Jurassic Park Collection 4K UHD (1993-2015)

[Jedihunter]

Originally Posted by Brayden96

"Classic Jurassic" featurette (7:25)
"Building the Gyrosphere" featurette (4:27)
"Your Host for Jurassic World...Jimmy Fallon!" featurette (2:40)
"Jurassic Props" featurette (9:51)
"The Experts" featurette (5:36)

Pretty sure I saw all of those present when I was going through that disc. Can't believe so many were retail exclusives, but I also don't remember there being that many present on the mass retail version either.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Jedihunter

Because the grain wasn't completely obliterated on the opening title shot.......sharpening the image could make it appear more coarse and present in a shot. Youre acting like im speaking in absolutes when I'm mentioning that maybe something is a possibility. As ive seen both discs front to back.

I've seen both discs front to back too. You're trying to rationalise something using all kinds of pretzel logic when the simple reality is that they've added a bunch of DNR to Lost World. Not for every second of it, most of the movie is fine, but the opening shot has been blitzed as have several others. And it's nothing to do with the photography or sharpening or pixie dust or whatever, it's someone deciding that those shots must pay for their crimes.

[bbwiscfan]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

I've seen both discs front to back too. You're trying to rationalise something using all kinds of pretzel logic when the simple reality is that they've added a bunch of DNR to Lost World. Not for every second of it, most of the movie is fine, but the opening shot has been blitzed as have several others. And it's nothing to do with the photography or sharpening or pixie dust or whatever, it's someone deciding that those shots must pay for their crimes.

Ultimately I’m still happy I got these two new steelie sets, but I’m glad I’m not the only one who saw those shots in TLW and went like “what the hell?”

[maverick22]

Watched Fallen Kingdom for the first time last night, and wow, that movie sucked! Contender for worst in the series for me!

Hope Dominion and Rebirth are better than that.

[HeavyHitter]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

So, out of this new DV Jurassic Park trilology steenbok there's two small but appreciable upgrades for movies one and three, and one almighty DNR'ed piss-take for the piggy in the middle.

I was pretty impressed with this new disc all things considered. There's some dimensionality in some of those jungle scenes to where the movie looked better than ever in DV (LLDV tone mapping via Envy) to me. While the audio was pretty good, I was expecting a little more out of it but didn't compare it to the prior mix. I agree, it's a fun quest movie and I enjoy it better than TLW.

[Fang Zei]

Originally Posted by Daz_85

Sounds like I did the right thing by cancelling my pre-order for both sets. Very disappointing! I’m not entirely convinced the 3D version was even taken from a new scan of the negative, but processed from the same source we have on 4K disc. Makes me wonder if the negatives for the original trilogy (or at least JP 1 and 3) were destroyed in that Universal studios fire, hence the recycling of those limited quality masters.

The 2008 fire on the Universal lot destroyed a lot of video masters and there were unfortunately a lot of the original studio recording masters of music by various artists that were the highest quality sources of that material that will ever exist. The latter was the cover story of the NYT magazine in the late 2010’s, I still remember it was called “The Day the Music Burned.”

So yeah, video masters were also destroyed in that fire and I remember thinking in 2010 when Apollo 13 first hit bd and looked way worse than the hddvd that maybe they had to do a fast and cheap redo from a film source since the earlier hd master had probably been lost in that fire. Although, had that been the case, I never understood why they couldn’t have simply ripped an hddvd copy onto a hard drive and recovered it that way. There were also plenty of other Universal bd’s that clearly used the same master as the hddvd. Sometimes they ended up looking slightly worse because of a dnr pass like with The Thing, and I remember the Dragonheart screenshot comparisons ending up looking the same way. But then there were examples like Dune that, again, used the same master as the hddvd but looked exactly the same and even had a higher bitrate.

But yeah, I don’t think any film elements were in that vault fire. Otherwise we never would’ve gotten all those 4k remasters we ended up with later on like the aforementioned Apollo 13 among many others.

[motorheadache95]

Sounds like I’ll be watching the first film for now on ITunes, but sticking with my original discs for the other two. I’d imagine that any slight rollback in processing for JP III would mean very little for the streaming version, and generally otherwise it looks the same. The Lost World sound like the new version is a bit worse overall.

Hopefully one day the original film gets a completely new remaster that gets it right, then I’ll buy a new copy.

