Titanic 4K UHD (1997)

[bradnoyes]

Originally Posted by Trekkie313

I have a feeling some user reviews of this disc are going to be tainted by confirmation bias and rampant speculation.

I have a feeling--more of a hunch, really--that some user/pro/youtube/amateur (really they're all the same, right?) reviews will be tainted by willful ignorance and fanboyism. Something tells me we'll both be right.

[DigitalDeluge24]

Originally Posted by ilenewoodsfan99

A question for those who've experienced Titanic in most if not all available home video formats: What would you say is your definitive ranking of Titanic on home video (VHS, Laserdisc, DVD, Blu Ray, etc)? I'm just curious over what formats would be worth seeing it on?

3D Blu-ray with TV color settings
Fullscreen LD
Widescreen LD
JP Rental Only VHS
Fullscreen VHS
2005 DVD
Thai VCD
4K Blu-ray
2D Blu-ray
2012 DVD
1999 DVD
Widescreen VHS

[emmet otter]

Originally Posted by PeterTHX

Canada stopped wasting paper? Good news.

Thats because they burnt down all their trees last year

[KMFDMvsEnya]

Download the images and review them in a picture viewer, there are more images after the link.

https://slow.pics/c/ytn76eUx

Pay particular attention to the areas around the rigging and arms in the center of the image. Visual information differences are... interesting.


Specifically the area between Paxton's face and the headset, between the various captures the grain is also interesting.


4K UHD frame capture vs literal screenshot.



I have observed other common degraining artifacts elsewhere in the film but the severity of it from what I have sampled is less egregious and relatively palatable.

[escvnte]

Originally Posted by ilenewoodsfan99

A question for those who've experienced Titanic in most if not all available home video formats: What would you say is your definitive ranking of Titanic on home video (VHS, Laserdisc, DVD, Blu Ray, etc)? I'm just curious over what formats would be worth seeing it on?

3D Blu-Ray
4k UHD
2005 DVD
pre-2012 HDTV rip
35mm (just for the theatrical and LD 5.1 DTS mixes)
1999 DVD
VHS

[joeldawson83]

Originally Posted by Doc Samson

No slipcover.

Classic Canadian release, no slip and no code for $40 bucks...

This right here. We pay out the ass for films on 4K now thanks to Amazon owning the market up here. No slip or digital copy just chaps me up and I know I’m not alone in this. I will keep my copy that was just delivered but equitable releases with other countries would be appreciated.

[emmet otter]

[escvnte]

Originally Posted by georgea

I could use the code please. Thanks!

Check PM

[ilenewoodsfan99]

Ok, thanks you all!

[eightslicesofpie]

Originally Posted by blakninja

Why is everyone here? Aren't you supposed to be watching the 4K disc?

if Best Buy would ship my dang copy...

[Kris Deering]

I'm not a fan of the sharpening. The image looks good more often than not, but it DEFINITELY looks sharpened more than I would care for on my projection system.

[Destinys Memory]

Wish every scene didn't have a gross yellow hue.

[stvn1974]

My copy was just delivered. I will have to wait until tomorrow to watch it and see if the ship still sinks at the end.

[matbezlima]

Originally Posted by Destinys Memory

Wish every scene didn't have a gross yellow hue.

Screenshots aren't the way to judge colors, when will you people learn this?

WHEN?!

[TheSweetieMan]

I'm watching this now with my 8-year old daughter. Waiting on her Collector's edition to arrive later this week for Christmas.

We were also putting up the Christmas tree, so I haven't been able to watch this disc with completely undivided attention. So please remember that in case I change my opinion on some things.

However, my first imressions would be a rather surpringly lackluster one.

When I saw the first images trickling out, I remained more optimistc than others. Based on the still frames, the image looked nice and sharp, and you could tell some post-processing was being done, but looked tastefully applied originally. It almost looked like some type of AI process was done to the image, similar to that of the first 'Avatar' on UHD. Though I would argue that 'Avatar' looks fine overall -- likely thanks to the medium it was shot on.

There's something very artifical going on with the look of the UHD for 'Titanic'. Despite not being the DNRd mess of T2, it still looks... synthetic? Like the layer of grain on top of the image sharpening is some sort of weird artifical construct of how Cameron thinks the film would look today if he shot it on any type of film stock. You can tell the guy is obsessed with the sharpness of the modern digital age. Which is fine. I guess. And you can tell there at least was an effort to not bastardize the transfer for this disc. It's not that it looks bad per se -- in fact I would say the color grading and HDR are very well done and authentic to the film's source look -- but I'm just put off more than a handful of times by the sharpening that was applied, and HOW it was applied.

