King Kong 4K UHD (2005) (Ultimate Edition)

[kong73]

Originally Posted by Schwartzy

^^ actually its one of my favourite soundtrack ever

I don't think its awful its just hard for me to get John Barrys Epic theme out of my head

[steev210]

Each time I scroll down the list of forum posts and I see King Kong 4K UHD I get momentary burst of excitement that Paramount finally announced King Kong '76 on 4K, then my eyes scan the rest of the headline and realize it's Jackson's remake we're talking about.

Although I love Kong '33, and Kong '05, I really wish Paramount would just announce this already. It's baffling that it's not on blu-ray nearly fifteen years into the format given the iconic pop culture appeal of the character. Perhaps with Godzilla vs Kong releasing in May and 2021 marking the 45th Anniversary of Kong '76, Paramount might find the proper incentive for a U.S. release.

Others may disagree, but I think KK '76 is one of Paramount's titles that deserves a 4K restoration and to be released on an actual 4K disc, not downscaled to 1080p like so many of their other recent efforts.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Mierzwiak

Very true and fortunately LOTR doesn't have that weird, awful photoshoppy look (maybe in some VFX shots, but it's not that noticeable in motion), exaggerated by aggressive!!! contrast and HDR. If they did the same with the Trilogy, it would look disastrous.

I also love Blu-ray's color palette, that's how I remember it looking on the big screen. It's a shame compression is so bad, though. I'm sure the original 2K DI would would look amazing with high bitrate and subtle HDR grade, although I still like the UHD, at least some parts of it.

Aye. I'm not saying that The Look of Kong is exactly the same as the holy trilogy because it's not, the HDR in particular is properly ****ed up although I don't mind the colour (to me the Blu has the typical green drench of SDR transfers from yesteryear), but I said it was gonna be an interesting comparison to LOTR because old DI is old, and so it proved.

[Galactus123]

I wonder if Peter Jackson was involved with this like he was with the recent Lord of the Rings 4K Blu-Rays?

[LexInHD]

Originally Posted by Galactus123

I wonder if Peter Jackson was involved with this like he was with the recent Lord of the Rings 4K Blu-Rays?

AFAIK, he had no involvement whatsoever and I've never found any information that suggests otherwise. At the time the film was being prepped for UHD-BD, he would have been working on Mortal Engines and his WW1 documentary.

[CelestialAgent]

Just got a 4K player and posterised blacks in this look rough. Anyone know which settings I should change to optimise it?

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by CelestialAgent

Just got a 4K player and posterised blacks in this look rough. Anyone know which settings I should change to optimise it?

Try turning off the 12-bit 4:4:4 output in the player. You're not any good at providing makes and models first up, are you CA? It'd be handy to know what player ye have

[CelestialAgent]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Try turning off the 12-bit 4:4:4 output in the player. You're not any good at providing makes and models first up, are you CA? It'd be handy to know what player ye have

This was frantic during the film and my parents were getting agitated when I was pausing it and trying to adjust the settings. Throughout the film I was scouring instruction manuals and message boards online because it was better than actually watching the nightmare.

Turns out the whole day I had HDR turned off, not on the player itself but on the Samsung TV itself. The bright colours in Flash Gordon fooled me into thinking it was HDR! But I think the sign of HDR can be eyestrain. In HDR, the film looks beautiful, purple and blue skies and with the resolution it’s wonderful seeing noise dance around. But yeah, HDR outputting in a TV set for SDR is a blown out crushed blacks negative image nightmare. Which I think can happen in caps too where that information isn’t conveyed. In that situation, a BD or DVD probably looks better. I first noticed the issue in the shadow under the bridge during the car duel sequence in Grease, I just figured it was an encoding issue.

Anyway now that it’s fixed, I can enjoy Rad, Dawn of the Dead, Suspiria, Twin Peaks, Apocalypse Now, Dracula hopefully without any issues!

[DMRI2006]

This may be the only disc that makes it worthwhile, but I found for KONG that forcing Dolby Vision in the Oppo 203's HDR output options to be a huge improvement (via Dolby Vision "Dark") over just watching the straight HDR10 image. It definitely is not a cure-all to the transfer's problems, but it still makes the Kong UHD much, much more watchable, lowering the hotness and also seems to enhance some color that is otherwise washed out by the inherent brightness of the HDR10 in this disc.

[CelestialAgent]

The film has 53 chapters! How often does that happen?

