The Little Mermaid 4K UHD (1989) (30th Anniversary Edition)

[Brian81]

Some early thoughts and observations...

I did not A/B with Diamond Edition BD but did compare what I saw on my calibrated set to the sets of stills from various releases as provided on the Disney thread on the Original Trilogy forums.


Colors do not appear as vibrant as the provided stills marked as being from the Diamond Edition BD. https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Re...tures/id/15617. The UHD looks closest to the colors of the 1998/1999 LD/DVD releases. After that, I would say the next closest would be 1990/1991 releases, but those look overly bright.


As far as overall appearance, I am initially disappointed. I was hoping for nicely resolved grain and razor sharp outlines. Perhaps something like Watership Down BD esque grain for an animated feature captured on film. This has that typical Disney filtered look. Just soft lines and not much grain. The poster mentioning the Peanuts features is not too far off, I actually thought the same. Though the Peanuts programs look better. Also, the opening credits are jaggy so for that, I think of upscaling. From memory, I think the Diamond Edition 3D may have been 'grainier.' Take a grain of salt with these comments as I watched the BD years ago on a projection setup at normal viewing distances and I checked this disc out today on a TV at three feet from 75".

Also, for the various censorships and changes (knee removal, for one) - these have not been restored to their original state. In case anyone wondered if anything was undone.

I do think the duller colors may be more faithful as they are closer to 1990s home video releases and not as oddly different as the mid-00s release or as colorful as Diamond.


*post was cleaned up*

[Geoff D]

Remind me of your non-junk TV?

[Brian81]

Originally Posted by geoff d

remind me of your non-junk tv?

940d

[Geoff D]

Cheers. I wouldn't worry about having no DV on a Sony.

[Hardback247]

Originally Posted by Brian81

The various censorships and changes (knee removal, for one) have not been restored to original state.

The layer for Grimsby's hand has been fixed, and there is no more tear in the top right corner when Ariel and Eric dive into the water.

[Brian81]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Cheers. I wouldn't worry about having no DV on a Sony.

I read that there have been issues. I do think the additional zones may been a great benefit. Sometimes the pulsing/dimming drives my eyes buggy and I sometimes want to turn local dimming off. Pretty much only during credits, though.

[Geoff D]

That's the thing about credits on the ZD9. I'm used to having the screen light up, then dim down, light up, then dim down etc from the previous edge-lit Sonys that I had, but it's so much better on the ZD9, pitch black with no appreciable blooming around the lettering, nor any backlight raising from one credit to the next. There's the occasional credits sequence that must have some form of light 'pollution' on it somewhere because it wigs out the backlighting, but mostly they look marvelloso. Still amazed by what this telly can do.

[goeagles5039]

A lot of comments in this post making me second guess buying this.

[Hardback247]

Originally Posted by goeagles5039

A lot of comments in this post making me second guess buying this.

Go with whatever you think feels right.

[seanjonmc]

Originally Posted by BluRayWish108p

I picked up the 4K digibook at Target today, and my heart dropped when I saw that Ursula the sea witch wasn't on the blu ray disc. I thought both discs were going to have artwork on them like the Best Buy steelbook exclusive. The odd part is that the little cardboard at the top of the digibook shows that the second disc is supposed to have artwork on it. What gives? I've been cheated!

The cardboard portion on top actually shows the second disc as being all blue. At least mine does.

[Show spoiler]

[shinobipopcorn]

Originally Posted by singhcr

What digital effects are you referring to? Other than the ending scene that used CAPS, this is old school traditional animation- hand painted cels and backgrounds photographed on film.

Stuff like title cards would be done optically.

The stairs when Ariel runs to spy on Vanessa and Eric, the carriage when they jump the ravine, and I think one other shot (maybe with the chef?) were effects.

[mysticwaterfall]

So, I've seen this multiple times on VHS, DVD, Bluray, and Bluray 3d before over the decades, so having just finished the 4K, my thoughts...

