Starship Troopers 4K UHD (1997) (20th Anniversary Edition)

[emgesp]

Just saw the screenshot comparison of the new UHD vs the old BR master. Makes me so sad they won't release the new master on regular Blu-ray. I don't even own a 1080p PC monitor and can see a huge difference in terms of detail and filmic grain quality. Hopefully Sony will reconsider and release a new standard BR with the improved 4K master.

[ROSS.T.G.]

Originally Posted by emgesp

Just saw the screenshot comparison of the new UHD vs the old BR master. Makes me so sad they won't release the new master on regular Blu-ray. I don't even own a 1080p PC monitor and can see a huge difference in terms of detail and filmic grain quality. Hopefully Sony will reconsider and release a new standard BR with the improved 4K master.

I wouldn’t count on it. Sony wants to sell more 4K panels, players and discs.

[Geoff D]

And they think Starship Troopers is the film to do that? Nah. IMO they decided that it wasn't worth pursuing a standalone BD re-release so they didn't bother, there's no conspiracy here when you look at the large number of Sony UHDs which DO come with a remastered BD.

[ROSS.T.G.]

I don’t think it’s a conspiracy but I do think studios aren’t releasing the BD counterparts so they can sell more 4K titles. To your point I think in a lot of cases they just didn’t bother for whatever reasons. But if it’s not worth pursuing then why bother putting in the effort to release one of the better releases of 2017? Knowing that I couldn’t own superior transfers is what pushed me into upgrading. It’s a dick thing to say but I hope this trend continues so more upgrade. Or maybe they are catering to videophiles?

[KMFDMvsEnya]

I noticed on the Ghostbusters UHD and Starship Troopers caps that along the top and bottom of the frame there is some weird haloing and artifacting. Perhaps due to some EE, film emulsion, or maybe boundary compression artifacts.

Also applicable to all those examples, there are some minor interesting compression artifacts within the images proper which could be due to simply compression settings or HDR. There are instances I prefer how the conventional blu-ray encode handles certain things.

[Geoff D]

I didn't spot the stuff on the letterbox bars but sure, when you get close enough in still form then you'll see some gnarly artefacts in there when dealing with such heavy grain. In motion it's not usually a problem though, the adaptable block size of HEVC means that said gnarliness still looks more natural than AVC being pushed to such limits.

[KMFDMvsEnya]

Zoom in and enhance...

Ghostbusters
http://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?a=3&x=...3&l=0&i=0&go=1

Starship Troopers
http://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?a=3&x=...2&l=0&i=0&go=1

[Geoff D]

Cheers dude. You can still clearly see the same ringing in the 1080p version so I guess the UHD encoding is clashing with it a wee bit. Whether the ringing is from the respective downsampling (even 4K has to go from 4096x1716 or 3996x2160 into 3840x2160) or something that pro compressionist David M has talked about before (he likes to shift the bars slightly up or down so that they don't bisect a compression block) is unclear but I've watched Ghostbusters' UHD numerous times and Troopers has had key scenes played over and over (no, not those scenes, ya filthy animals!) and I've never noticed those issues with the black bars.

They're there alright in caps, but they are literally the sort of thing that you'd need to have your head pressed up against the TV to spot in real world viewing so it's not a major issue IMO. I have actually spotted ringing on the letterbox bars in certain movies from my normal viewing distance mind you, the upscaling for 2K movies is better on some discs than on others but in the case of GB and ST the grain helps to obfuscate those kinds of artefacts in motion.

[OutOfBoose]

I can barely see them in motion, and only when I specifically look for these artifacts. Not an issue for me.

[oddbox83]

Those caps are a VERY bad way to judge. The contrast isn’t so blown when I view the real disc for example. I think a lot of it is artefacts from the HDR fold down. Whites are being crushed for example and the contrast looks too hot.

[Geoff D]

Yes, I don't use those caps to judge dynamic range, nor should anyone. But the colour's pretty good and the detail is there for all to see so they still have some benefit in that regards.

[Sky_Captain]

To be honest, Cars 3 is the only UHD I noticed this on, (without looking for it), as it's so clean.

[Geoff D]

Yes, that's what I meant about being able to see that sort of ringing on certain movies, if they's got no grains then it can be a bit more obvious.

[NotASpeckOfCereal]

Originally Posted by ROSS.T.G.

I don’t think it’s a conspiracy but I do think studios aren’t releasing the BD counterparts so they can sell more 4K titles.

Yeah. In other words, it's a business model.

Knowing that I couldn’t own superior transfers is what pushed me into upgrading. It’s a dick thing to say but I hope this trend continues so more upgrade. Or maybe they are catering to videophiles?

