A Few Words About A few words about…™ The Alfred Hitchcock Classics Collection - in 4k UHD Blu-ray (3 Viewers)

[Colin Jacobson]

I bought my set back in August and Universal sent me the replacement disc for Psycho 2 weeks later.

They sent you a copy of "Psycho 2"? That's messed up!

 

[Michael Osadciw]

Add me to the list as someone who didn't get the replacement. I'll send the email again. Thanks for the reminder. I'm wondering if they're hoping people like me forget.

 

[Malcolm R]

Sorry to hear some have not received their replacements. I think my wait was closer to 8-9 weeks for delivery, but it only required one email.

Those not getting any response, are you sending your proof of purchase and delivery address along with the email request?

 

[B-ROLL]

Sorry to hear some have not received their replacements. I think my wait was closer to 8-9 weeks for delivery, but it only required one email.

Those not getting any response, are you sending your proof of purchase and delivery address along with the email request?

some people just need more than one stab at it !

 

[TravisR]

It's a miracle! I got a response and they said I should get the replacement discs in 2 to 4 weeks. Let that be a lesson to you kids out there- perseverance, after a very long period of time, will pay off.

Add me to the list as someone who didn't get the replacement. I'll send the email again. Thanks for the reminder. I'm wondering if they're hoping people like me forget.

It worked for me (after a year) so you might as well try it again.

Those not getting any response, are you sending your proof of purchase and delivery address along with the email request?

Yep. Even if I hadn't, you'd think they could have sent an e-mail saying "Hey dummy, we need a receipt too."

 

[Malcolm R]

Yep. Even if I hadn't, you'd think they could have sent an e-mail saying "Hey dummy, we need a receipt too."

You'd think so, but if it became necessary to have a multiple back-and-forth to get all the info, they may just disregard those that don't send all the info up front.

A peeve of mine at work is when people leave a message that just says "call me back" rather than simply stating what they're looking for so we can research and have the info already at hand when we call back. I often don't respond to these "cold call" messages.

 

[Nelson Au]

Congratulations Travis!

 

[TravisR]

It's a miracle! I got a response and they said I should get the replacement discs in 2 to 4 weeks. Let that be a lesson to you kids out there- perseverance, after a very long period of time, will pay off.

WHOA! They said 2 to 4 weeks and I got it already. Leaving aside the whole requesting-it-for-a-year part, Universal did a great job with getting it to me. 2 to 4 weeks was more like 2 to 4 days.

 

[Nelson Au]

Great news!

 

[Nelson Au]

Hey guys, I upgraded my display to a 4K OLED in October. So now I can finally watch the discs in this set. When I played Vertigo last year via my 4K capable player to my old plasma, the colors looked darker in the segments I sampled. So I felt I’m just not going to get a good viewing experience or see what I’m supposed to see.

Last night I wanted to start with Rear Window. As most people have complained, the image does look darker. But is it really? I’m wondering as I learn more about 4K and HDR, I just wonder if we are seeing simply a wider range of graduations of light to dark and more of the midrange. My display is calibrated via the tech at Value Electronics so I imagine what I’m seeing is properly being displayed. When viewing material that has no HDR, the display has two settings, one for daylight ambiant lighting and night time ambient lighting. I use the night time setting and the lights were low in the room. I thought it looked fine. The display did not sense HDR Dolby Vision so I assume Universal did not apoly it to this title.

This display is larger then my old one, so i’m already catching things I never noticed before, 4K or not. Things that stood out are the reflections on the chrome arms of the wheel chair. I swear I could see 3 hot spots that looked like the studio light reflections.

I have not tried the standard blu ray yet to compare brightness levels and sharpness. If RAH says this looks right, then it must be. I do see softness in the image and at time some real sharpness. When I think back at the times I saw real film projected, it has that look. I figure it’s all the grain too. . There’s a close up of Wendell Corey‘s face as he’s looking out the rear window and I can a lot of the skin textures. On the old blu ray, I always noticed the flesh colored make up on Grace Kelly had rubbed off her arm and onto the while blouse she is wearing under the Green suit she wears. On this new 4K disc, the colored make-up is still there, but not as strongly.

But there’s two shots that struck out to me. When we first see Lisa in her first scenes, her red lipstick is really red! The next sequence that surprised me was when Thorwald starts to approach Jeff to kill him. When Jeff sets off the flash to blind him, the flash has that cool white light you see from a real flash. That really surprised me! It was not only yhe color of the bright flash, but how bright it looked compared to how I recall the scene. So this is why I wonder if the image is dark. There is really a wider range of light to dark I might be seeing? Was 1080p blu ray simply not able to display this range and thus has a brighter image because it’s not showing that greater range?

