So Target has this for the same $$ as Amazon, I went to get it and they wouldn't sell it to me as their computer says it doesn't street until September 9.
So I ordered it online for store pickup while in the store as the manager could not override the computer. But I was able to pickup an online order.
Picked up First Blood on 4k for 12 bucks after 20% off (Cartwheel). The 20% off doesn't work on 'new this week' but it's good til the 20th.
Anyone else spotted the grading error in Episode 2?
[Show spoiler]Near the end, when Joe Shea is remembering the Apollo 1 crew giving him and Storms those gag photos, the black and white is supposed to transition back to colour on the final dissolve from the crew to the photo, with the last shot of Shea in colour (it's kinda the point of that visual device, B&W for 'memories' and colour for 'now') but on the HD it stays in black and white until the end of that sequence, the colour re-appearing on the cut to Betty Grissom sparking up a loose.
The most grievous error to end all errors? No, but it's somewhat indicative of the slapdash nature of this remaster. And I had a feeling that the black levels would be much darker on the DVD and so it proved, the image is very dense indeed but if it feels too crushy-crushy in SD then the HD remaster is far too thin and milky in the blacks, the contrast is now shot to hell for Blu-ray. For the remaining episodes I'm gonna raise the gamma by a good few notches to thicken up the low end.
I think I figured out just why so many shots look as processed as they do, numerous opticals aside, as the corresponding sequences on the DVD have a fair bit of 'flutter' in the grain which they've decided to, ah, even out for the remaster.
Sorry Geoff, I “had something in my eye” at that point. It’s a shame that that happened, but not having noticed it on my watch I can attest that it does little to undermine the impact of that scene.
My eyes are nowhere near as discerning towards the digital tinkering and grain structure/management as yours are so I bow to your judgement. I can only say that I have not found it overly distracting myself.
Positives/negatives aside, I’m just glad that this release has given me the perfect excuse to watch this great series again.
So Target has this for the same $$ as Amazon, I went to get it and they wouldn't sell it to me as their computer says it doesn't street until September 9.
So I ordered it online for store pickup while in the store as the manager could not override the computer. But I was able to pickup an online order.
Picked up First Blood on 4k for 12 bucks after 20% off (Cartwheel). The 20% off doesn't work on 'new this week' but it's good til the 20th.
Same thing happened to me. I went up to the self checkout and the woman who supervises that area said that she couldn't sell it to me. So I went back and grabbed another one and asked if I could purchase it in the movie section. She just over rid it and out I went.
I have my digital collection on vudu, movies anywhere, google play, apple tv, itunes, fandango now and Fios. I think only Fios and Movies Anywhere do not support all the studios. Correct if I am wrong. I will correct myself it did not transfer to any of the other services once I added it. Lame and unusual.
Sorry Geoff, I “had something in my eye” at that point. It’s a shame that that happened, but not having noticed it on my watch I can attest that it does little to undermine the impact of that scene.
My eyes are nowhere near as discerning towards the digital tinkering and grain structure/management as yours are so I bow to your judgement. I can only say that I have not found it overly distracting myself.
Positives/negatives aside, I’m just glad that this release has given me the perfect excuse to watch this great series again.
If you go back to my first post assessing it then you'll note that I expressed a very similar sentiment, quoted below, but that's not going to stop me from calling out sloppy work.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Geoff D
[Show spoiler]It's a mixed bag is this. Two episodes in and the framing (still a bit too tight in close-ups) is the least of my quibbles. There's a lot of DNR being applied here and there with sharpening on top, not on the whole thing but certain shots look very, very processed indeed. And I'm not talking about stock shots of historical video or the handful of janky SD upscales that I've spotted thus far, but lots of 'regular' shots like when Kevin Pollack arrives after the Apollo 1 fire and he looks at Stephen Root, both of their angles look like boiled crap, and there are plenty of little moments like that in these first two episodes.
Do NOT get me wrongo, when this is on-song the detail and clarity are simply fabulous but the grain always looks "managed" to some degree and when it takes an outright detour into DNRsville it can get rather distracting. Well, for someone like me anyway. The ironical thing is that the fake grain in the new VFX shots looks FAR more natural than much of the fudged 35mm grain on display here, though the new VFX themselves can look rather cheap in terms of execution from what I've seen so far. As was mentioned by the 'new' fella, some of the spacecraft almost look like frozen images with a background passing by behind them, there's no kind of proper motion blur or interactive lighting on the object itself and it feels like some of it was cooked up in someone's bedroom.
It's been casually mentioned that this is one of those 'shot on film but edited on video' shows but there are a LOT of photochemical opticals here inherent to the original edit (indeed, the credits list a 'negative cutter') for things like fades and dissolves, there are several of the latter in ep 2. There are also a bunch of shots of David Andrews during the hearing at the end which were originally reframed in post, optically enlarged in the old-fashioned way complete with printed-in specks of dirt that just sit there.
Why am I mentioning the opticals at all? These things are part and parcel of how that era of film worked, you're going to lose detail and get softer-yet-coarser grain compared to the camera negative - but for this presentation they've decided to de-grain them so they end up looking very smooth compared to the first gen material and, again, the flip-flopping between good and meh can stand out more than it otherwise should.
Black levels can look a bit weird, they're quite thin and are sometimes shot through with a vibrant blue tinge, and the fades to black often look strange as well, the image fading down to what looks like well above black and then it just kinda hard cuts to an actual black screen. Spotted some gnarly banding in certain scenes in Ep 2 as well, though that's just as likely on the encoding itself (typical Warners, putting 4 hours onto one disc) rather than the mastering at source.
