrance and played around with the XDR setting on my TV, this adjusts the HDR light output separate from any other backlight or contrast setting. I turned it all the way off, this still presents an HDR image with the appropriate 'shape' to the tone curve but with brightness reduced to literally half of what HDR should be according to my HCFR measurements, so 50% peak is now 50 nits rather than 100, 75% is now 500 nits rather than 1000 etc.

With that done, it made this HDR10 layer a LOT more tolerable for me. Not that it alleviates the crushing because that's baked in, you can't undo it on the UHD, but because it brings down the APL so drastically the darker spots in any given scene blend so much better rather than looking as horribly posterised as they do when watching with the full brightness.

This means that the darker scenes now look hella dark (what's new? ) while the brighter exteriors lack the true 'snap' of HDR peak brightness (although I still winced when it cut to a shot of a blazing sun!) but the >1000-nit tone mapping is still intact so I could clearly see the beautiful speculars that are retained in most of the Wakanda exteriors. It's not ideal but I can live with that rather than having my eyes distracted by that ugly-ass crushing at every turn. Yay!

[TheSweetieMan]

Black crush or not, I will never watch the regular blu-ray over the UHD.

[Geoff D]

I don't expect people to throw their copies onto the fire all of a sudden. If people enjoyed the presentation before then they're still going to enjoy it now.

[TheSweetieMan]

My thing is, the color and detail on the costumes and sets, look a lot better than on the BD.

Also, Rachel Morrison's cinematography seems to come across in a much more vibrant and nuanced style on the UHD compared to the blu-ray.