Stranger Things: Season 2 4K UHD (2017) (Target Exclusive)

[FilmFreakosaurus]

Originally Posted by SterlingBen

I am down for one of these for $10, next summer!

If the indicators are correct... you may not have it available to purchase at all or at that low price next year. They've drastically cut back on the available stock of S2 after the glut of S1 sets (not surprising since Target and Netflix never formally announced it nor advertised it much - just like S2), and many stores are indicating there will be no replenishment.


$24.99 for the 4k set (today is the last day) isn't too bad considering what TV sets normally go for from other studios.

[jayman3]

Originally Posted by SterlingBen

I am down for one of these for $10, next summer!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTJI...ature=youtu.be

[guachi]

A reasonable price, to me, for a show on Blu Ray is $1.50 per episode and it's easy enough to find shows for around half that

Since Stranger Things isn't many episodes per season I can see why people would be hesitant to buy it at the prices Target was asking. Even at the Black Friday price last year it wasn't a huge bargain per episode.

I bought it and I bought the 4k at $30 but that's because I really like the show and the stock was so low that if I didn't get the 4k I might never get the chance.

[FilmFreakosaurus]

Originally Posted by guachi

A reasonable price, to me, for a show on Blu Ray is $1.50 per episode and it's easy enough to find shows for around half that

Since Stranger Things isn't many episodes per season I can see why people would be hesitant to buy it at the prices Target was asking. Even at the Black Friday price last year it wasn't a huge bargain per episode.

I bought it and I bought the 4k at $30 but that's because I really like the show and the stock was so low that if I didn't get the 4k I might never get the chance.

There are short HBO seasons that go for a lot more. At least they didn't price ST at those levels.

[BluPat]

Yea last week our local Target got like 1...ONE 4K set and like 20 Blu-ray sets of Season 2. And of course the beotch that scanned it said "It says only one on hand. So we're out." I told her, "Uhhh, an *on hand* means you DO have it." She gives me this "...where would I look...." bullshit. So I went to a manager and told her how lazy the fat ***** was and the manager offered to go to the back and look. But she couldn't find it.
But I told her I appreciated her looking.

Why the F you gonna have an *exclusive* and not have it?

[LordCrumb]

Originally Posted by FilmFreakosaurus

Once again:


1.) SDR


2) Lossy audio


3) Rec 709 color gamut


4) 4 episodes per BD-66... a bit of a squeeze.

Those are not botches If your disc did not work, then that's a botch.

[glennstl]

Originally Posted by BluPat

Yea last week our local Target got like 1...ONE 4K set and like 20 Blu-ray sets of Season 2. And of course the beotch that scanned it said "It says only one on hand. So we're out." I told her, "Uhhh, an *on hand* means you DO have it." She gives me this "...where would I look...." bullshit. So I went to a manager and told her how lazy the fat ***** was and the manager offered to go to the back and look. But she couldn't find it.
But I told her I appreciated her looking.

Why the F you gonna have an *exclusive* and not have it?

[FilmFreakosaurus]

Originally Posted by LordCrumb

Those are not botches If your disc did not work, then that's a botch.

Last I checked, those weren't even close to 4k disc specs. Sure, you get a little extra detail (there were so many SFX shots that it's basically a 2k show), but everything else is regular Blu-ray quality and then even lesser audio than the Blu-ray in the same set - lossy instead of lossless.

[jayman3]

Originally Posted by BluPat

Yea last week our local Target got like 1...ONE 4K set and like 20 Blu-ray sets of Season 2. And of course the beotch that scanned it said "It says only one on hand. So we're out." I told her, "Uhhh, an *on hand* means you DO have it." She gives me this "...where would I look...." bullshit. So I went to a manager and told her how lazy the fat ***** was and the manager offered to go to the back and look. But she couldn't find it.
But I told her I appreciated her looking.

Why the F you gonna have an *exclusive* and not have it?

