Die Hard 4K UHD (1988)

[stangeek]

Originally Posted by TheComedian

This may be "the best it has ever looked" but the picture quality is still pretty crap.

Completely agree! I think the other movie that looked this bad was E.T. (and it may actually look better than Die Hard). At $20, it's still not worth it.

[jh901]

It makes no sense for members here to comment about image and sound without a gear profile as sig. How hard is that!?

[mar3o]

Originally Posted by stangeek

Completely agree! I think the other movie that looked this bad was E.T. (and it may actually look better than Die Hard). At $20, it's still not worth it.

E.T. is a nice improvement over the blu-ray.

I seriously have to wonder how people are setting their TVs. I think a good portion of the people in here are not seeing HDR images anywhere close to how they are intended, either due to poor HDR implementation on their TVs or poor settings.

[imsounoriginal]

Originally Posted by mar3o

There's more grain on this title than Grease for sure. It's mild but Grease is even milder, to the point it's often not even visible.

You're right, I meant the overall transfer. Edited to clarify.

[brainofj72]

I genuinely don’t understand how people think this looks bad? I could at least UNDERSTAND if people were merely underwhelmed or disappointed, but bad? Crap? VHS?! Anyone with a proper setup and functioning eyes should be able to see that this is a solid visual presentation.

[Bourne1886]

Originally Posted by stangeek

Completely agree! I think the other movie that looked this bad was E.T. (and it may actually look better than Die Hard). At $20, it's still not worth it.

Yes it is, for starters the colour palette is much improved and there’s more refined detail as pointed out by Geoff and Heavy Hitter. They gave two great examples.

The Blu-ray is shite to be honest, the colours are all over the place, overblown and garish.

The 4K is a far superior product to the Blu-ray and is more balanced and natural looking and is a definite upgrade.

[Fat Phil]

There's a whole lotta crazy up in this thread. The UHD looks fantastic.

[DMRI2006]

Originally Posted by brainofj72

I genuinely don’t understand how people think this looks bad? I could at least UNDERSTAND if people were merely underwhelmed or disappointed, but bad? Crap? VHS?! Anyone with a proper setup and functioning eyes should be able to see that this is a solid visual presentation.

It's not "bad" by any means -- but I'm definitely in the "underwhelmed" category. Bouncing back and forth between the UHD and BD doesn't produce a massive difference (more a subtle one) on my Samsung KS8000/Oppo BPD-203 (I am using rtings calibration settings pretty much, Dynamic Contrast and all that other processing crap turned off).

Certainly isn't "crap" or "VHS". But, I am not seeing this as a "huge upgrade" and IMO it's the kind of thing that really doesn't help 4K UHD as a format, especially where catalog titles are concerned. HDR is indeed restrained, and so much that I kind of felt the image was blah a lot of the time. Sure it's probably "Better than the Blu-Ray" overall but that discrepancy should've been a lot wider than it is. At least I expected more than that, it's not that attractive a UHD presentation IMO...maybe some of that too has to do with the original cinematography. I did see the movie in theaters when I was 12 but I'm not going to claim to recall how it "looked at the time"

[HeavyHitter]

Originally Posted by imsounoriginal

Was worried when this started, thought I saw a little bit of gate weave on the first opening title and the stuff on the plane didn't look too great (better than the BD, sure, but what isn't?). But as soon as "DIE HARD" comes on-screen and McClane lights the cigarette (talk about a bygone era...), I started calming down. There are shots of the approach to Nakatomi Tower (McClane and Argyle in the cab) that used to look disgusting, with all sorts of crap in the sky, that now look fine. I thought the HDR was relatively reserved, other than some lights and explosions popping a bit more than we're used to, it's pretty respectful and doesn't try to turn Die Hard into something it's not. For all the times I've seen this thing across VHS/DVD/BD/cable, I never really paid attention to how moody the lighting is within Nakatomi; it's great that a format can come along and give us new things to discover about movies we've known and loved literally for decades.

There probably should've been some more grain, but oh well. I'd put this on the level of something like Grease [EDIT: in terms of the overall transfer]. Once the movie finally gets to the 30th floor, I kinda stopped finding things to complain about because I got sucked into the movie. Skipped it this past Christmas because of how awful the BD is, so I hadn't seen it in close to 18 months; was like reuniting with an old friend. Love this movie.

