The Limey 4K UHD (1999)

[Dubliner1]

Originally Posted by James Luckard

Sometimes they don't even bother making a new BD with the UHD transfer, they just shove an ancient BD in to get rid of old, unwanted stock, as happened with A Clockwork Orange.

...why would they go to the added expense of doing a new BD? They probably figure people who are interested in the best video quality have already made the move to 4K...and those still happy with standard 1080 BD's are not so critical or fussy about pq.

[johnpaul2]

Originally Posted by James Luckard

Do the colors on the included BD with the French set look roughly the same as the UHD?

It seems that the French BD and UHD don't match with each other in terms of grading.
However, I've compared the French BD with the UK BD caps provided ealier on this topic and they don't match with each other either. This means we pretty much have 1 master and 3 presentations of its grading. Yay.

Originally Posted by Dubliner1

...why would they go to the added expense of doing a new BD? They probably figure people who are interested in the best video quality have already made the move to 4K...and those still happy with standard 1080 BD's are not so critical or fussy about pq.

With a UHD market around 5% (3 in France) and a BD market at 20% instead, this still leaves a lot of people interested in a better video quality but not (yet) by 4K aisde. There are quite a lot of remasters I'd love to have gotten on BD (from Sony or Paramount, in particular).

[cirik]

Originally Posted by johnpaul2

It seems that the French BD and UHD don't match with each other in terms of grading.

If you correctly tonemap UHD to SDR/Rec. 709, then French BD and UHD are quite similar in terms of color grading.

But this is not the case in those UHD screenshots from dvdclassik.com.

Just compare this dvdclassik shot from French UHD - https://i.slow.pics/6KciLwBp.png
To andreasy969 one - https://postimg.cc/hJSWWrsK

[bladelia]

Available to ship to Uk from Amz.FR finally.

[Geoffrey Firmin]

Originally Posted by cirik

If you correctly tonemap UHD to SDR/Rec. 709, then French BD and UHD are quite similar in terms of color grading.

But this is not the case in those UHD screenshots from dvdclassik.com.

That's not fair, it is true to say that there are some differences between the media players in terms of management of color space convertions. One can easily highlight this differences by using a BT 2111 test pattern: it can be download at this link in HEVC, the BT 2111 ( HDR 10/ BT 2020 test pattern) is explained by ITU at this link. Play the HEVC stream convert to rec709 sdr, made a capture with your media player ( VLC, MPC/madvr, 5K player, DVDfab 6), analyse the colorbars pattern with XnView and you will see that none of them is accurate to tonemap BT2020 HDR 10 to 709 SDR, with 5 or 6 points disparities on secondary colors ( yellow, cyan, magenta). But in any case, that could explain the huge amount of red (30 points !) difference between the BR HD and the UHD on that shot:
French HD
French UHD
UK HD

[Sabzi_Nic]

Great release. I really enjoyed revisiting.

[cirik]

Originally Posted by Geoffrey Firmin

But in any case, that could explain the huge amount of red (30 points !) difference between the BR HD and the UHD on that shot:
French HD
French UHD
UK HD

And here is French UHD done with madVR (beta v126 with unchecked compromise on HDR tone & gamut mapping accuracy).

http://www.imagebam.com/image/882f3f1371418831

Now it's much closer to French BD, isn't it ?
I wont argue that madVR is 100% accurate but it's much closer colorwise to what I'm seeing on my calibrated TV compared to dvdclassik UHD screenshots. And I don't mean just that one shot but all of them.

But my point is that on my calibrated TV set (LG OLED C7 + OPPO 203) French BD & UHD are quite similar in color grading but dvdclassik comparison shows something completely different in that matter. And IMO it's just wrong and misleading.

[DAT_JB]

Originally Posted by Fat Phil

Comparisons are up -
UHD vs Lionsgate 1080p

Looks nice. Ordered.

Did you have a chance to look at it?

Noticed a small price drop so thinking about getting it.

[Fat Phil]

Originally Posted by DAT_JB

Did you have a chance to look at it?

Noticed a small price drop so thinking about getting it.

Hoping to have a watch this weekend

[Fat Phil]

HDR10/Sony 65" X900E/Sony X800

Soderbergh's The Limey gets its third release in as many years - so do we finally have a worthwhile presentation? Yeeea.....no, no we don't. At least not in HDR10.

Each of the three has issues. The German 1080p release from Koch media uses a master from 'ye olden times. The Lionsgate's 1080p release in the UK actually uses the lovely remaster, but they've gone and borked the colours while authoring the disc (and dropped all the extras).

So what of the French 4K UHD release? Well, um, it's definitely the best. But that's damning it with faint praise. Because it's also a abominable shit-show of encoding incompetence. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if whoever encoded this disc is the same person or persons responsible for some of Studio Canal's steaming turds.

But first, positives. Well, it is the newer master and colours look far better than Lionsgate release, highlight detail is much improved and fine detail in general gets a welcome bump.

Unfortunately, grain has that digitised look and only sporadically resembles something truly organic - I can live with that though. What kills it for me is the chroma compression - it's truly diabolical. Coloured blocks (especially green) are just itching to manifest, especially obvious in open spaces like skies, windows etc. It may very well be improved by DV but the HDR10 is seriously compromised. Ugh. As always, your mileage may vary - viewing distance, screen size and how sensitive you are to this issue. Some people just can't see poor chroma compression even if it's dancing the Macarena in front of their eyes and that's fine. I envy those people.

So a missed opportunity to deliver a definitive release. We seem to be crawling slowly in the right direction in a "two steps forward, one step back" kinda way, but you have to ask yourself - How many more bites at the apple are we gonna get? Unless Lionsgate release a UHD, this is probably the end of the road. They did release Requiem For A Dream though so stranger things have happened.

