UHD Review A Few Words About A few words about...™ - Aliens -- in 4k UHD (14 Viewers)

[Robert Harris]

My point being that the more black area on the screen the less data throughput necessary.

1.78 devours data.

 

[Wes Candela]

My point being that the more black area on the screen the less data throughput necessary.

1.78 devours data.

ahh. Excellent point. I never stopped to consider that And now it seems pretty obvious.

 

[Tino]

May come down to the equipment content being viewed on, and listened to with.

Sure. Have you actually compared a 4K stream against its physical counterpart Wes? I have and it’s virtually indistinguishable imo. I use Apple TV 4K with a 300mb speed.

 

[Wes Candela]

Sure. Have you actually compared a 4K stream against its physical counterpart Wes? I have and it’s virtually indistinguishable imo. I use Apple TV 4K with a 300mb speed.

I have yes T, And watching Aliens on a web stream and comparing it to the disc I see and hear a difference.
I always do.

sometimes I notice it more than others,, visually, but sound wise I always notice a difference

so does my wife
when she's upstairs slamming on the bedroom floor asking me to to turn down the subwoofer.

this is become a little bit of aggressive debate here

Not with you, but with everybody, I feel in general


i'm just saying, I noticed a difference and I'll take physical over screaming any day

 

[Robert Crawford]

Sure. Have you actually compared a 4K stream against its physical counterpart Wes? I have and it’s virtually indistinguishable imo. I use Apple TV 4K with a 300mb speed.

i'm just saying, I noticed a difference and I'll take physical over screaming any day

Now, that we have that established, can we move forward.

 

[Wes Candela]

Now, that we have that established, can we move forward.

Yes please.

 

[yamato72]

Now, that we have that established, can we move forward.

OK OK but after completely missing out on the discussion yesterday when this thread veered so wildly off topic, I wanted to add one observation regarding stream vs disc. I'll almost always pick the disc. Case in point:
Recently the wife and I re-watched the Craig Bond films, which I've bought on disc since Casino Royale. Since the films were all on Amazon we started with the 4K Atmos stream. After watching the intro, the Atmos sound with DD+ core was anemic enough that we switched to our 2006-vintage BD. Both of us agreed that the PQ was on par and the sound (DTS-HD Master audio according to HTF) was much better. We stayed with the disc versions til the end, I think the last two are UHD. We watch on an current-gen AppleTV, wired, gigabit internet. In general I'm the guy that always notices macroblocking and color gradients in streams and they annoy the hell out of me. Some streams have better audio than others, but I'm a big fan of lossless audio.

 

[JohnRice]

I vaguely recall this thread is about the 4K release of Aliens, so...

I finally watched it a couple days ago.

The opening sequence really jumps off the screen. Dynamic range of the torch cutting through the door kind of made my jaw drop.

The movie is now very bright overall, visually. So yeah, it simply looks completely different from how it always has. I was more disappointed in the soundtrack. Having said that, and though I've always found Cameron's films to be enjoyable, I've never understood the worship of him as a filmmaker. It's a good action movie. I'll keep my original Blu Ray set as well, because, why not?

 

[Lee-c]

You mean in addition to the colors being back closer to the more correct original blue shade at night (a good thing), the dark scenes, which is much of the movie, are now quite a bit brighter overall, thus reducing the dark moody tense feel of the film?

 

[JohnRice]

You mean in addition to the colors being back closer to the more correct original blue shade at night (a good thing), the dark scenes, which is much of the movie, are now quite a bit brighter overall, thus reducing the dark moody tense feel of the film?

I don't know about the colors. Others can comment on that. This version of the movie looks very bright and well lit. It has a completely different feel from what it's always been. Personally, I think that was a mistake. I'm just not fanatical enough about it to get very upset about it.

 

[Dave H]

Regarding streaming, it depends on the platform. I streamed The Irishman from Netflix in 4K (projected) and it looked outstanding.

However, some of the streams from Amazon Prime...Meh. Compression artifacts very obvious that are not on disc.

As far as Aliens, gave it a spin this week. Mixed feelings about it. I liked the color and the reduced gamma in the darker scenes...not sure why. Detail can be very good although I got the sense some of it was 'enhanced'. The lack of grain feels odd in some parts of the movie (especially brighter scenes).

 

[Tino]

However, some of the streams from Amazon Prime...Meh

Prime is the worst streamer by far.

 

[JoshZ]

On the subject of colors, I'm not prepared to make a definitive proclamation right at this minute because I haven't watched the whole movie yet, and am only looking at the accompanying Blu-ray disc first. However, I ripped the new Blu-ray, as well as the 2010 Blu-ray, and scanned through the both of them for a quick comparison. As far as I can tell, those two discs have the exact same color grade. The only difference between them is that the new Blu-ray has virtually no grain and some detail enhancement cranked up.

It doesn't look to me like Cameron did a new color grade for the movie. It's still the same teal-and-orange-fest that it was in 2010.

 

[Lee-c]

I thought one of the reviews stated that the colors were back closer to the original color timing (more original blue, less teal that was added to the previous Blu-ray)? Or maybe it's only the 4K Blu-ray where the colors are more accurate to the original timing?

 

[Robert Harris]

I thought one of the reviews stated that the colors were back closer to the original color timing (more original blue, less teal that was added to the previous Blu-ray)? Or maybe it's only the 4K Blu-ray where the colors are more accurate to the original timing?

What is “original timing?”

 

[JoshZ]

I thought one of the reviews stated that the colors were back closer to the original color timing (more original blue, less teal that was added to the previous Blu-ray)? Or maybe it's only the 4K Blu-ray where the colors are more accurate to the original timing?

Again, I haven't watched the 4K disc yet. I've just scanned through the Blu-ray that comes with it. From looking at that, no, the color grade appears to be exactly the same as the 2010 Blu-ray.

I will try to watch the 4K disc soon.

 

[Lee-c]

The classic Cameron blue color he used for dark scenes to simulate night time, when the Blu-ray came years ago as a step up from the resolution of the previous DVD it went more teal-ish (apparently like so many other movies had been doing with their teal shifts in the newer disk releases and was discussed all over on various forums for years, seemingly some fad with wanting movies to switch to have those colors).

 

[JoshZ]

What is “original timing?”

I think you well know that James Cameron was famous for the "steely blue" color timing of his movies until the advent of digital color grading, at which point he became obsessed with revising all his old movies to remove all the blue and inundate them with teal-and-orange instead.

 

[Bryan^H]

Color timing is a foolish term. It really is!

 

[Josh Steinberg]

It’s just a holdover from the film days, similar to the way digital editing programs have “bins” that your raw footage is kept in - in the film days, editors literally had giant bins that they unedited film strips were hung inside.

The way to adjust the look of each individual shot to match different takes together in the film days was to alter the length of time each was exposed to the printer lights when making prints, hence, timing.