On the whole this is one of my favorite Hitchcock titles and I stopped looking at the image quality and just enjoyed the story! That’s the point, and it was certainly more enjoyable this way! How can Jeff keep putting off Lisa!

 

[Johnny Angell]

How can Jeff keep putting off Lisa!

I’ve been wondering that since my first viewing.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Hey guys, I upgraded my display to a 4K OLED in October. So now I can finally watch the discs in this set. When I played Vertigo last year via my 4K capable player to my old plasma, the colors looked darker in the segments I sampled. So I felt I’m just not going to get a good viewing experience or see what I’m supposed to see.

Last night I wanted to start with Rear Window. As most people have complained, the image does look darker. But is it really? I’m wondering as I learn more about 4K and HDR, I just wonder if we are seeing simply a wider range of graduations of light to dark and more of the midrange. My display is calibrated via the tech at Value Electronics so I imagine what I’m seeing is properly being displayed. When viewing material that has no HDR, the display has two settings, one for daylight ambiant lighting and night time ambient lighting. I use the night time setting and the lights were low in the room. I thought it looked fine. The display did not sense HDR Dolby Vision so I assume Universal did not apoly it to this title.

This display is larger then my old one, so i’m already catching things I never noticed before, 4K or not. Things that stood out are the reflections on the chrome arms of the wheel chair. I swear I could see 3 hot spots that looked like the studio light reflections.

I have not tried the standard blu ray yet to compare brightness levels and sharpness. If RAH says this looks right, then it must be. I do see softness in the image and at time some real sharpness. When I think back at the times I saw real film projected, it has that look. I figure it’s all the grain too. . There’s a close up of Wendell Corey‘s face as he’s looking out the rear window and I can a lot of the skin textures. On the old blu ray, I always noticed the flesh colored make up on Grace Kelly had rubbed off her arm and onto the while blouse she is wearing under the Green suit she wears. On this new 4K disc, the colored make-up is still there, but not as strongly.

But there’s two shots that struck out to me. When we first see Lisa in her first scenes, her red lipstick is really red! The next sequence that surprised me was when Thorwald starts to approach Jeff to kill him. When Jeff sets off the flash to blind him, the flash has that cool white light you see from a real flash. That really surprised me! It was not only yhe color of the bright flash, but how bright it looked compared to how I recall the scene. So this is why I wonder if the image is dark. There is really a wider range of light to dark I might be seeing? Was 1080p blu ray simply not able to display this range and thus has a brighter image because it’s not showing that greater range?

On the whole this is one of my favorite Hitchcock titles and I stopped looking at the image quality and just enjoyed the story! That’s the point, and it was certainly more enjoyable this way! How can Jeff keep putting off Lisa!

Nelson,

Rear Window does have HDR applied to it on that disc!

 

[Nelson Au]

Robert, Thanks! I thought it had to have HDR applied. I’ll take another look at it as maybe I didn’t see the indication on my set. The way the image looked, it looked like it did!

 

[Neil S. Bulk]

It's HDR10, not Dolby Vision.

 

[Nelson Au]

Thanks Neil, I did a little reading and I’m seeing that was the reason. I was expecting to see some kind of ability to adjust it like the Dolby Vision control on the Sony.

Edit: I checked the specs of the Frankenstein 4K blu ray and I see that is HDR10 as well. So perhaps Universal only does HDR10, while the new Paramount Star Trek 4K film set has both HDR10 and Dolby Vision, I’m starting to catch onto to all this 4K jargon.

 

[Nelson Au]

Guys, I watched The Birds 4K blu ray last night as I watched the next title from the 4K Hitchcock set.

My disc played flawlessly with no freezing or pixelation, so that was great. I know The Birds well enough as I find the back projection and optical effects usually are obvious. And they still are in 4K, but some shots actually do look better integrated. Overall, I thought it was a very nice improvement over the standard Blu ray. Though I thought the standard blu ray looked very much watchable when I last viewed it about 2 years ago.

What struck me the most are the live action outdoor shots. Those look like where the HDR shows itself the best. As Melanie is driving her Aston Martin DB2 on the winding road to Bodega Bay, I tried to see if I could tell where the matte painting starts and ends and it’s so well blended, I could not see it. Same when Melanie takes the boat across the bay to Mitch‘s house. The painting is so well integrated. The one shot when Melanie is sitting on the bench outside the schoolyard as she waits for Cathy to take her home and we see the birds on the play ground behind her, that processed shot looked pretty good.

Overall, the image quality looked great and like Rear Window, I was more sucked into the story and the scary bits still gets me a little on the edge. The Master is still innovating during this late period. The thrills and suspense still works so well.

