Skimmed through this release last night before I re-watch it in its entirety but in the 25 min's that I spent looking at different scenes, this is what I found on my rig:
The contrast on this release is so pumped up, you lose detail in the light areas. Those light areas like sun on a bright surface bloom so badly that it makes me want to dumb down my Gamma, contrast and backlight to compensate and out of 95 4K HDR titles I own, this is a first... and hopefully the last like this.
Now, I need to note here that my panel and 4K player are maxed in terms of output because I like pop... I like things to be stunning looking rather than sedate, especially with HDR and films like Sicario or more recently, F&F 8 look insanely good. I'm not saying that every parameter is cranked up full but settings are at the max point before things start to look grainy, too saturated etc. It's for my liking, not some guy who tells me what I should be watching. Anyway, point is... Deadpool, the Star Trek films, Sully... they all look stunning, totally amazing but Kong looks like someone back at Universal just decided to crank up the contrast to 11, maybe because their set-up is massively dialed down, dunno.
Now, on the other hand, on the plus side there are huge improvements. For example, night scenes are outstanding. There is so much more detail and contrast here that I see slight differences in how far the sun has set into the horizon or up for that matter. I saw detail in the shore rocks that I never saw before at the theater or on the BluRay. These darker scenes are phenominal. Kong, as another example, sits on his cliff against the evening sky and now I can see more actual cloud formation in that sky, I can still see light reflecting on surfaces from a sun that is barely peeking out before it completely drops out of sight. More shades of colors are present... in faces, more pinks, in the forest, more shades of green etc so these things are a vast improvement but it's such a shame that the daytime scenes are so overblown.
There is more grain present here than on the BluRay, without a doubt and that grain varies depending on scene so more than likely, several different cameras may have been used whereas the regular BluRay looked more consistent.
I'm conflicted here... do I dumb down the PQ and lose that impressive edge on the night scenes or keep things where they are so the night scenes just 'wow' me? I'm leaning to the former rather than the latter. Maybe I can find a happy medium here but damn it, Universal... what happened on this release?
For those who may want to shut down the HDR on this title, You should have options in your menus like Samsung, Sony whereby you can either shut off that feature or use another picture setting. My 2015 Samsung for example, only does HDR in Movie or Dynamic modes. Standard or Natural modes would not pull in and display HDR. On the 2016 and 2017 panels, all modes could do it but Samsung has an actual clickable option to turn on or off that HDR. I may do that as a test to see if things settle down.
Fast & Furious 8 - another Universal 4K HDR release yesterday by contrast looks insanely good. Just sayin'.
Update: (Feb3) Pulling down both the contrast and the sharpness helped a lot. Got the title looking quite good but really need to de-tune the panel for this release.
Last edited by DavePS3; 08-03-2017 at 02:03 PM.
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) but bear in mind you're starting out with a fundamentally different EOTF (gamma vs PQ) and also whatever colour grade alterations have been baked into the 4K HDR version.
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Not gonna be able to watch it til next week though 
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