Sleepy Hollow 4K UHD (1999)

[BrandonJF]

Originally Posted by Filmmaker

Me sitting back thinking of all the times someone in this thread insisted on trying to school me that this would be a Best Buy exclusive as my Bull Moose shipping notification drops into my inbox…

While I never bought that, either, I am also not that surprised that my late pre-order from Bull Moose did not ship. I'm going to guess you placed your order way earlier than I did (8/3) and they didn't get enough yet to cover pre-orders or they are going to fulfill my order from one of the stores. I had 7 pre-orders for next week and that's the only one that didn't ship (yet).

I have a feeling I'll end up making a trip to Best Buy on Tuesday.

[Filmmaker]

Originally Posted by BrandonJF

I'm going to guess you placed your order way earlier than I did (8/3)

June 26th. I don’t mess around where preorders are concerned.

[oubukibun]

Anyone. ANYONE. Who says the old disc is better than the 4K needs to give serious consideration to moving up their visit to the ophthalmologist. And I mean that so, so sincerely. (I've been on this forum long enough that people likely know I'm an earnest fellow.)

That transfer is a catastrophe of noise and pixels being held together by an encode doing the work of 10,000 other encodes at the most basic possible level of survivability and success.

Meanwhile: anyone get shipping notice on their Amazon pre-order for the steelbook? Not terribly worried since they tend to send notifications late, but figured I'd ask.

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by oubukibun

Anyone. ANYONE. Who says the old disc is better than the 4K needs to give serious consideration to moving up their visit to the ophthalmologist. And I mean that so, so sincerely. (I've been on this forum long enough that people likely know I'm an earnest fellow.)

That transfer is a catastrophe of noise and pixels being held together by an encode doing the work of 10,000 other encodes at the most basic possible level of survivability and success.

Meanwhile: anyone get shipping notice on their Amazon pre-order for the steelbook? Not terribly worried since they tend to send notifications late, but figured I'd ask.

My Amazon preorder was just sitting there, and after they failed to deliver on Bruce Lee CE timely and delivered me a crushed Infinity Pool steelbook I canceled and got it from Diabolik instead

[ponderingtheuniverse]

I'm wondering when Amazon will be restocking the steelbook.

[SpacemanDoug]

Originally Posted by Kyle15

Wowee that encode looks like complete garbage in some shots. What a mixed bag. It does look better than the Blu, but wow can Paramount please step it up? I knew To Catch a Thief was a bad sign of things to come.

as I said in an earlier post, it does have flaws but it still is fortunately a very passable presentation, definitely a revelation compared to the 17 year old BD

[LanceL]

Are there any videos out there that explain this DNR process? I can't understand how they take grain out without losing every part of the picture. Meaning, how is there still any picture left if you scrape anything out...?

[kashif]

Originally Posted by oubukibun

Anyone. ANYONE. Who says the old disc is better than the 4K needs to give serious consideration to moving up their visit to the ophthalmologist. And I mean that so, so sincerely. (I've been on this forum long enough that people likely know I'm an earnest fellow.)

That transfer is a catastrophe of noise and pixels being held together by an encode doing the work of 10,000 other encodes at the most basic possible level of survivability and success.

Meanwhile: anyone get shipping notice on their Amazon pre-order for the steelbook? Not terribly worried since they tend to send notifications late, but figured I'd ask.

There is always thesd discussions here. I don’t if to laugh or cringe. Often hear "I am keeping my blu ray" like dude fine keep it then don’t come here to 4k section if you want every movie to look like Blade Runner or Alita.

My Amazon Pre order is still showing as pre order but nothing to worry as sometimes they ship on the release date as well. I am 1000000 percent sure our orders will be meet and won't be cancelled.

[kashif]

Read some of the previous pages. Ok first it was talks about the steelbook is Bestbuy exclusive and now judging picture quality from some screenshots that are SDR how amazing. You guys never cease to amaze me. I didn't even click to see the screenshots. I always find 4k discs look so much better than the shared screenshots so I am not concerned and excited to get my copy soon. Just hoping Audio to have some solid punch even if not Atmos.

