King Kong 4K UHD (2005) (Ultimate Edition)

[JohnCarpenterLives]

Originally Posted by Patient Leech

I just got this 4k. I'm looking forward to watching it again.

It's not one I saw in the theater, so this is probably the best it'll look for me.

I got it from Gruv recently myself! I haven't seen it since the theatrical release. Looking forward to it, but it's so sad.

[lgans316]

Originally Posted by JohnCarpenterLives

I got it from Gruv recently myself! I haven't seen it since the theatrical release. Looking forward to it, but it's so sad.

You are better off watching the bit starved BD over the atrocious 4K

I still remember my son commenting about how bad the 4K looked within the first 10 minutes prompting me to switch to the BD. Yes, the BD does look poor when it comes to the scenes with highlights but I prefer a more natural picture over the overcooked UHD.

[Geoff D]

Yep, definitely gonna do a defence of Kong post later on

[snipemonkey]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Yep, definitely gonna do a defence of Kong post later on

I'm with ya. While I think the 2005 version is definitely the least of the remakes, I still enjoy it simply because it's Kong and there's just no such thing as a BAD Giant Monkey Movie. Can't be done.

Plus, Naomi Watts...

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by snipemonkey

I'm with ya. While I think the 2005 version is definitely the least of the remakes, I still enjoy it simply because it's Kong and there's just no such thing as a BAD Giant Monkey Movie. Can't be done.

Plus, Naomi Watts...

Oh, I didn't mean the film. I meant the UHD

[PonyoBellanote]

Is the UHD that bad? But is it a case of Peter Jackson doing a TLOR in 4K or the overbaked HDR that Universal did at the early start of their UHDs?

Asking how bad it is to know if I should skip the UHD period. I don't have the movie in any format, so that's why I want to know. For example, Sing I know is a bad UHD due to the overcook but I am planning to get it etiher way because it has the BD and also because my entire collection of Illumination is going to be in UHD.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by PonyoBellanote

Is the UHD that bad? But is it a case of Peter Jackson doing a TLOR in 4K or the overbaked HDR that Universal did at the early start of their UHDs?

Asking how bad it is to know if I should skip the UHD period. I don't have the movie in any format, so that's why I want to know. For example, Sing I know is a bad UHD due to the overcook but I am planning to get it etiher way because it has the BD and also because my entire collection of Illumination is going to be in UHD.

Sing isn't really "overcooked" (and I don't agree with that characterisation of Universal's early HDR titles in general), it's just not got a lot of range baked into the master so the HDR can't do much with it apart from add brightness. It's not losing any highlight info vs the SDR BD, but poor tone mapping could end up blowing out the highlights worse than the SDR.

The difference with Kong is that although it *is* very bright it's also got plenty of highlight detail to go with it in several scenes, and the regular Blu is the usual kind of tealy-green drenched SDR master of yesteryear which the UHD neutralises.

[PonyoBellanote]

''Range'' baked into the master? I'm afraid I don't know what the meaning of that is. I've watched the UHD and all I know is that, it looks ''overblown'' like someone has gone on the TV settings and gone with the contrast too high or something like that, and it sucks, because I don't think it's something with the source master since the BD is normal, I think it's just at the time Universal didn't understand HDR right and just.. tonemapped it wrong entirely. I believe the digital DV helps with it but not much. Either way it's not entirely unwatchable but it's a very obvious issue that if I had to choose.. Blu-ray.

Still don't get it, though. Is it bad or watchable, does it have issues that'd make the BD much better? I also just learned that originally Universal skipped the DVD extras, there seems to be a 2019 steelbook (now OOP and possibly scalped..so if I ever wanted it I'm cursed) that included a bonus BD with the missing extras, don't know if all of them. Any other edition worldwide with that disc that isn't OOP or scalped? And of course, what's the picture like. I await your opinion, but while I do so I'll be looking out on this site's page for info on the bonus disc availability and also capsaholic for master comparisons.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by PonyoBellanote

''Range'' baked into the master? I'm afraid I don't know what the meaning of that is. I've watched the UHD and all I know is that, it looks ''overblown'' like someone has gone on the TV settings and gone with the contrast too high or something like that, and it sucks, because I don't think it's something with the source master since the BD is normal, I think it's just at the time Universal didn't understand HDR right and just.. tonemapped it wrong entirely. I believe the digital DV helps with it but not much. Either way it's not entirely unwatchable but it's a very obvious issue that if I had to choose.. Blu-ray.

Still don't get it, though. Is it bad or watchable, does it have issues that'd make the BD much better? I also just learned that originally Universal skipped the DVD extras, there seems to be a 2019 steelbook (now OOP and possibly scalped..so if I ever wanted it I'm cursed) that included a bonus BD with the missing extras, don't know if all of them. Any other edition worldwide with that disc that isn't OOP or scalped? And of course, what's the picture like. I await your opinion, but while I do so I'll be looking out on this site's page for info on the bonus disc availability and also capsaholic for master comparisons.

You know what dynamic range is, right? It's the tonal range between the lightest and darkest parts of the image, and High Dynamic Range is a transfer function that exposes more of this latent imagery than SDR. When doing an HDR pass on an existing digital source master you're going to be exposing more of this in-built i.e. "baked in" range owing to the way that HDR works.