[Johnzilla2179]

Originally Posted by motorheadache95

Sounds like I’ll be watching the first film for now on ITunes, but sticking with my original discs for the other two. I’d imagine that any slight rollback in processing for JP III would mean very little for the streaming version, and generally otherwise it looks the same. The Lost World sound like the new version is a bit worse overall.

Hopefully one day the original film gets a completely new remaster that gets it right, then I’ll buy a new copy.

I feel like the first and third film have noticeable upgrades overall, they're just more in the "refinement" than "revelation" category. I streamed the Apple versions of one and three before ever getting the discs and I noticed the differences, and I'm nowhere near an expert.

Regarding The Lost World, I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a waste as Geoff did, but it's certainly a lateral move at best. It's really just confusing for the most part. Almost as if to justify the "remastered" label, they fiddled with the processing on all three films. But whereas one and three benefitting from having it rolled back, TLW never had a lot to begin with, so some was added. It's just odd, as has been stated. Setting aside whatever bassackwards motivations or reasoning gave us this result, I think it's very much a pick your poison situation.

The 2018 disc has a more consistent grain structure across the whole film, but I always felt the color was a bit more muted than it should be. It also had some odd contrast issues, such as at the 34:32 mark where Ludlow leans back towards the camera. His face is in shadow, yet on the 2018 disc the color shifts into a milky peach/orange color. On the new disc, his face actually looks like it's in shadow. There are a few other shots throughout the film that look like this and it always bothered me on the old disc. The general brightness/contrast levels seem to have been tweaked overall (without correcting the black crush, as noted) and the overall color has more of a green push to it. The dinosaur stampede, for instance, actually looks like it takes place on a properly sunny day now, rather than with a slight overcast. I've genuinely noticed some color nuance I've never seen before on this new disc (particularly in the dinosaur designs), whilst also noting that certain shots have had the grain obliterated. The Dolby Atmos and DTS:X mixes are pretty similar, with the former being a more robust, fuller listening experience but the latter appearing to have a bit more nuance and discrete separation. I'd imagine that most people will prefer the Atmos.

This is my favorite film of all-time, even more than the first, so while it's disappointing that Universal couldn't just kick TLW over the finish line with a Dobly pass and Atmos, I think I'll stick with the new disc. But that's just me.

[VIDEOgameDROME]

I got my steelbook trilogy for $45+tax from Gruv.ca on Monday. People figure it was a price error that both steelbook trilogies were $45 each. I thought the first film looked fantastic, I did notice some of the issues with DNR but as it was my first time seeing TLW and JPIII I just chalked it up to opticals or out of focus shots rather than DNR. Oh well. I enjoyed all three though. Didn't bother with the a Jurassic World trilogy as I just bought the old version of Jurassic World on 4K not too long ago. I'm fine with them but it is a shame when they screw up a transfer with DNR like that on TLW.

[Medality]

Originally Posted by VIDEOgameDROME

I got my steelbook trilogy for $45+tax from Gruv.ca on Monday. People figure it was a price error that both steelbook trilogies were $45 each. I thought the first film looked fantastic, I did notice some of the issues with DNR but as it was my first time seeing TLW and JPIII I just chalked it up to opticals or out of focus shots rather than DNR. Oh well. I enjoyed all three though. Didn't bother with the a Jurassic World trilogy as I just bought the old version of Jurassic World on 4K not too long ago. I'm fine with them but it is a shame when they screw up a transfer with DNR like that on TLW.

That's an incredible deal! I didn't even know Gruv had a canadian website. I always bought from them on eBay.

[lilboyblu]

Not familiar with this source, but found another review of the Remastered Jurassic Park that goes a little more in depth than others.

https://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/11...ray/index.html

[Show spoiler]

Audio

Jurassic Park is presented in a newly remixed Dolby Atmos object-based container.

Originally mastered by legendary Hollywood sound mixer Gary Rydstrom, Jurassic Park also premiered the DTS sound format in cinemas around the world, which replaced analog sound with a digital equivalent played off synchronized CD-ROM. This single biggest upgrade to theatre sound since silent films gave way to 'talkies' in the 1930s enshrined the film as the poster child for digital sound forevermore.

Unlike its video transfer, the many iterations of Jurassic Park's home entertainment mixes have been of a consistently high level, which has seen the film in high rotation in theatre demos for over three decades. And whilst some may express preference for one over the other, for me, this Dolby Atmos re-engineer takes things to a whole new level.