At the begining of the movie I was a little disappointed because it looked "duller" then I am used to in previous formats, especially the begining underwater scenes. But then I began to appreciate the much more filimiac quality to the whole presentation, and I think this was how it was actually meant to be seen. You can really appreciate the effort put into the animation. And then once we got to daytime scenes it was definitely more vibrant then I remember previously, and my remaining doubts vanished.

The HDR has some good highlights - magic, sparks, fire, etc really pop and it does a good job differentiating the day and night scenes more so then previous releases.

Overall I think this is probably the best the film is ever going to look and I am happy with it in the end. Much better then the disappointing 3D version which I'm keeping solely for special features.

As for effects, they are almost all traditional. The stairs, ravine jump, the ship sailing away under the rainbow, and a few misc wrecked ships in the background at the end are the only CAPS/CGI ones. More info below.

[Show spoiler]
From Wikipedia, which cites the commentary as a source, so I'm fine with it since it's a good write up.

The Little Mermaid was the last Disney feature film to use the traditional hand-painted cel method of animation. Disney's next film, The Rescuers Down Under, used a digital method of coloring and combining scanned drawings developed for Disney by Pixar called CAPS/ink & paint (Computer Animation Production System), which would eliminate the need for cels, the multiplane camera, and many of the optical effects used for the last time in Mermaid. A CAPS/ink & paint prototype was used experimentally on a few scenes in Mermaid, and one shot produced using CAPS/ink & paint—the penultimate shot in the film, of Ariel and Eric's wedding ship sailing away under a rainbow—appears in the finished film. Computer-generated imagery was used to create some of the wrecked ships in the final battle, a staircase behind a shot of Ariel in Eric's castle, and the carriage Eric and Ariel are riding in when she bounces it over a ravine. These objects were animated using 3D wireframe models, which were plotted as line art to cels and painted traditionally.

[Noremac Mij]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

That's the thing about credits on the ZD9. I'm used to having the screen light up, then dim down, light up, then dim down etc from the previous edge-lit Sonys that I had, but it's so much better on the ZD9, pitch black with no appreciable blooming around the lettering, nor any backlight raising from one credit to the next. There's the occasional credits sequence that must have some form of light 'pollution' on it somewhere because it wigs out the backlighting, but mostly they look marvelloso. Still amazed by what this telly can do.

You should see it on an OLED.

As for TLM, I’m somewhat unimpressed by the whole thing, picture and sound.

[abbazappaplant]

Just watched it and thought it looked fantastic. I thought coloring and highlights were great. Especially the boat scene when Ariel discovers Eric. Theres a lot going on in that scene between lights and darks and fire etc... And it handled with aplomb. It's not razor sharp resolution, but I wasnt truly expecting that from this animation to film process. Now, if sleeping beauty looks like this, I'll be disappointed

[Hardback247]

Originally Posted by TheSweetieMan

The HDR, to no surprise, is the real star here. There were moments where it looked like bubbles for floating off my screen, it was pretty damn impressive. Lots of specular highlight detail with this disc, with the wider color spectrum really breathing new life into certain portions of the images that otherwise felt lifeless or dull on all other previous disc formats.

People talk about HDR all the time, and sometimes I think I have some kind of idea what it is, but when I watch a movie with HDR, I can't really figure out exactly WHERE it is whenever it pops up. It's like I need a perfect photographic memory of the movie in SDR in order to really understand. In the case of The Little Mermaid, I don't know if I can tell any big difference between the remastered SDR Blu-Ray and the HDR 4K Blu-Ray.

[leniphotography]

Just picked up my copy and watched it in its entirety. I am somewhat underwhelmed by the picture quality myself. I won’t judge the audio as I am currently using a simple 5.1 system. The HDR color I thought was excellent. It was more vivid and colorful than I remember. There were a handful of scenes that stood out to be sharper than HD, but not breathtakingly so. A lot of shots were very blurry or muddy; I just assumed it was the original hand drawn animation, but I’m not so sure.