I still find the interaction between Melanie and Annie Hayworth one of the more interesting facets to the film. Annie had a romantic relationship with Mitch in San Francisco, but it did not work out. Annie still harbors some hope she could be with Mitch by moving to Bodega Bay. Annie is very clear in her acknowledgment that Melanie is interested in catching Mitch, and she seems to accept it. So there is an interesting friendship that they form over that weekend. Melanie seems to be the intruder and central catalyst in the story, she’s interested in Mitch, but so is Annie and so is MItch’s mother whose afraid to loose him. Pleshette is great in the role of Annie. Later Melanie manages to gain Mitch’s mother’s approval too. Jessica Tandy‘s performance as Mitch’s mother is great as well. She’s really cold and uncomfortable with herself. the scene when the house is being attacked and Mitch’s mother and Melanie are literally crawling up the walls in fear and tension!

I’m always interested in the filming locations because I find it interesting when one of my favorite films is filmed near the San Francisco area. Its fun so many people make the trip to Bodega Bay to see the school house and other sites. The Tides is now a remodeled and enlarged restaurant and an Inn. Totally unrecognizable.

Its always fun to re-visit Hitchcock as I find new things and or angles to interpret in the story and characters. Not sure which to view next, I am not as big a fan of Psycho, though the last time I viewed it during my Hitchcock viewing project, it does have some interesting aspects that I found interesting, so maybe I can explore that more. Vertigo I always like to make sure I have a solid block of time to give it 100% focus as it’s a heavier story. I guess I’ll see which one strikes my mood.

 

[benbess]

I just finished watching the 4k of Vertigo for the first time, and the original VistaVision source makes this release a stunner. As we all know, green is one of the colors associated with Kim Novak's character(s). Although her eyes were well-enough rendered in the previous blu-ray, in 4k the details of Kim Novak's olive-green eyes are much more vivid and detailed in the close-ups. And so the green of her wrap at the first sighting at Ernie's, her green Jaguar, the green of the redwood forest, and even the green light from the neon sign of the Empire Hotel, all almost seemed to me in this new viewing to be colors emanating out from whomever she is, from her eyes—the one part of her that isn't made-over.

Having been born in Berkeley, and having been in San Francisco several times while growing up, and even having visited recently, I have a fondness for the city, and seeing it so vividly during the late 1950s in this 4k disc is a treat.

It goes without saying that Kim Novak and James Stewart give their all to this surreal story, and all the rest of the players are wonderful too, including Barbara Bel Geddes.

One little thing—at the end going from San Francisco to San Juan Bautista is a 90-mile drive.

For those interested in Vertigo's locations, here's a great site that shows all the locations in the movie on several pages, as well as what the sites look like today.

Vertigo - Cemetery — Reel SF

Then ... Scottie pulls up behind Madeleine's Jaguar in front of Mission Dolores, on Dolores Street between 16th and 17th ( map ) . The Mission is the oldest building in San Francisco, dedicated in 1776 and completed in 1791.

reelsf.com

 

[Nelson Au]

Hey Ben, I’m a Bay Area native too. That reelsf site is great, I’ve been referring to it for several years. . I particularly like his entry for Bullitt.

A few years ago I took a road trip down to San Juan Batista. It was pretty cool to see how little it’s changed since the film. And I went inside the church, of course there is no staircase up a tower.

Its too bad the owner of Scottie’s house remodeled it so much. I bet too many tourists visit it.

I don’t think I’ve ever noticed Kim Novak’s eyes are green! I’ve been saving the 4K Vertigo disc for a good time to watch. So that’s something I’ll look for.

 

[Doug Otte]

Hey Ben, I’m a Bay Area native too. That reelsf site is great, I’ve been referring to it for several years. . I particularly like his entry for Bullitt.

A few years ago I took a road trip down to San Juan Batista. It was pretty cool to see how little it’s changed since the film. And I went inside the church, of course there is no staircase up a tower.

Its too bad the owner of Scottie’s house remodeled it so much. I bet too many tourists visit it.

I don’t think I’ve ever noticed Kim Novak’s eyes are green! I’ve been saving the 4K Vertigo disc for a good time to watch. So that’s something I’ll look for.

A few years back, I was in SF for the first time with my wife to attend a wedding. I hoped to see some Vertigo locations, but didn't have time to plan for it. When we took a bus tour to Napa, we did drive by the (Edit) Palace of Fine Arts.

One time we were walking back to our rented apartment (between Nob Hill and Chinatown) from Downtown. We crested a hill, and there was the Elsters' apartment building! That was exciting, and we came upon it from the same angle as the film's shot.

 

[Nelson Au]

Doug, that a cool story. You are referring to the Brocklebank Apartments. I must seen that as a kid a few times, but not recently.

The Fort Point under the Golden Gate Bridge is partly gated off, so you cannot walk up to the edge where Madeline jumps in the bay. It was gated off after 9/11. Which is too bad.