Over and above the addition of object-based discreet height information, there's an overall 'freshness' to the sound mix, which doesn't betray what has come before but presents it in a more contemporary fashion. I'm not sure how exactly it's been achieved, perhaps some utilization of new filtering tools, but crucially, there doesn't seem to be any new Foley effects added.

There are no real problems to speak of with regard to dialogue, and surround and split channel utilization is ever-present. Whilst bass usage is suitably impressive, I'm sure some will wistfully recall the greatly over-cooked version from the original Laserdisc.

Overall, this is a solid improvement over what's come before and won't be controversial for the majority of fans.

Video

Jurassic Park is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.851:1 in the Rec. 2020 color space, finished with dynamic Dolby Vision and static HDR-10 high dynamic range formats and encoded with AVC H.265 compression.

At odds with the film's wonderful theatrical presentations, Jurassic Park's home video transfers have never properly reflected its status. In the HD and 4K generations to date, we've dealt with a transfer that's been incorrectly colored, digitally noise-reduced, overly sharpened, and too tightly cropped.

For its second attempt in 4K, Universal has returned to the same base 4K scans that were made around the time of the 20th anniversary 3D re-release in 2013. However, this time around, the elements have seen improvements with regard to color grading, less use of (but not entirely absent) digital noise reduction, and more careful encoding, which makes this the best version of the classic film on the market today, even if it still remains compromised.

The biggest improvement this time around shifts the color grading and gamma levels to a more natural and pleasant equilibrium away from the magenta shift that previously turned skin tones into a pink frenzy. It goes a long way to dealing with many complaints of fans and home theatre aficionados, but we're still left with the issue of the base negative scans being almost 15 years old. A contemporary effort would have certainly provided much bigger improvements than simply tinkering around with what already existed.

Still, we can't avoid the fact that even in its flawed state, this is the best version of the film currently available and for the foreseeable future. Choose your poison accordingly.

[samlop10]

I was finally able to watch the original over the weekend.


Picture:
I have the first version of the 4K disc and after watching this newer one I am glad to have bought it. It’s not perfect, but the upgrades add up to the point that it doesn’t take me out of the movie like the previous disc did. I think the biggest improvement for me, picture-wise anyway, were the colors. It is true some shots look largely the same as the previous transfer, but I did not notice that pinkish push the previous disc had, which made the picture look more artificial and processed. In short, the colors look more natural. The contrast too is less ‘hot’. Highlights retain better detail and the contrast is more balanced where the brights and darks are less garish while still being enhanced by the HDR. Grain too is more convincing. There are still shots with heavier DNR, but overall it retains a more/better filmic image. Compression-wise, it is not the best, but also definitely not the worst either. It looks a little crunchy at times, but it never devolves into that macro-blocking and/or uber smooth mess usually found on a lot of Paramount’s catalog 4K disc releases because the compression simply cannot keep up with the grain. Here, in motion is looks fine. Certainly not the best, but good enough that it doesn’t take me out of the movie like other discs have done.

I basically felt like I was finally watching a good transfer of the film. I have never felt like any of the previous home media versions ever looked ‘good’. The previous 4K transfer was still an upgrade from the standard blu-rays, but overall it still looked off to me. This newer one is not perfect, but the upgrades of this new 4K disc make it pass the threshold from mediocre to actually ‘good’. I would give the previous 4K disc a 3.25, and this one a 4.25.


Audio:
The new Dolby Atmos mix also sounds better. I specifically remember the DTS-X mix sounding too hot in the surrounds and heights, almost like they pushed them a little too high and thus they called attention to themselves instead of blending well to provide something more seamless and immersive. Clarity here is excellent, and the heights and surrounds are still used to great effect without being pushed past the point of sounding artificial. Low end is also quite good. I would give it a very solid 4.75, while being tempted to just give it a perfect score (for reference, I would give the DTS-X mix of the previous 4K disc a 3.75).


Overall:
Being a home theater enthusiast and cinephile, this new disc is a most welcome addition. The upgrades are a not a massive upgrade when each one is considered individually, but when added together, they bring the overall image and sound from overcooked and mediocre (previous 4K disc) to a more balanced, more filmic, and actually ‘very good’ image and sound. Not perfect, but good-to-very-good.