Also someone correct me if I’m wrong, but the backgrounds look so muddy and nowhere near as sharp and detailed as The Lion King. I thought TLK being 2K CAPS and TLM being native 4K I would see much greater detail in TLM, but I was wrong.

I don’t hate this release and I still think it looks better than ever, I’m just underwhelmed as a whole.

[KilljoyEX]

I ended up picking up both the Best Buy steel book and the Target edition not sure if I will keep the Target one.

Not sure if any of this is present on my diamond edition Blu-ray but these are my two cents after watching this standalone not too long ago.

Video:
-Looks inconsistent. Some parts look eye-poppingly clear and some just look average like they were untouched.
-Overall a bit darker than I remember
-Bubbles looked great like I could touch them
-Some items look like they were placed on top of the background like in a CGI way and some items and characters on the screen pop with “HD” more than the ones next to them
Examples:
-Whales in the beginning
-When Arielle is in the her cave and she is swimming around and circling, I could tell that only she was upgraded while flounder looked the same and dull in the background and the same with the scenery
However, the scene after the rescue when Eric is unconscious has beautiful colors and is clear.


Sound:
-Listened at -5 from reference about 13 feet away from center speaker.
-I liked the Dolby Atmos track a lot and all speakers were active as much as possible
-The fireworks scene was a perfect opportunity to utilize my mounted up high height speakers
-Thunder and lighting before Ariel rescues Eric and the ship is about to burn down sounds amazing with my height speakers.
-While there wasn’t always thunderous LFE the dialogue and all sound was very clear and defined. Such ear candy to hear the voices so clearly with nice range.
-Sounds is really good and the LFE sounds more controlled, refined, and not bloated sounding like the Diamond edition Blu-ray if I recall correctly.
—Example: The shark sounds
There are other instances where there is LFE where I didn’t expect like Scuttle falling and hitting something-welcomed LFE.
-King Triton blowing up the human artifact collection cave sounds were great also.

[nickelmouse]

Originally Posted by Pyoko

Looks like an older transfer with moderate to heavy de-graining, outlines often look artificially filtered/thickened/sharpened, or futzed-with (weird stuff on the bird in the opening shot, end of Triton's right eyelid.) This could partly be the source, since painted cels sometimes appear with defects or scratches not too dissimilar from dirt-removal artifacts, but there's no question the top part of the wing next to the beak is missing. There's a frequent unsharp mask feeling (shark shot) and it still shows extremely subtle traces of ghosting here and there, though nowhere near as bad as the DVD. I never bothered with the Blu-ray but I'm going to assume it's the same source and many of the issues stem from that. Don't like it, the look of the movie is still quite dirty and drab so cleaning it up was a wasted effort in my opinion, the much more natural and filmlike DVD at least looks appropriate. I guess that answers my question on how Disney intends to treat their classics on 4K.

I can appreciate either one of these. The 4K certainly looks less organic and I'm sure that's by design to make it look more like modern animation. I don't think that should've been any surprise given Disney's treatment on most of their classic animated releases. It's certainly not staying true to the source if they are going to use DNR and other techniques to make everything look smooth. However, just like Film vs. Digital or HDR re-grading changes that spark all kinds of debate about a directors original intent, I find that I often appreciate both versions of a film and am happy to ignore the arguments over which is better.

And all that aside, I feel like there has to be some serious limitations in what could even be done to bring these to 4K in way that improves the visual quality without sacrificing the source integrity if that was the intent. I don't know anything about this old animation and the process for restoration/digitalization so perhaps I'm totally off base with that assumption.

[storythecorgi]

Originally Posted by seanjonmc

The cardboard portion on top actually shows the second disc as being all blue. At least mine does.

[Show spoiler]

Same here

[Brian81]

That first Scuttle scene where Ariel brings the fork is so DNRed. I swear, if Disney is going to keep their BD approach, they might as well not release these on UHD. They're such a terrible home video department when it comes to treating their 'animated classics'. Well, maybe it is better to say that they do not care about faithful restorations, but rather care about making everything look acceptable to the general consumer who does not care. At least they do not do 16:9 croppings.