If it was being "held on hand," it was most likely placed in the back at guest services, where it was reserved waiting for a customer pick-up. Just my guess.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by FilmFreakosaurus

Last I checked, those weren't even close to 4k disc specs. Sure, you get a little extra detail (there were so many SFX shots that it's basically a 2k show), but everything else is regular Blu-ray quality and then even lesser audio than the Blu-ray in the same set - lossy instead of lossless.

I thought Netflix demanded 4K everything from their productions, including 4K VFX?

[persuazion]

Might be a cyber Monday deal on this.

[FilmFreakosaurus]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

I thought Netflix demanded 4K everything from their productions, including 4K VFX?

I don't believe digital effects have to be 4k as some productions would become too expensive and this is still TV. Most top budget movies still don't even use 4k digital effects, just 2k upscaled. Everything else is highly suggested to be sourced from 4k or higher cameras or film. I think they've backed off on it being absolute requirements, though.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by FilmFreakosaurus

I don't believe digital effects have to be 4k as some productions would become too expensive and this is still TV. Most top budget movies still don't even use 4k digital effects, just 2k upscaled. Everything else is highly suggested to be sourced from 4k or higher cameras or film. I think they've backed off on it being absolute requirements, though.

Movies and TV are different animals though, and while TV certainly costs less money than a $250M Marvel blockbuster they don't need 3000 VFX shots for 2+ hours of material either, so 4K VFX is more achievable. Still tight when it comes to turnaround, but eminently doable. Think of it like the Nolan way of doing things: his movies can stretch to 8K VFX because they're not crammed with thousands of VFX shots and there's not a 3D deliverable to worry about either.

As an example, this piece about the Star Trek-inspired Black Mirror episode makes it quite clear that the VFX was delivered in 4K on that show (as it was in the prior season) and not for any special reason either, other than it being a Netflix joint of course: https://www.fxguide.com/quicktakes/black-mirror-engage/

[sandman slim]

Originally Posted by BluPat

Yea last week our local Target got like 1...ONE 4K set and like 20 Blu-ray sets of Season 2. And of course the beotch that scanned it said "It says only one on hand. So we're out." I told her, "Uhhh, an *on hand* means you DO have it." She gives me this "...where would I look...." bullshit. So I went to a manager and told her how lazy the fat ***** was and the manager offered to go to the back and look. But she couldn't find it.
But I told her I appreciated her looking.

Why the F you gonna have an *exclusive* and not have it?

FYI, people like you are why retail workers tend to loathe humanity. An onhand of 1 means either the order got shorted, or it's in someone's cart, or somebody stole it, or someone's idiot kid picked it up and then dropped in another department. It does not mean that there's a magic shelf somewhere that an employee can go directly to and shout to the heavens, "Look! Here it is!!!"

And speaking from experience, that nice manager who went to the back to look for the small box with an onhand of one? She didn't really look for anything. After you insulted her employee ("fat lazy *****", classy) she walked into the stockroom, stood around for a few minutes, then came back out and said, "Sorry, couldn't find it". If the item doesn't show a backroom bin location, no one's going to organize a search party to scour thousands of square feet for it.

[FilmFreakosaurus]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Movies and TV are different animals though, and while TV certainly costs less money than a $250M Marvel blockbuster they don't need 3000 VFX shots for 2+ hours of material either, so 4K VFX is more achievable. Still tight when it comes to turnaround, but eminently doable. Think of it like the Nolan way of doing things: his movies can stretch to 8K VFX because they're not crammed with thousands of VFX shots and there's not a 3D deliverable to worry about either.

As an example, this piece about the Star Trek-inspired Black Mirror episode makes it quite clear that the VFX was delivered in 4K on that show (as it was in the prior season) and not for any special reason either, other than it being a Netflix joint of course: https://www.fxguide.com/quicktakes/black-mirror-engage/

Black Mirror is an episodic anthology show and perhaps the studio behind it had the funds to do full 4k digital effects or farmed out the effects depending on what each episode called for.



Most big budget shows are like a 7 to 8 hour movie. Maybe they don't have to spend most of their funds on star salaries, but not all can do true 4k effects... maybe comped 2k uprezzes mixed with 4k primary footage.