PS:
I spot-checked the discs of the second and third films. I would say the second one is a ‘two steps forward, one step back’ sort of situation. Where it also has better colors, less garish contrast/highlights and thus better HDR, but it has that DNR. IMO, it still looks better than the previous disc given it is not a DNR fest and most of the film still retains a decent amount of film grain. Not ideal, but still better imo. The third one I think is less of a question, as the image looks better overall without any caveats. If you do not own the previous discs, then this new collection is definitely the one to get. If you own the previous discs, but are a fan of the first and/or the other films, I would still say it is worth it. At $20 per disc it is a reasonable price.


All these are my thoughts and opinions, and mileages may vary of course.

[rexcrk]

Originally Posted by maverick22

Watched Fallen Kingdom for the first time last night, and wow, that movie sucked! Contender for worst in the series for me!

Hope Dominion and Rebirth are better than that.

Fallen Kingdom has actually grown on me. When I first saw it, I didn’t hate it, but I did feel like it was just a kind of “weird” movie. I do like it though, but I’d rank it last of the first six.

I’m in the minority, but I really like Dominion and I truly don’t see what’s so offensively bad about it. Rebirth is not very good in my opinion though.

[WBMakeVMarsMovieNOW]

Originally Posted by PeterTHX

Standard Blu-ray's REC709 has a habit of "turning up" the teal & orange.

I've seen quite a few films now on 4K UHD where it's toned down as you said - well it actually was more like that theatrically too. The expanded REC2020 color range of 4K UHD brings out the original intended grade.

Rec709 gamut can't show the intense cyans/teals/aquas that most 35mm print film can. It's clips it to some mix of more washed out/different color tints.

[WBMakeVMarsMovieNOW]

Originally Posted by PeterTHX

I recall it well because on the second time I saw it I then knew it wasn't an error the first time I saw it.

If it was that bad I'd think I'd have recalled it.
Maybe some bad batches of prints here and there?

[oneida]

Seeing a lot of "Avoid!"s on these last few pages and I'm coming in very late. Is there a good release of Jurassic Park in UHD?

/edit/ I see samlop10's post above, so the collection disc is the one to get then?

[Kyle15]

Originally Posted by Fang Zei

The 2008 fire on the Universal lot destroyed a lot of video masters and there were unfortunately a lot of the original studio recording masters of music by various artists that were the highest quality sources of that material that will ever exist. The latter was the cover story of the NYT magazine in the late 2010’s, I still remember it was called “The Day the Music Burned.”

So yeah, video masters were also destroyed in that fire and I remember thinking in 2010 when Apollo 13 first hit bd and looked way worse than the hddvd that maybe they had to do a fast and cheap redo from a film source since the earlier hd master had probably been lost in that fire. Although, had that been the case, I never understood why they couldn’t have simply ripped an hddvd copy onto a hard drive and recovered it that way. There were also plenty of other Universal bd’s that clearly used the same master as the hddvd. Sometimes they ended up looking slightly worse because of a dnr pass like with The Thing, and I remember the Dragonheart screenshot comparisons ending up looking the same way. But then there were examples like Dune that, again, used the same master as the hddvd but looked exactly the same and even had a higher bitrate.

But yeah, I don’t think any film elements were in that vault fire. Otherwise we never would’ve gotten all those 4k remasters we ended up with later on like the aforementioned Apollo 13 among many others.

Unless I missed something there were no video/film masters held in that archive, it was specifically music. The original story greatly sensationalized what was actually lost too. Many artists dropped out of the lawsuit because it turned out their stuff wasn't destroyed. Of course there could be damage control at play here as well.

[nusilver]

Originally Posted by maverick22

Watched Fallen Kingdom for the first time last night, and wow, that movie sucked! Contender for worst in the series for me!

Hope Dominion and Rebirth are better than that.

IMO, Dominion is a contender for worst, and Rebirth is up near the top. Watch the extended version of Dominion, though--it is better than the theatrical cut.

[Day93]

As more people seem to have viewed the disc can anyone else confirm the issue I heard with Jurassic Park. During the scene when Alan and the group are escaping from the control room up the ladder, the Raptor smashes through the window. For about a second the sound of the glass smashing sounds a bit strange compared to any previous release. I just want to know if anyone thinks this is a glitch or just the new sound mix?

[maverick22]

Originally Posted by nusilver

IMO, Dominion is a contender for worst, and Rebirth is up near the top. Watch the extended version of Dominion, though--it is better than the theatrical cut.

Good to know about Rebirth about being near the top for you!

I watched Dominion last night and liked it better than Fallen Kingdom.