I can't tell you whether you should buy it or not because everyone's got different sensitivities (and budgets). But as someone who owns all three, the UHD will be my go to for the time being. Even with it's shortcomings it's still better than the other two discs. Just temper your expectations.

[Dubliner1]

Thanks for detailed review above Phil. I'm coming from the original US DVD so it's a big uptick in quality. Not perfect tho like you said but I can live with it as it's a favourite movie of mine, and like you said, we may never get a better release in the future.

[Fat Phil]

On a different note - i've seen this movie like a dozen times now and this was the first time I clocked that Avery is Barry Newman from Vanishing Point. Major brain fail.

I've always thought, "I know that guy from something". I think it was the spectacles throwing me off. Derp.

[DAT_JB]

Was The Limey part of the rumored Soderbergh 4K set for this year? Maybe another more competent studio will do better..

And thanks for the review Phil!

[andreasy969]

Originally Posted by DAT_JB

Was The Limey part of the rumored Soderbergh 4K set for this year?

No.

[Dubliner1]

On a side note, Ken Loachs 'Poor Cow' with Terence Stamp can be had at Simply Home Entertainment £9.99 plus 20% off using MOTHER20
(footage from this film is used in 'The Limey')

https://www.simplyhe.com/collections...or-cow-blu-ray

[nitin]

Originally Posted by Fat Phil

HDR10/Sony 65" X900E/Sony X800

Soderbergh's The Limey gets its third release in as many years - so do we finally have a worthwhile presentation? Yeeea.....no, no we don't. At least not in HDR10.

Each of the three has issues. The German 1080p release from Koch media uses a master from 'ye olden times. The Lionsgate's 1080p release in the UK actually uses the lovely remaster, but they've gone and borked the colours while authoring the disc (and dropped all the extras).

So what of the French 4K UHD release? Well, um, it's definitely the best. But that's damning it with faint praise. Because it's also a abominable shit-show of encoding incompetence. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if whoever encoded this disc is the same person or persons responsible for some of Studio Canal's steaming turds.

But first, positives. Well, it is the newer master and colours look far better than Lionsgate release, highlight detail is much improved and fine detail in general gets a welcome bump.

Unfortunately, grain has that digitised look and only sporadically resembles something truly organic - I can live with that though. What kills it for me is the chroma compression - it's truly diabolical. Coloured blocks (especially green) are just itching to manifest, especially obvious in open spaces like skies, windows etc. It may very well be improved by DV but the HDR10 is seriously compromised. Ugh. As always, your mileage may vary - viewing distance, screen size and how sensitive you are to this issue. Some people just can't see poor chroma compression even if it's dancing the Macarena in front of their eyes and that's fine. I envy those people.

So a missed opportunity to deliver a definitive release. We seem to be crawling slowly in the right direction in a "two steps forward, one step back" kinda way, but you have to ask yourself - How many more bites at the apple are we gonna get? Unless Lionsgate release a UHD, this is probably the end of the road. They did release Requiem For A Dream though so stranger things have happened.

I can't tell you whether you should buy it or not because everyone's got different sensitivities (and budgets). But as someone who owns all three, the UHD will be my go to for the time being. Even with it's shortcomings it's still better than the other two discs. Just temper your expectations.

Does the UK BD, if viewed in the right colour space, have as poor a compression job?

[Fat Phil]

Originally Posted by nitin

Does the UK BD, if viewed in the right colour space, have as poor a compression job?

I haven't watched the Lionsgate 1080p in its entirety yet, just a few select scenes. It doesn't look well encoded either . But I think my next move will be to try and force it into the correct colour space and give it a full watch because if I can do that, it may well end up being a more appealing option to me than the HDR10. I'd actually be willing to trade off dynamic range and resolution because I find the rampant green blobs so distracting.

*There's also an accompanying 1080p disc in the French release. I haven't watched that yet either, but a couple of other members have already mentioned that while it is in the correct colour space, it also has a dumpster fire encode and looks worse compression wise than the Lionsgate.

[Scottishguy]

Originally Posted by Fat Phil

I haven't watched the Lionsgate 1080p in its entirety yet, just a few select scenes. It doesn't look well encoded either . But I think my next move will be to try and force it into the correct colour space and give it a full watch because if I can do that, it may well end up being a more appealing option to me than the HDR10. I'd actually be willing to trade off dynamic range and resolution because I find the rampant green blobs so distracting.

*There's also an accompanying 1080p disc in the French release. I haven't watched that yet either, but a couple of other members have already mentioned that while it is in the correct colour space, it also has a dumpster fire encode and looks worse compression wise than the Lionsgate.

The forced wide gamut worked for me, and I was satisfied. I done the same with Heat definitive, and it looked to knock the red and blue primaries back into place.

[Fat Phil]

Originally Posted by Scottishguy

The forced wide gamut worked for me, and I was satisfied. I done the same with Heat definitive, and it looked to knock the red and blue primaries back into place.

Cool. I haven't had a chance to look into exactly how they f***ed the colour space on the Lionsgate disc. Was hoping someone else had already done the legwork

As for Heat, i'm still rocking the Warner Bros VC-1

[nitin]

Originally Posted by Fat Phil

Cool. I haven't had a chance to look into exactly how they f***ed the colour space on the Lionsgate disc. Was hoping someone else had already done the legwork

As for Heat, i'm still rocking the Warner Bros VC-1

I believe the UK BD is encoded in the RGB colour space. So you just need to set your player and/or tv for that colour space if they allow it.