Very informative commentary track

[DaylightsEnd]

This 4k uhd is simply a horrendous botch job. I've tried to be kind. I've given it quite a few tries, in fairness. Even the dull, murky, green-tinted old blu ray is a much-welcome viewing option to this cartoonishly garish, radioactive, scorched easter-egg nuclear melt-down. Fortunately I only paid $5 for it in a Walmart blowout bin last year, marked "Promo". I even tried watching it on lesser displays such as an older 50" LG 4k panel in one of my guest bedrooms, and it just looks worse. The more you try to alter the underlying qualities by tweaking colour/contrast/gamma etc. settings on your display, the more artificial, blown-out, fake, cartoonish, and two-dimensional it exposes itself to be. The cgi, in particular, stands out abysmally, which is a deal-killer in and of itself. Sadly, the immense uptick in actual underlying detail on this disc over the standard blu is completely lost on it, and becomes moot. I am constantly taken out of the film by the botched hdr and the bizarre animated look of each new scene. The City looks brutally artificial, drenched in what look like the garish post-apocalyptic rays of our sun through a depleted ozone layer or similar. The garish amber sheen over everything in the blown-out landscapes and cityscapes is highly distracting well beyond revisionism. In short, she's a turkey. My tolerance for this level of artificial sun-poisoning without SPF50 is only about 10 minutes, before I have to pop her out of my Oppo, and save my eyes from further exposure. I could watch the entire LOTR 4k uhd trilogy set three times in a row, before I could watch even half an hour of the King Kong 4k uhd. I understand this is a highly subjective matter, and perhaps my post has a hint of excessive dramatic flair, but this one just rings my bell. I do note that last time I unsuccessfully attempted to view this disc, it was with HDR10. YMMV. If you're gonna watch this one and sit close to the screen, don't forget your Hawaiian Tropic and a nice thick set of blue blockers.

[Dubstar]

^ I kinda agree some of the image is just too bright and the contrast inconsistent, wish Universal did a better job with this. The brontosaurus valley chase sequence is eye assaulting.

[happydood]

Interesting. My tv is an older, lower-nit affair that this looked pretty good on. I guess my set's not strong enough to highlight the brights that everyone else is being blinded by. The set's still in good shape and most everything I throw at it looks great, so I'm gonna live with it for a while even if I'm not getting the best UHD I could get...

[motorheadache95]

King Kong was an early UHD release, right? Sounds like they didn't really understand what HDR was good for yet, and felt like they needed to nuke the whole picture and make it look like a dazzling light show. Kind of like when HD first came out and the expectation was to make everything look as crystal-clear and three-dimensional as possible, dubbed by many as the "window-effect."

Today I finally replaced my Extended Edition DVD set with the Blu-Ray. It's the original Blu-Ray release, but I got it for 3 bucks. Watched "Part 1" of the extended cut, and it looked good enough for me.

[mar3o]

I played my UHD for the first time this afternoon in my new Panasonic UB420, and roughly a third of the way through the film, somewhere a bit after 1:03:00, the screen went black for just a second and then came back, and the TV's HDR logo popped briefly, like it does when it first receives an HDR signal, as if it lost the signal for a second. There were no other glitches. This is the 8th UHD disc I've played on the player and this is the first issue I've run into. I played the scene back again a couple times after the movie was over, and it didn't happen again. I cleaned the disc before I put it in the player.

Has anybody else had any issues like this with this disc? I'm trying to figure out if it's a disc issue or an issue with my new player.

Could it have been where one of the layer breaks was on the 100Gb disc? I watched Close Encounters yesterday without issues and that was 100Gb too I believe.

[CelestialAgent]

Originally Posted by motorheadache95

King Kong was an early UHD release, right? Sounds like they didn't really understand what HDR was good for yet, and felt like they needed to nuke the whole picture and make it look like a dazzling light show. Kind of like when HD first came out and the expectation was to make everything look as crystal-clear and three-dimensional as possible, dubbed by many as the "window-effect."

Today I finally replaced my Extended Edition DVD set with the Blu-Ray. It's the original Blu-Ray release, but I got it for 3 bucks. Watched "Part 1" of the extended cut, and it looked good enough for me.

I like the light show. But it’s my first exposure to the film not having seen the BD or cinema

[WBMakeVMarsMovieNOW]

Originally Posted by CelestialAgent

I like the light show. But it’s my first exposure to the film not having seen the BD or cinema

it looked NOTHING like this at the movies or on the BD

[Galactus123]

I watched this on Apple TV app. It looked good and HDR was very bright. I noticed that there was a lot of smoothing on character's faces in many scenes. I don't remember it being like that on normal Blu-Ray.

[Davidian]

It was not. Just ask Geoff.

[lgans316]

Completely agree with the long post above. It's a shit show all the way. Easily in the top 3 worst UHDs for me.