Go into any Costco or Best Buy (or insert the mega store of your peepuls), you'll see that 4K UHD panels are targeting the masses.

Not that people aren't still buying BD, or DVD, or even VHS. But the further you go down the legacy chain, the more you'll find those people at the Goodwill (or insert the hand-me-down store of your peepuls).

Chris

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by ROSS.T.G.

I don’t think it’s a conspiracy but I do think studios aren’t releasing the BD counterparts so they can sell more 4K titles. To your point I think in a lot of cases they just didn’t bother for whatever reasons. But if it’s not worth pursuing then why bother putting in the effort to release one of the better releases of 2017? Knowing that I couldn’t own superior transfers is what pushed me into upgrading. It’s a dick thing to say but I hope this trend continues so more upgrade. Or maybe they are catering to videophiles?

That's a good point but there's always a first time for x movie on x format, you can always drum up a few new purchases that way. So I guess Sony thought they'd give Troopers and Groundhog and A Few Good Men their debut on UHD while their historical sales data may have pointed to the reverse for remastering and re-releasing them on BD, though if Sony doesn't want to do them then the new transfers may well end up on BD as licensed or retailer-exclusive titles at some point.

It also goes the other way, Sony did new 4K transfers of xXx and Jezza Maguire and Talladega Nights and Bad Boys I & II but have released them on BD only thus far and I don't see any of the "we're being bullied into buying 4K!" complainers moaning about that. By my maths they outnumber the three remasters that Sony has put out exclusively on UHD.

Bottom line is that Sony are making individual decisions about what movie is released on what format and on the balance of it they've been MORE accommodating to non-4K owners than 4K owners at this point in time. There's no conspiracy here.

[ROSS.T.G.]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

That's a good point but there's always a first time for x movie on x format, you can always drum up a few new purchases that way. So I guess Sony thought they'd give Troopers and Groundhog and A Few Good Men their debut on UHD while their historical sales data may have pointed to the reverse for remastering and re-releasing them on BD, though if Sony doesn't want to do them then the new transfers may well end up on BD as licensed or retailer-exclusive titles at some point.

It also goes the other way, Sony did new 4K transfers of xXx and Jezza Maguire and Talladega Nights and Bad Boys I & II but have released them on BD only thus far and I don't see any of the "we're being bullied into buying 4K!" complainers moaning about that. By my maths they outnumber the three remasters that Sony has put out exclusively on UHD.

Bottom line is that Sony are making individual decisions about what movie is released on what format and on the balance of it they've been MORE accommodating to non-4K owners than 4K owners at this point in time. There's no conspiracy here.

It’s hard to argue that. It’s funny you brought up those titles because when I was watching the Transformer 4K’s this weekend I thought about how great Bad Boys will look and then started wondering when Sony will release the other mastered in 4K titles. I’m assuming we should have them this year. Hopefully...

[singhcr]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Yes, I don't use those caps to judge dynamic range, nor should anyone. But the colour's pretty good and the detail is there for all to see so they still have some benefit in that regards.

That's good to know. I loved the sharp grain and the increase in detail, but many of the caps had very.blown out whites and contrast, the football game being one of the worst.

[Geoff D]

Seriously, ignore the highlights and contrast levels in just about every ripped cap that you see because they need an SDR conversion in order to look vaguely normal on a display device operating in conventional gamma. My own comparison photos are different because they're not strictly "SDR" or "HDR", they're just capturing the differences as they appear.

[singhcr]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Seriously, ignore the highlights and contrast levels in just about every ripped cap that you see because they need an SDR conversion in order to look vaguely normal on a display device operating in conventional gamma. My own comparison photos are different because they're not strictly "SDR" or "HDR", they're just capturing the differences as they appear.

That makes sense. To be fair, though, isn't your camera just doing a conversion to sRGB or Adobe RGB or whatever SDR color space it has when you take the photo? How is that any different? Consumer cameras can't capture the full P3 gamut and even if they could, our PC displays overwhelmingly can't display it.

Ah yes, the vagaries of tone mapping

[Geoff D]

I never said that the photos are capturing the full range or full gamut, but the point here is that the TV has already applied the "transform" to turn the HDR images into conventional video signals and is using a method that preserves upwards of 4000 nits of highlights, unlike the 180 or 350 nit transforms that madVR is applying to these raw HDR captures.

I can to certain degrees adjust the 'mapping' of my camera to capture what I want to capture in the photos, varying the exposure on a "scene by scene" basis to be able to get it to read the highlights or whatever. The average playback environment for static metadata HDR does not do this, hence why it's such a cluster**** on actual TVs never mind caps.