Paramount Rental or Movie-Only BDs With Better PQ

[jscoggins]

Okay, most of us are familiar with Lionsgate putting lossy audio on their rental BDs.

What if a studio did the opposite and made the rental or movie-only version superior to the retail BD?

Paramount has done this at least twice.

Inspired by GenPion's posts in the Super 8 thread, I decided to buy the Walmart movie-only version.

Originally Posted by GenPion

[Show spoiler]Is there someone with the Wal-Mart edition (movie sans extras) who would be willing to do a BD Scan of the disc to see what the details are? The rental version had a higher bitrate PQ and I would like to try and get a copy if possible. If the Wal-Mart version is the same, then that's the easiest route.

Originally Posted by GenPion

[Show spoiler]I disagree. Super 8's transfer was strong on the retail release - but not perfect. Around a 4.5/5. It might seem silly to spend extra just to reach as close to perfection as one can get to some, but Super 8 is one of my favorite movies of the last few years and getting the release with an almost 10 mbps higher bit-rate will ensure that's the best version I'll ever own. So I would like to get either the rental version (if possible) or the Wal-Mart one, if it's the same situation. I have the UK steelbook (with US discs) and will simply take out the US DVD and put the BD inside with the higher bit-rate transfer.

It does indeed have a video encode with higher bit rates.

In the action-heavy sequences, the bit rates are in the 30s for both versions. However, in the dialogue sequences, the bit rate drops into the 20s for the retail version, whereas the movie-only/rental version stays in the 30s. (The audio is identical.)

Retail BD:


Movie-Only/Rental BD:


BD specs posted by Tech-UK: https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...postcount=7033

The disc scan even shows that the disc has been labeled as the Rental version ("Darlings" was the movie's codename while in production)!

Walmart Exclusive US Super 8 average video bitrate is 36.08 Mbps.
Standard US Super 8 average video bitrate is 27.68 Mbps.
UK/EU(majority) Super 8 average video bitrate is 23.57 Mbps.

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Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol was another movie where the rental BD got a higher bitrate video encode. This was the same BD that appeared in Best Buy's 3-disc Exclusive (since all of the Extras were moved onto the second disc).





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Back when Blockbuster and Hollywood Video were still in business, Paramount regularly prepared movie-only versions for those rental chains. They had cover art and even barcodes, though the discs didn't have any bonus features. I wonder how many of them had better video encodes? If you bought them from Blockbuster or Hollywood Video, please chime in.

Unverified:
True Grit (2010) (06/07/2011)

Thor (09/13/2011)


Verified:
Super 8 (11/22/2011)

Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol (04/17/2012)