Belladonna of Sadness (1973) 4K UHD

[XGEEKEDGERX]

Originally Posted by andreasy969

Nope, Royal Mail/Deutsche Post (despite £11.50) and most likely tax here. But to my surprise rather quickly, which is anything but natural with this combo. I only ever have the FedEx pleasure with Vinegar.

It seems that ATA is now registered, my recent order arrived via Deutsche Post with no issues.

[Mothravka]

Originally Posted by andreasy969

Nope, Royal Mail/Deutsche Post (despite £11.50) and most likely tax here. But to my surprise rather quickly, which is anything but natural with this combo. I only ever have the FedEx pleasure with Vinegar.

I didn't have to pay any fee for customs when ordering from Vinegar Syndrome (FedEx), but I just got a letter yesterday from FedEx about this film with tax/fees, so I wasn't so lucky after all. The administration cost was around €10 too, quite pricey. Even the Swedish postal service doesn't take that much.

[andreasy969]

Originally Posted by XGEEKEDGERX

It seems that ATA is now registered, my recent order arrived via Deutsche Post with no issues.

Mine still didn't arrive, but the tracking, which didn't update anymore since Monday by now (aka wtf are they doing), says it'll go to my customs office. Which might be wrong.

Originally Posted by Mothravka

I didn't have to pay any fee for customs when ordering from Vinegar Syndrome (FedEx), but I just got a letter yesterday from FedEx about this film with tax/fees, so I wasn't so lucky after all. The administration cost was around €10 too, quite pricey. Even the Swedish postal service doesn't take that much.

With Vinegar/FedEx it's always all inclusive here as well - no additional tax or fees. Both by experience and by what I've been told by Vinegar. But that will depend on the terms I guess. In regard to FedEx I mean.

[Kyle15]

Hope we get some impressions soon, I'm gonna order from Diabolik asap when I get paid.

[Le Grande Blu]

My copy arrived last week, and although I haven't had a chance to watch the full film, I had a look through it. Compared to my old Cinelicious Blu, the image has much better grain and it's also a bit sharper, with a bitrate that seems to hover better the 80-100s. The biggest difference is in the framing - the image has been opened out to the point that some scenes reveal the very edges of the artwork - I took a photo of one scene and compared it with the Cinelicious and there's a fair bit more information. I'm really happy with this release, but some people might prefer a more cropped presentation.

[gigan72]

I watched this two nights ago but haven't posted my impressions yet because I need to take a few pictures, the disc looks mostly good but there's easily noticeable moments where the encode becomes very blocky.

[PowellPressburger]

Originally Posted by gigan72

I watched this two nights ago but haven't posted my impressions yet because I need to take a few pictures, the disc looks mostly good but there's easily noticeable moments where the encode becomes very blocky.

i hate to hear this esp on a 4K disc

[Kyle15]

Oh dear...sounded sweet at first but then oh no. For a film utilizing moving stills for much of the runtime, seems like something sloppy is afoot to result in blocky shenanigans.

[gigan72]

My impressions on the disc: the transfer looks great with natural looking grain, no noise reduction, no sharpening etc, and its generally fine... but the encode does crap out a few times. Very noticeably.

While it generally holds together I noticed image elements that were flat red or pink immediately stood out as iffy looking. And as the film went on, it went from looking iffy to looking extremely blocky. And I want to stress, red and pink sections of the image specifically looked much worse than any other element on the screen. There's some iffy compression at points that aren't red or pink but nothing was as bad as these bits. I didn't do any pixel peeping to find these examples either, I noticed them all immediately.

Here, look at the devil next to Jeanne. While she (and the rest of the image) looks natural and grainy, the devil is blocky and very digital looking.

[Show spoiler]

Here's a much closer look at this shot; if you can ignore the pixels, you can see how refined and grainy the image is, but the devil... forget refined, you can't even see any grain because the compression crushes it all away, leaving some crunchy blocks instead.

[Show spoiler]

This next shot may be the worst of them. The grain is completely gone from the outline of Jean, and there's nasty and extremely visible digital crud left instead.

[Show spoiler]

A closeup of the same shot, the grain is just digital soup.

[Show spoiler]

The last two pictures are NSFW.

Another shot with bright red; here her body is surrounded by a digital soup, plus her body is quite blocky too. And the shadows in her cape become blocky, but not as badly as her body.

[Show spoiler]

And a closer shot, here the blockiness is very visible. The blocks swarm around the movement in the shots too.

[Show spoiler]

It's a real shame that the encode has these issues because most of the time the disc looked great with nicely resolved grain and a very natural appearance. But the blockiness is really bad when it's present, disappointing when this disc should've been fine.

[Rayjg]

Ouch, thanks for the screenshots.

[Kyle15]

Did they have France encode this one? This thing went completely down the crapper. No hesitation on passing. Hopefully Arbelos is gonna do this one soon, and it'll be done by FiM to-boot.

[PowellPressburger]

Originally Posted by Kyle15

Did they have France encode this one? This thing went completely down the crapper. No hesitation on passing. Hopefully Arbelos is gonna do this one soon, and it'll be done by FiM to-boot.