If you look at the demi-dogs in S2, they have lesser detailed skin renders because they had so many more digital shots to accomplish than S1 where they used a bit more in-camera practical shots and far fewer creatures. Even the floating spores were all digital particle effects. That's a lot of rendering time.

[jayman3]

Originally Posted by sandman slim

FYI, people like you are why retail workers tend to loathe humanity. An onhand of 1 means either the order got shorted, or it's in someone's cart, or somebody stole it, or someone's idiot kid picked it up and then dropped in another department. It does not mean that there's a magic shelf somewhere that an employee can go directly to and shout to the heavens, "Look! Here it is!!!"

And speaking from experience, that nice manager who went to the back to look for the small box with an onhand of one? She didn't really look for anything. After you insulted her employee ("fat lazy *****", classy) she walked into the stockroom, stood around for a few minutes, then came back out and said, "Sorry, couldn't find it". If the item doesn't show a backroom bin location, no one's going to organize a search party to scour thousands of square feet for it.

This is true. I used that dccoapps.com website to see if my Target had the Stranger Things: Worlds Turned Upside Down BTS book. It said there was a single copy available. I found the spot where it shouldhave been on display, but alas to my discovery it was nowhere to be seen.

A guest must have picked it up and misplaced it somewhere else in the store as you said. But I wasn't going to go on a scavenger hunt looking for it lol.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by FilmFreakosaurus

Black Mirror is an episodic anthology show and perhaps the studio behind it had the funds to do full 4k digital effects or farmed out the effects depending on what each episode called for.

Most big budget shows are like a 7 to 8 hour movie. Maybe they don't have to spend most of their funds on star salaries, but not all can do true 4k effects... maybe comped 2k uprezzes mixed with 4k primary footage.

If you look at the demi-dogs in S2, they have lesser detailed skin renders because they had so many more digital shots to accomplish than S1 where they used a bit more in-camera practical shots and far fewer creatures. Even the floating spores were all digital particle effects. That's a lot of rendering time.

Re: Black Mirror the "studio behind it" is Netflix, hence the 4K VFX from season 3 onwards as mentioned in the article...which is when Netflix took over production. Daredevil S1 had something like 1000 VFX shots spread over the whole season of 13 episodes, and so them producing 4K VFX is less of a stretch than turning around 3000 2K shots for a 2+ hour movie in roughly the same time period for post-production.

It might well seem counter-intuitive that TV shows are actually ahead of movies when it comes to VFX resolution - if not the overall quality of the work, which is why the ILMs and Wetas of the world charge as much as they do - but the pipelines have different constraints and TV shows have VASTLY fewer deliverables that they have to come up with, many are coming up with a single set of mezzanine files in 4K Dolby Vision and everything else is derived from that.

It isn't the case that 4K VFX is some mythical beast that movies can't attain because of the technology (not that you said it was), it's still so rare because of the greatly increased time pressures that these movies come under. Even when they're farming out packages of hundreds of shots (you take this character, you take this environment etc) to several different vendors that's what all the other major blockbusters are doing as well, so there's no let-up in the schedule when it comes to theatrical-quality VFX.

[gkolb]

I did find 6 of these at one of the nearby stores, brought one home for the 24.99 price.
I had to check the fine print on the back to make sure I had a 4K UHD version.

Still not sure if these are super limited, but it sure feels like they are/ will be.

[FilmFreakosaurus]

Originally Posted by gkolb

I did find 6 of these at one of the nearby stores, brought one home for the 24.99 price.
I had to check the fine print on the back to make sure I had a 4K UHD version.

Still not sure if these are super limited, but it sure feels like they are/ will be.

Check your discs thoroughly and play them through when you can. The rougher cardboard still scratches and scuffs the discs. You may have to exchange them.

[jayman3]

Originally Posted by gkolb

I did find 6 of these at one of the nearby stores, brought one home for the 24.99 price.
I had to check the fine print on the back to make sure I had a 4K UHD version.

Still not sure if these are super limited, but it sure feels like they are/ will be.

The UHD is super limited. It has already sold out in my area. Lucky to have snagged a copy. Though the blu-ray is still readily available.