Hmmm...for me Die Hard looks far more like 35mm film than Grease therefore it's automatically place much higher on the rating scale. Even before the electronic issues (DNR going up and down throughout movie, haloing artifacts) of that Grease transfer, the colors and brightness are still pushed too hard where as we don't have that issue at all on Die Hard.

[imsounoriginal]

Originally Posted by HeavyHitter

Hmmm...for me Die Hard looks far more like 35mm film than Grease therefore it's automatically place much higher on the rating scale. Even before the electronic issues (DNR going up and down throughout movie, haloing artifacts) of that Grease transfer, the colors and brightness are still pushed too hard where as we don't have that issue at all on Die Hard.

I dunno, I'm not a Grease expert. The UHD was the first time I saw it and I thought it looked really good, but obviously people who know the movie better than I do saw things that shouldn't be there. I have the opposite relationship with Die Hard, and I think the UHD is a big step up from the BD. Not saying that the two transfers have the same strengths and weaknesses (my bad if it came off that way), just that in terms of overall quality, they're at about the same level. IMHO, obvi.

[mar3o]

Originally Posted by jh901

It makes no sense for members here to comment about image and sound without a gear profile as sig. How hard is that!?

Even good gear means nothing without knowing how to adjust your settings to see a decent image.

My TV is admittedly not ideal. It's a 2016 LG LCD UHD with HDR and Dolby Vision, but it only hits around 550 nits max, supposedly. LG didn't disclose the brightness of this panel. They originally were telling some people 1000 nits but it's obvious it doesn't hit that, otherwise they would have gone for the certified label, which it doesn't have. The 550 nits figure Rtings claims may not be completely accurate, as their test results are flawed imo. I have a feeling it reaches a bit brighter than that, especially since Rtings did not run their HDR measurements with dynamic contrast enabled, as I am about to explain here.

What I learned from reading some articles is that dynamic contrast is tied directly to HDR performance for at least some if not all 2016 LG UHD sets. Normally, I always leave dynamic contrast off for all SDR viewing. However, for HDR, dynamic contrast is an absolute must for HDR to display correctly (at least on 2016 model LG LCD sets - and I have read the same for OLED also). Perhaps that has changed for newer models; I don't know. What I do know is what my eyes tell me. With dynamic contrast off, HDR images are very, very dark, with lots of black crush and low brightness. With it on low, the image springs to life, with bright highlights (not blown highlights) and tons of shadow detail that jumps out from behind the crushed blacks.

HDR looks dull, dark and dreary with dynamic contrast off on my LG set. On low it looks amazing. I wouldn't dial it any higher as it can end up a bit too aggressive with highlights, but low is perfect. Keep in mind I use AVS and other calibration patterns to dial in the best image I can, so I pay attention to blown highlights and crushed blacks. I even started up a thread for this dynamic contrast issue with LG sets in here and was mostly met with doubt and ridicule. Their loss. I know what I see and I know what I've read elsewhere on the topic. I've also mentioned this over on AVS for the owner's thread on my model and several people have verified that it's a substantial improvement after they've tried it.

[Shawn Elestren]

I've been to Nakatomi Plaza several times, actually. And the first time I went I shot this little video...in actual anamorphic. Yay me!

Nakatomi Shawn

[infiniteCR]

Originally Posted by FilmBufffff

I think you're mistaking brightness for clarity.

Similar to what happens with loudness in a soundtrack, additional brightness is often perceived as sharper. One of the dangers of HDR, and one of the reasons this disc is so good in that it doesn't resort to that kind of 'vivid' trick to add perceptual sharpness, which usually comes about as a mishmash of imagery on the screen that look both sharp and soft (ala the mummy).


I did something I never do and I ran the disc last night to sample a few scenes and it looks absolutely perfect and doesn't look digitally revised or updated from what I am seeing. Can't wait to watch this in full.

[Ernest Rister]

Originally Posted by Shawn Watson

I've been to Nakatomi Plaza several times, actually. And the first time I went I shot this little video...in actual anamorphic. Yay me!