Better yet, maybe Deaf Crocodile can take it on, and use FiM

My copy is on its way, but so disappointed with the feedback.

I keep thinking the positive is its basically the bluray but with better resolved grain but with just as bad compression?

[andreasy969]

Originally Posted by XGEEKEDGERX

It seems that ATA is now registered, my recent order arrived via Deutsche Post with no issues.

I don't think they are registered. For one thing, mine (going by what both Deutsche Post and the tracking are telling me) is going to customs and for another I still see no indication of German VAT or IOSS whatsoever during checkout.

If yours came through, it's just luck AFAICT.


re. the poor compression: If true, which I don't doubt, this was my last blind buy from this label. I don't have money to burn either.

[NLScavenger]

Who's credited for disc authoring?

[Magyalmar]

Originally Posted by Kyle15

Did they have France encode this one? This thing went completely down the crapper. No hesitation on passing. Hopefully Arbelos is gonna do this one soon, and it'll be done by FiM to-boot.

This is why I hate the Internet sometimes, people are told "generally very good with a few issues" and they understand "crap".

[Zen_Amako]

Originally Posted by Magyalmar

This is why I hate the Internet sometimes, people are told "generally very good with a few issues" and they understand "crap".

I watched this last night, and it generally does look very good. It’s just not perfect.

I also popped in the Blu-ray to see if it is region B locked, and it appears to be region free.

[andreasy969]

I for one didn't understand crap, I understood distracting. And I totally judge stuff by what I have to pay for it. I paid £32.33 GBP for this, which is fine, if the quality is fine.

I also just had the customs letter in the mail (so no, ATA didn't register), which means another 19% next Monday. And while I still won't ask for perfect, it better be pretty damn good for my hard earned money and doesn't come with poor/distracting compression.

[Kyle15]

Originally Posted by Magyalmar

This is why I hate the Internet sometimes, people are told "generally very good with a few issues" and they understand "crap".

That's funny because he did say the encode "craps out."
Anyway, let's go over what he said again:

"the transfer looks great with natural looking grain, no noise reduction, no sharpening etc, and its generally fine... but the encode does crap out a few times. Very noticeably."

Let's contrast this with the examples posted of the encode falling apart. That's some pretty garbage encoding on display if that's really how it looks on disc. For me, that's quite a distracting mess to spend 50-some dollars on. I'm not demanding perfection. I'd like a movie not to turn into Legovision for chunks of its runtime. Combined with the fact the movie is largely stills makes this even more embarrassing.

A transfer can look great and a release can look great in general but then when your compression goes that bad it's not a good look and it's not worth it. And yea, even though I didn't say it, it does look pretty crappy. A beautiful film given that treatment isn't nice tbh.

To keep you comfy should I not say anything and shut up and just buy product because "it generally looks good?" Or should they be held to their so-called standard for releasing something so sub-par?

[gigan72]

Originally Posted by Magyalmar

This is why I hate the Internet sometimes, people are told "generally very good with a few issues" and they understand "crap".

There's more issues with the encode than I posted; every shot with similar red or pink elements has blocky compression problems. All of them. It's pretty distracting when a shot fades from beautiful fine grain to lego blocks, then right back again.

Originally Posted by Kyle15

Let's contrast this with the examples posted of the encode falling apart. That's some pretty garbage encoding on display if that's really how it looks on disc. For me, that's quite a distracting mess to spend 50-some dollars on. I'm not demanding perfection. I'd like a movie not to turn into Legovision for chunks of its runtime. Combined with the fact the movie is largely stills makes this even more embarrassing.

Pretty on the nose here, it's honestly shocking that it's so bad. Whoever encoded this for some reason had serious problems with red/pink hues, and for the price this disc costs I don't think anyone should be defending it. if there was more to say about the disc I would've, everything else is fine but the encode shifts from an 8/10 to a 0/10 within the same shot at times. This movie should look beautiful.

Plus the book they sold with it is shorter and not exactly what they sold people, this release should be passed on until someone else produces a better disc. Companies shouldn't be given a pass for issues like this, especially since this is a 'premium' format.

[Kyle15]

Originally Posted by gigan72

There's more issues with the encode than I posted; every shot with similar red or pink elements has blocky compression problems. All of them. It's pretty distracting when a shot fades from beautiful fine grain to lego blocks, then right back again.



Pretty on the nose here, it's honestly shocking that it's so bad. Whoever encoded this for some reason had serious problems with red/pink hues, and for the price this disc costs I don't think anyone should be defending it. if there was more to say about the disc I would've, everything else is fine but the encode shifts from an 8/10 to a 0/10 within the same shot at times. This movie should look beautiful.

To add insult to injury, the okay/middling regular Cinelicious disc doesn't fall apart as bad as this one. It's pretty crazy!

Plus the book they sold with it is shorter and not exactly what they sold people, this release should be passed on until someone else produces a better disc. Companies shouldn't be given a pass for issues like this, especially since this is a 'premium' format.

How many pages is the book? It was always advertised as having 220 pages but it never actually did have that many. I made a lil post about it one page over.
It's pretty wild they're still misadvertising it!