I would say for this disc, it's going to be a mileage may very. If you don't mind how the film was adjusted in terms of its sharpness, you likely won't be offended at all. But if you are a purist through and through, you're likely going to be participating in debates over this film's look on the format over the next year or two.

To put it straightforward, anyone that says the disc looks awful because it's not looking like how it did on the film stock used in 1997 will be exaggerating. But also, the people that have reviewed this disc 'professionally' are way off on giving this unabashed praise. There's some less than desirable results here from the image tinkering. Enough that it prevents it from being a great release, sadly.

With that being said, considering the doom and gloom that was on set in this thread the day the disc was announced based on what happened with T2 -- this disc is nowhere near that bad. Just... very synthetic looking at times.

The 4K disc is still going to be my preferred method of watching the film based on how I may feel about the artificial sharpness. Still has great color with nice skin tones, tastefully done HDR, and pretty solid compression overall. Though there were a couple moments where I felt like in scenes with strong light sources, macroblocking would almost creep in.

Hope you guys will enjoy this release regardless of the techniques that were applied to the restoration!

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by TheSweetieMan

Hope you guys will enjoy this release regardless of the techniques that were applied to the restoration!

Remaster, not restoration.

[Jbabler]

I only watched a few scenes from the first 45 minutes.

I guess I have to agree with the feelings of being a bit underwhelmed.

The glowing reviews had me prepared to be wowed. I wasn't. It looked better when I turned down the brightness on the DV Bright setting on my Sony LED.

That's not to say it looks bad to me - it looks fine. But I expected more than fine.

Sounds great though

[matbezlima]

Isn't the DV Dark setting a bit more accurate than DV Bright? Though to be clear, both are fairly accurate if I'm not mistaken.

[Jbabler]

Originally Posted by matbezlima

Isn't the DV Dark setting a bit more accurate than DV Bright? Though to be clear, both are fairly accurate if I'm not mistaken.

I tried DV Dark too but that's always too dark to me. So I set it to bright and lowered the brightness to try and split the difference. Neither were quite right.

I wonder if part of the "problem" might be the color palette itself. Maybe browns/golds/blacks don't lend themselves to popping as much as others.

[Rich Pure Doom]

Originally Posted by TheSweetieMan

I'm watching this now with my 8-year old daughter. Waiting on her Collector's edition to arrive later this week for Christmas.

We were also putting up the Christmas tree, so I haven't been able to watch this disc with completely undivided attention. So please remember that in case I change my opinion on some things.

However, my first imressions would be a rather surpringly lackluster one.

When I saw the first images trickling out, I remained more optimistc than others. Based on the still frames, the image looked nice and sharp, and you could tell some post-processing was being done, but looked tastefully applied originally. It almost looked like some type of AI process was done to the image, similar to that of the first 'Avatar' on UHD. Though I would argue that 'Avatar' looks fine overall -- likely thanks to the medium it was shot on.

There's something very artifical going on with the look of the UHD for 'Titanic'. Despite not being the DNRd mess of T2, it still looks... synthetic? Like the layer of grain on top of the image sharpening is some sort of weird artifical construct of how Cameron thinks the film would look today if he shot it on any type of film stock. You can tell the guy is obsessed with the sharpness of the modern digital age. Which is fine. I guess. And you can tell there at least was an effort to not bastardize the transfer for this disc. It's not that it looks bad per se -- in fact I would say the color grading and HDR are very well done and authentic to the film's source look -- but I'm just put off more than a handful of times by the sharpening that was applied, and HOW it was applied.

I would say for this disc, it's going to be a mileage may very. If you don't mind how the film was adjusted in terms of its sharpness, you likely won't be offended at all. But if you are a purist through and through, you're likely going to be participating in debates over this film's look on the format over the next year or two.

To put it straightforward, anyone that says the disc looks awful because it's not looking like how it did on the film stock used in 1997 will be exaggerating. But also, the people that have reviewed this disc 'professionally' are way off on giving this unabashed praise. There's some less than desirable results here from the image tinkering. Enough that it prevents it from being a great release, sadly.

With that being said, considering the doom and gloom that was on set in this thread the day the disc was announced based on what happened with T2 -- this disc is nowhere near that bad. Just... very synthetic looking at times.

The 4K disc is still going to be my preferred method of watching the film based on how I may feel about the artificial sharpness. Still has great color with nice skin tones, tastefully done HDR, and pretty solid compression overall. Though there were a couple moments where I felt like in scenes with strong light sources, macroblocking would almost creep in.

Hope you guys will enjoy this release regardless of the techniques that were applied to the restoration!

I'll second this and say that if you are sensitive to a filtered image on the whole, Titanic in 4k is definitely going to bother you. I noticed it immediately and couldn't ignore it if I wanted to.