Nakatomi Shawn

That's great, Shawn. I remember going to Century City to watch the SE of The Abyss when I moved to L.A, and suddenly seeing that skyscraper, and saying, "Holy crap! That's the Die Hard building!" And yeah, I drove through the turnaround. Nobody dropped a dead guy onto my car, though.

[ROSS.T.G.]

https://ultrahd.highdefdigest.com/57...ahdbluray.html

Echo's what others have reported. Finally watching tomorrow morning!

[Synchg]

Originally Posted by mar3o

Even good gear means nothing without knowing how to adjust your settings to see a decent image.

My TV is admittedly not ideal. It's a 2016 LG LCD UHD with HDR and Dolby Vision, but it only hits around 550 nits max, supposedly. LG didn't disclose the brightness of this panel. They originally were telling some people 1000 nits but it's obvious it doesn't hit that, otherwise they would have gone for the certified label, which it doesn't have. The 550 nits figure Rtings claims may not be completely accurate, as their test results are flawed imo. I have a feeling it reaches a bit brighter than that, especially since Rtings did not run their HDR measurements with dynamic contrast enabled, as I am about to explain here.

What I learned from reading some articles is that dynamic contrast is tied directly to HDR performance for at least some if not all 2016 LG UHD sets. Normally, I always leave dynamic contrast off for all SDR viewing. However, for HDR, dynamic contrast is an absolute must for HDR to display correctly (at least on 2016 model LG LCD sets - and I have read the same for OLED also). Perhaps that has changed for newer models; I don't know. What I do know is what my eyes tell me. With dynamic contrast off, HDR images are very, very dark, with lots of black crush and low brightness. With it on low, the image springs to life, with bright highlights (not blown highlights) and tons of shadow detail that jumps out from behind the crushed blacks.

HDR looks dull, dark and dreary with dynamic contrast off on my LG set. On low it looks amazing. I wouldn't dial it any higher as it can end up a bit too aggressive with highlights, but low is perfect. Keep in mind I use AVS and other calibration patterns to dial in the best image I can, so I pay attention to blown highlights and crushed blacks. I even started up a thread for this dynamic contrast issue with LG sets in here and was mostly met with doubt and ridicule. Their loss. I know what I see and I know what I've read elsewhere on the topic. I've also mentioned this over on AVS for the owner's thread on my model and several people have verified that it's a substantial improvement after they've tried it.

can anyone confirm what this guy is saying? especially about the dynamic contrast being set to low. i'm going for accuracy, not preference. because the color definitely loses some range/vibrancy with dynamic contrast turned on, even at low. Are you referring to dynamic contrast or LOCAL dimming? hmm cuz u might be cruising for some ridicule brah

[James_Younger_Gang]

Was I the only one whose heart rate went up during the helicopter and rooftop scenes? They looked amazing.

[flyry]

Originally Posted by ROSS.T.G.

https://ultrahd.highdefdigest.com/57...ahdbluray.html

Echo's what others have reported. Finally watching tomorrow morning!

"This UHD version straps a chair of C-4 to previous editions and blows them away in a massive explosion!"

Corny

[roadwarrior980]

I only sampled a handful of scenes on my display (Vizio M65-D0, using a Philips BDP-7501 player) but this looked especially good and the best i have seen it to date. I probably rented this several dozens times growing up from a local store before the Fox 5 Star Collection DVD came out. That was a big deal since i had never seen it in widescreen and it brought the viewing experience to a different level.

As good as the camerawork and cinematography are (a handful of scenes were used as discussion points in one of my college film classes) the film stock and quality are reflective of so many late 80s action films. I certainly don't expect Saving Private Ryan or BR 2049 quality, but i did enjoy the film-like viewing and how the 4 transfer handled motion. That and the increased color were good enough for me.

This would have truly benefited from a DTS:X or Atmos mix to open the soundtrack up a bit, but it sounds as good as i remember and for some time this was my go-to demo (particularly the 'glass' shootout scene and the helicopter assault at the end).

[Pieter V]

▶ Comparison of Die Hard 4K With HDR10 Mode vs Die Hard 2007 Blu-Ray Edition - YouTube