Basically there's definitely a bit of source-related quality loss BUT I'm not of the opinion that the supposedly poor "OCN" is at the heart of of it all, for if they'd left the DNR dial alone or used it in moderation then it wouldn't look half as uneven as it does.
Eh, it was only 20 quid so this isn't something I'm going to lose sleep over, and did any of it matter when Frank Borman did his 'failure of imagination' speech to the senate committee, or when the wives of the Apollo 1 crew gave Deke his astronaut pin? HECK no, that last bit got me all choked up and as we near the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landings it's only proper to also consider the sacrifices that got them there. (I watched the 'live' CBS report on the fire a few months back on youtube, even that was gut-wrenching.)
Yeah, it's almost got a kind of ungraded look to it as the skin tones are this kind of pale orange, the blacks are milky AF and the highlights are so flat. I'd love to see this in HDR.
I watched the first two episodes last night. My only real complaint is that there are times where skin tones looked an under-saturated yellowish-orange. There were other times, however, where skin tones were excellent, sharp and well saturated. The Mercury and Gemini capsules in space looked great. The Atmos sound wasn't all that immersive but was generally good. My nit picks are just that and don't detract from a solid release that is a nice upgrade from my Signature Edition DVDs. There's also an interesting feature on the restoration process and the conversion to 1080P resolution. At the end of the day, the content of this series rules and it's up there with The Sopranos, Band of Brothers, Game of Thrones, etc. in the pantheon of HBO's best work so, for me, "all systems are go" with this release.
If you go back to my first post assessing it then you'll note that I expressed a very similar sentiment, quoted below, but that's not going to stop me from calling out sloppy work.
Absolutely. You’re just much better at spotting that stuff than I am Geoff.
I have not watched my dvds in years. It never looked "good". I will say if you have never seen this buy it, its a fantastic show. Im ok with the blu rays. My expectations were never high with how it will look. Oz will be a mixed bag if they blu ray it.
You haven't even seen it for yourself, you've said you're not boycotting it, and yet you're complaining about how it looks--and your "knowledge" about how it looks is all based on one person's written impressions about it.
pretty sure more than one person has said the special effects were badly done. But I will continue to read this thread and what others have to say about it. Again, I never said I wasn't boycotting, and I've never said I am boycotting it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by noirjunkie
Just do us all a favor and stop posting about this release. You're not bringing anything useful to the conversation.
Unless you are a moderator here, don't tell me what to do. My posts were relevant and on topic. You shouldn't tell people to stop posting in a thread just because you disagree with them.
People always think that their reasoning is obvious- and it is to them. I also very much doubt that HBO considers this to be a "very bad release."
Sending your explanation to HBO's customer service and expecting it to reach the studio decision makers AND for them to then correlate that with the sales data for this release AND to also extrapolate from your email that your reason is the reason for most people not buying a release is highly improbable. It is much more likely that they would just assume that there is little to no interest in physical releases of catalog content, especially given that disc sales in general are declining and have been for years.
I would agree, if I were the only one to do. But if enough people decided not to buy the release and sent a letter to the studio explaining why, I would think it would get their attention eventually.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vilya
I recommend supporting physical media releases that interest you as much as possible particularly in the declining disc market that we are in.
It's not perfect, but the last time I got to watch this was omg VHS taped from HBO....so still much better than that! It's a great series and the technical flaws do not ruin that. Sure, I wish HBO had done a better job though.
pretty sure more than one person has said the special effects were badly done. But I will continue to read this thread and what others have to say about it. Again, I never said I wasn't boycotting, and I've never said I am boycotting it.
Unless you are a moderator here, don't tell me what to do. My posts were relevant and on topic. You shouldn't tell people to stop posting in a thread just because you disagree with them.
It’s more accurate to say they are a mixed bag, the models of the vehicles themselves look very good and I am sure are quite accurate however a number of the shots have not been blended properly (they look like they have been put on top of the image instead of actually being part of it) which was also one of the issues with the TNG Season 2 remaster however there are a number of shots (most of Episode 9) that look fantastic IMO
If they had had longer to do this I am sure it would have turned out even better but I get the impression this was a relatively last minute project and they were racing against the clock to have it finished and released in time for the 50th Anniversary and obviously sacrifices were made but then it’s worth remembering that 90% of the show is regular live action footage with no visual effects and besides the odd colour and DNR on a number of shots it looks great and if this is someone’s first introduction to the series I really do envy them as it’s an incredible journey.
Last edited by Indiana Jones; 07-17-2019 at 09:33 PM.
I have my digital collection on vudu, movies anywhere, google play, apple tv, itunes, fandango now and Fios. I think only Fios and Movies Anywhere do not support all the studios. Correct if I am wrong.
Movies Anywhere supports movies (shocker) only and not television series.
If the effects and colors are really that bad, I may have to go through this scene by scene and correct the color, and replace the effects with upscaled effects. Also where important information is cut off at the bottom, change the aspect ratio for those scenes. I have been having some pretty great success with Topaz Gigapixel for AI upscaling. It is hit or miss, but really works great for some things, and not so much for other things. Here is an example scene where I upscaled it from the 4x3 DVD.
No offense to the original reviewer but he seems to be posting his thoughts here there and everywhere and, to tell you the truth he seems unreasonably critical. I believe he's scaring off potential viewers from a perfectly reasonable HiDef version of the series. In an ideal world we'd get a beautiful bells and whistles BD upgrade, but in the twilight of the physical disc format, this is more than I ever expected. The vast majority of potential viewers of this set will be perfectly happy with it...
Quote:
Originally Posted by trevanian
This review, especially the last part, is very telling in my view.
So looked forward to buying this, but now ... No damn way!
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