[Rusty100]

Originally Posted by oddbox83

This is what I was saying about the random DNR stick. Paramount are always doing this. You get a film that largely has good grain retention, but you get random shots where, for no clear reason, they've cranked the DNR right up. Their Trek TNG movies were the same. First contact looked great yet for no rhyme or reason you got some shots in Picard's ready room absolutely blasted even though there was no optical work or anything like that.

Even so, that shot still looks preferable in the 4K cap to my eyes. You can see the clumpy mushiness on the old disc that looks atrocious in motion.

To be honest, this screenshot specifically looks like the bitrate has shit the bed. There's huge macroblocking all over the image. Maybe they DNR'd it, but it's hard to say with compression this bad and inconsistant. In all honesty, for this shot, it's probably both.

[WBMakeVMarsMovieNOW]

Originally Posted by The Rider

Where is the added value in sharpness and fine details? Film grain?

It looks like an upscale to me in some screenshots. Why these burned-out highlights in screenshot 22, which the Blu-ray didn't have?

https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?go=1&...17009&i=21&l=0

???? The blu-ray looks clipped in the bright spots, zero detail there. The UHD is also using an HDR->SDR conversion with who knows what settings. And look at the tons more detail on the UHD all across her forehead. UHD looks way better to me.

[oddbox83]

Originally Posted by LanceL

Are there any videos out there that explain this DNR process? I can't understand how they take grain out without losing every part of the picture. Meaning, how is there still any picture left if you scrape anything out...?

Well that's the issue, if not used carefully it does remove image details you'd want to keep.

There're two main types of DNR, spatial and temporal, and within that you've got variations on algorithms. You can also chose whether you apply it to an entire image, or just a specific channel such as the chroma (colour) channels to reduce chroma noise.

Either version has it's uses, and I'll always argue DNR itself is not the devil itself and it' a valid restoration tool among many others. It's when it's used unnecessarily and in ham-fisted hands that has given it it's bad reputation.

Adding "fake" grain is also a step that should often be done, but is ignored. If there was a justifiable reason for these random DNR spikes, why didn't they add fake grain to match those shots with the fine grain elsewhere in the film? It's just a failure to use the tool properly, since if it was to tackle grain spikes, having shots now free of grain in a film that otherwise has a fine layer of grain is just a spike the opposite way around.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Rusty100

To be honest, this screenshot specifically looks like the bitrate has shit the bed. There's huge macroblocking all over the image. Maybe they DNR'd it, but it's hard to say with compression this bad and inconsistant. In all honesty, for this shot, it's probably both.

Not that Paramount don’t love the DNR stick - because they’d smack anything and everything with it if they could - but I think a fair bit of what we might perceive to be “grain management” is these dire B-team encodes frittering away the grain in brighter areas of the signal. I don’t mean anything in Sleepy Hollow per se as I’d rather watch it in motion before passing judgement , but in general.

[Spartan21]

It's funny reading this thread (or any 4K thread) when my wife is just fine with watching a movie that looks like it was filmed with a potato

[stvn1974]

Put on my goggles to check out the screen caps and they look pretty good to me.

[GrouchoFan]

Originally Posted by colormeandrew

What a disaster to my tea and light refreshments.

The Bucket woman?!?

[Cplhicks]

Originally Posted by GrouchoFan

The Bucket woman?!?

It's pronounced Bouquet.

Also, looking at the screenshots it looks a lot better than the old BD to me. Not stretched, better color, none of the halos and murky sharpening stuff I see on the old disc. I didn't check every single shot but to me it looks like a big step up.

[PowellPressburger]

My copy arrived from Atomic

I haven’t opened it. But hopefully the spines won’t give out.

It looks even better in person, title font is shiny red.

And it has weight to it.

[BluPat]

That orange banner across the top of the US slipcover is ugly. To me. And I love Halloween colors but not on this.

[Kyle15]

I like the orange banner better than the silver ones at least. Those are so tacky.