Sony "Mastered in 4K" Blu-ray Titles May 14 and July 16

[HD Goofnut]

Originally Posted by Vintrus

Im hoping Davinci Code & MIB 2&3 will be done.

The master for the standard release of Men in Black 3 was already done at 4K.

[reanimator]

The import LAWRENCE looks great, but you know this will be among Sony's first titles in true 4KBD -- I think I can wait.

[Vintrus]

Originally Posted by HD Goofnut

The master for the standard release of Men in Black 3 was already done at 4K.

Didn't know that.

[HD Goofnut]

Originally Posted by Vintrus

Didn't know that.

Most masters of Sony's new releases are done at 4K now. I just wish the rest of the studios would get on board.

[Jacob The Great]

Originally Posted by HD Goofnut

Most masters of Sony's new releases are done at 4K now. I just wish the rest of the studios would get on board.

Walt Disney Japan already joined with Panasonic to add Master Grade Video Coding to their Studio Ghibli Blu-rays, Panasonic Blu-ray players with Master Grade Video Coding and any brand of 4K TVs are needed to enjoy this, only the Japan versions support this. Disney and Panasonic did this before Sony, films with MGVC support are: My Neighbor Totoro (Tonari no Totoro), Grave of the Fireflies (Hotaru no Haka), Kiki's Delivery Service (Majo no Takkyubin), Only Yesterday (Omohide Poroporo), Princess Mononoke (Mononoke Hime), The Cat Returns (Neko no Ongaeshi), The Wind Rises (Kaze Tachinu), Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi), and Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro (Rupan Sensei: Kariosutoro no Shiro) ((VAP's Blu-ray has no MGVC support but Disney's remastered Blu-ray has)).

[HeavyHitter]

Originally Posted by HD Goofnut

Most masters of Sony's new releases are done at 4K now. I just wish the rest of the studios would get on board.

Agreed. It will be interesting to see which studio will be the last one kicking and dragging to 4K.

[fitprod]

Originally Posted by HeavyHitter

Agreed. It will be interesting to see which studio will be the last one kicking and dragging to 4K.

Universal... Not doubt about it. Even Lionsgate will be on board before them.

fitprod

[HeavyHitter]

Originally Posted by fitprod

Universal... Not doubt about it. Even Lionsgate will be on board before them.

fitprod

Yeah, I was thinking Universal or Paramount.

[I KEEL YOU]

Originally Posted by fitprod

Universal... Not doubt about it. Even Lionsgate will be on board before them.

fitprod

Unlike the other two, Universal actually have some excellent releases from 4K restorations, such as:

Jaws
E.T.
Schindler's List
Vertigo
High Plains Drifter
Out Of Africa (re-release)

And they are doing new 4K restorations as we speak. They've also messed up some of their 4K releases such as To Kill A Mockingbird.

On the other hand, I'm not sure if there are 4K restorations of 100% (world-wide rights) Paramount films, other than The Godfather films.

The problem with Universal which gives them a bad rep is that the vast majority of their releases are based on their old masters, and those are some of the worst in the industry.

Anyway, it's not the amount of Ks, it's how you treat them and how good the source material is. A recent example in Purple Noon from caps-a-holic couldn't explain this better:

http://www.caps-a-holic.com/hd_vergl...D=1720#auswahl

The Criterion is a 2K scan, while the Studio Canal is 4K.

[wesslan]

Originally Posted by Jacob The Great

Walt Disney Japan already joined with Panasonic to add Master Grade Video Coding to their Studio Ghibli Blu-rays, Panasonic Blu-ray players with Master Grade Video Coding and any brand of 4K TVs are needed to enjoy this, only the Japan versions support this. Disney and Panasonic did this before Sony, films with MGVC support are: My Neighbor Totoro (Tonari no Totoro), Grave of the Fireflies (Hotaru no Haka), Kiki's Delivery Service (Majo no Takkyubin), Only Yesterday (Omohide Poroporo), Princess Mononoke (Mononoke Hime), The Cat Returns (Neko no Ongaeshi), The Wind Rises (Kaze Tachinu), Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi), and Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro (Rupan Sensei: Kariosutoro no Shiro) ((VAP's Blu-ray has no MGVC support but Disney's remastered Blu-ray has)).

MGVC will also be used for the upcoming Lone Survivor BD in Japan along with Dolbys 96KHz upsampling.

[FilmFreakosaurus]

The trouble is that even if they use 4k masters, many times it's the bitrate that needs to be higher on average, especially for fast motion or very detailed shots or titles with more grain... or...

All titles should be Superbit. There's clearly enough room on the discs.

[figrin_dan]

Originally Posted by FilmFreakosaurus

All titles should be Superbit. There's clearly enough room on the discs.

But can the BD player handle all those bits?