What I mean by "baked in" is whether the digital source master, derived from the original DI, contains more of this range than what was seen on whatever SDR version. Most of the time they do, sometimes it's shocking how much more information is contained in the master that the HDR pass brings out. But sometimes the master just doesn't have anything beyond what was seen on the existing SDR version and this is often the case with animation because it's not like film, you're not capturing a vast amount of tonal range just by turning on the camera, in animation you're in charge of every pixel so you can "bake in" as much or as little range as you want/need.

But I'll say it again: in Sing's case it's not losing any highlight information at all vs the SDR version, it's just got more brightness pushed through it. If you don't like the brightness that's one thing, to me it doesn't look overly unbalanced, but if your TV is clipping the HDR highlight detail relative to the SDR version (what I mean is making the highlights look more blown out than the SDR) then your tone mapping is doing it wrong.

As such I can't very well advise you personally on Kong as I don't know what your TV will do with it. I can explain what I like about it and what I think it does betterer than the BD and you'll have it take it from there.

[JohnCarpenterLives]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

the regular Blu is the usual kind of tealy-green drenched SDR master of yesteryear

https://m.youtube.com/watch?t=52&v=L...ature=youtu.be

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by JohnCarpenterLives

https://www.youtube.com/supported_br...tube.com/watch

Link not worky

[JohnCarpenterLives]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Link not worky

I fixed it.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by JohnCarpenterLives

I fixed it.

What a let down after all that build up. Erm, okay then? I've never liked the BD of this, for what that's worth (people now be scrambling through my post history to find evidence of the contrary ), as it's a very low bitrate VC-1 jobby and for that alone it's always looked very brittle to me, the grain is more of a digital mosaic. As for the green colour grading, we didn't know any different 20-odd years ago as everything looked like that, but with trends veering back towards naturalism (in HDR, anyway) it's staggering how many SDR transfers from the last couple decades have a pervasive greeny/yellowy tint that just kills the nuances in the colour.

[JohnCarpenterLives]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

What a let down after all that build up. Erm, okay then? I've never liked the BD of this, for what that's worth (people now be scrambling through my post history to find evidence of the contrary ), as it's a very low bitrate VC-1 jobby and for that alone it's always looked very brittle to me, the grain is more of a digital mosaic. As for the green colour grading, we didn't know any different 20-odd years ago as everything looked like that, but with trends veering back towards naturalism (in HDR, anyway) it's staggering how many SDR transfers from the last couple decades have a pervasive greeny/yellowy tint that just kills the nuances in the colour.

tealy-green = GAHRBIGE! Simple as that

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by JohnCarpenterLives

tealy-green = GAHRBIGE! Simple as that

Nah, I've cheerleaded for plenty of newer grades that people have derided as a teal nightmare e.g. Red Sonja. And I'll happily watch Aliens and The Terminator. It's not an automatic fail. But the kind of greeny-yellow colour balance that a LOT of these older SDR transfers have makes them look so dull, not that everything must "pop" (ugh) but it removes all nuance as said. And some of this is not just stylistic but an actual idiosyncrasy of the SDR system, it has an in-built tendency to oversaturate colour anyway but as the luminance is so low they have to resort to other tricks to boost it. Blue in particular is so 'low powered' in 100-nit SDR that they added green or yellow - those having more luminance - to give it more juice. HDR doesn't have to do that to maintain colour volume so if the teal/green/yellow is still there then I'll take it as seen, though it comes through with more subtlety anyway owing to higher bit depth and wider colour gamut, but if it's removed then I'm not sorry.

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

What a let down after all that build up. Erm, okay then? I've never liked the BD of this, for what that's worth (people now be scrambling through my post history to find evidence of the contrary ), as it's a very low bitrate VC-1 jobby and for that alone it's always looked very brittle to me, the grain is more of a digital mosaic. As for the green colour grading, we didn't know any different 20-odd years ago as everything looked like that, but with trends veering back towards naturalism (in HDR, anyway) it's staggering how many SDR transfers from the last couple decades have a pervasive greeny/yellowy tint that just kills the nuances in the colour.

2004 - 2014 was the teal & gold fad in theatrical grading, using their new digital toys. In DCP P3 and REC2020 it wasn't so bad but REC709 just flattens the shit out of the range. I'm just glad it's over for the most part so movies graded today that way stand out (not in a good way, mind you).

[Ferretferret]

Huh. This is both my favorite Kong adaptation (by a long shot) and, in my opinion, an excellent 4K outing. I also grew up with this film, though, so, some of the bad CGI and other detriments to the movie are more charming than disengaging to me.

[StingingVelvet]

Originally Posted by lgans316

You are better off watching the bit starved BD over the atrocious 4K

My memory of it was thinking the opening New York sections were way too bright and high contrast, but then comparing to the BD and firmly believing that's how Jackson shot it and intended it to look. The rest of the movie I remember thinking looked great? Been a while though.

[lgans316]

Originally Posted by StingingVelvet

My memory of it was thinking the opening New York sections were way too bright and high contrast, but then comparing to the BD and firmly believing that's how Jackson shot it and intended it to look. The rest of the movie I remember thinking looked great? Been a while though.

Not for me. It's looks nuclear to my eyes but YMMV.

Yes, in few scenes, we miss that HDR impact but the contrast boosting and random DNR is way too much for my eyesight.

[PonyoBellanote]

I'm still not convinced. I'll have to see the 4K with my very own eyes. Guess it's renting time.