The Deer Hunter (1978) 4K UHD

[Geoff D]

The Deer Hunter Revisited. So, yeah. This has Dolby Vision....and it transforms it from a mediocre encode to a very good one, still a touch fragile in a couple of spots but a world away from the HDR10 base layer which treads a very fine line. The odd flickering that I mentioned in the darker scenes in HDR10 is greatly improved in DV too, a couple of moments near the end when Mike is trying to track down Nicky in the Saigon back streets still flutter a wee bit but apart from that the problem is pretty much fixed.

I'm not gonna hail DV's prowess as a format for these improvements however, because if the HDR10 layers were being encoded properly then these problems would not exist. It's SUCH a shame that certain Dolby Vision encoders for disc seem to be doing this to the HDR10 presentation, severely hampering the chroma compression and also causing other issues, but it is what it is and this dual layer base + enhancement authoring system still needs a fair bit of fine tuning. Who knows, perhaps this is the reason why Disney are currently shying away from DV on disc?

One aspect where I will praise the DV is the dynamic tone mapping as it helps to bring the speculars highlights alive, NOT in the sense of adding gaudy 'pop' (though I did mention that dreaded word in my HDR10 review, for which I can only apologise) but by making them feel more intense and realistic without ever being overpowering. As much as I praised the HDR10 for looking better balanced between dark and light than the new SDR transfer, the DV does an ever better job of reconciling the high gamma with the bright highlights.

The DV is a more coherent presentation, to put it simply. Grain looks finer now that the compression artefacts have been reined in, and the HDR is integrated in an even more organic way. It's a beautiful visual representation of an amazing film (having screened it twice now in two days I was never clock watching) and I even turned on the AVR this time and watched it with the 70mm sound mix. I still can't quite fully articulate what the differences are between that and the regular 2.0 mix but the 70mm seems to sound sharper. I mean, it doesn't turn it into a modern sounding movie (all that overlapping hard-to-hear dialogue is very much part of the intent, and there's very little in the way of surround usage or overt LFE) but it's more precise, for want of a better word.

People keep asking which presentation I prefer but this Dolby Vision 4K UHD has them all beat. Note to self: check HDR settings on the player next time.