[wesslan]

Originally Posted by figrin_dan

But can the BD player handle all those bits?

Up to 30000-35000 kbps for video is usually no problem (see Sonys 4k BDs and many Japanese BDs) but that also depends on how much you spend on audio and multiple tracks.

My personal opinion for "big titles" is that all labels should put all extras on a separate disc to fully utilize the capacity for video and audio.

[I KEEL YOU]

Or they could just come out with the 128 gigabyte BDXL format or whatever extra amount of gigabytes they claim a BD can handle these days, and then even Lawrence of Arabia could have a 38 mbps video bit rate AND plenty of room left for extras.

[jblank]

Originally Posted by wesslan

Up to 30000-35000 kbps for video is usually no problem (see Sonys 4k BDs and many Japanese BDs) but that also depends on how much you spend on audio and multiple tracks.

My personal opinion for "big titles" is that all labels should put all extras on a separate disc to fully utilize the capacity for video and audio.

That's a bit on the low side. 35000kbps is just 34.1mbps and I know that there would be no problem for players to handle more than 40.

I agree 100%, ALL special features should be on a second disc, which can replace the useless and outdated DVD's the studios force on us.

[steve1971]

I tried out the Mastered In 4K The Amazing Spiderman man Blu ray on my W900A and I was blown away by the PQ and my tv aint 4K. I think it was much much better then the standard Blu ray release and its making me think of buying more Mastered in 4K Blu ray releases.

[HD Goofnut]

Originally Posted by steve1971

I tried out the Mastered In 4K The Amazing Spiderman man Blu ray on my W900A and I was blown away by the PQ and my tv aint 4K. I think it was much much better then the standard Blu ray release and its making me think of buying more Mastered in 4K Blu ray releases.

The difference appears to be marginal at best in terms of detail: http://caps-a-holic.com/hd_vergleich...less=1#auswahl

Maybe you're noticing the expanded color assuming you have a compatible display.

[tenia]

Originally Posted by wesslan

My personal opinion for "big titles" is that all labels should put all extras on a separate disc to fully utilize the capacity for video and audio.

Maxed-out bitrates don't prevent compression issues, while lower bitrates don't automatically mean compression issues. It's all about properly allocating bit-budget frame by frame.

Originally Posted by jblank

That's a bit on the low side. 35000kbps is just 34.1mbps and I know that there would be no problem for players to handle more than 40.

BD playback allows for a reading buffer, to enable a buffering of 40+ Mbps peaks, but otherwise, remember that the BDA specs are a maximum data rate of 54 Mbps, a maximum Audio + Video bitrate of 48 Mbps, and a maximum video bit rate of 40 Mbps.

Which is why you'll never see a maximum average video bitrate (AVB) of 40+ Mbps. And that's of course all depending of your movie duration.

If you have a 140 min movie, with 2 nice 5.1 DTS HD MA 48/24, you can forget your 35 Mbps AVB.

Actually, the number of BDs with a 40+ Mbps of Audio + Video total bitrate is probably already quite low.


In the present case (Sony Mi4K), the differences most likely don't come from the higher bitrate (it certainly doesn't for Moneyball), but from differences in the source treatment before the BD output. For older movies like Glory and Ghostbusters, or even the Raimi Spider Man 1 & 2, I can understand how they're going for newer sources and up-to-date picture treatment and encode, but for ASM for instance, or even Lawrence of Arabia, the regular BD is already coming from a 4K source, meaning it's only the work flow between this and the BD which is changing.

Even worse : you'll see titles like After Earth saying they are "Mi4K" but with extras and the not maxed-out AVB. To me, clearly, the maxed-out bitrate is just a nudge to people over-reading specs, trying to please them with overkill.

But hey, if you can sell it, it's because people are buying it !

[Eny-]

So many misconceptions. No movie needs to have high bit-rate for the entire duration. It always depends on the source!

On a movie like Lawrence of Arabia (eg) with a 2.20 AR the black bars don't need to consume any bit-rate since it's solid black the entire presentation. The same with static pictures. A dialog driven movie doesn't need a high bit-rate transfer.

And the mastered in 4K is a Sony gimmick. Like Superbit. As many already said these are just regular blu-rays with a 4k transfer.

[HeavyHitter]

Originally Posted by Eny-

So many misconceptions. No movie needs to have high bit-rate for the entire duration. It always depends on the source!

On a movie like Lawrence of Arabia (eg) with a 2.20 AR the black bars don't need to consume any bit-rate since it's solid black the entire presentation. The same with static pictures. A dialog driven movie doesn't need a high bit-rate transfer.

And the mastered in 4K is a Sony gimmick. Like Superbit. As many already said these are just regular blu-rays with a 4k transfer.

But they are still upgrades over the original version in many cases so I wouldn't call it a gimmick necessarily as they are from 4K sources.