Discs Giving 4K/UHD Delivery A Real Shot In The Arm (2 Viewers)

[Robin9]

All I need is a 4K HDR projector for under $5000 and I'm there!
...
(And maybe a couple years to save for it. )

That's my position too. I have a 50" plasma but I rarely use it. I watch via projector 6 or 7 days a week. Right now 4K projectors are more expensive than I'm comfortable with, but I'm sure within a few years Epsom or Optima will offer a 4k projector at a real-world price.

 

[Rachael B]

Maybe so, but my library of these 4K/UHD release has greatly increased to over 30 now. I just bought a couple of more and will probably buy such releases over their Blu-ray counterpart of the same title going forward.

I'm doing the same thing. I'm up to about 40 titles already. The only one I regret buying is Deepwater Horizon. My first copy had the "skin" on the play-field peeling off after being played once....and refusing to finish the movie. It had a freeze-up in my Oppo 203. The replacement copy also did the freeze, late in the movie, on my 203. I didn't play it all through on my Samsung 850 but it played the chapter that was freezing on the 203.Deepwater Horizon looked plenty good on regular BD and the Atmos audio was very, very good.

Avoid Deepwater Horizon for now. Something about it might not be kosher...???

 

[Rachael B]

The original Independence Day is awfully impressive, especially if you can decode the DTS-X audio. It sounds better than many of the new films with Atmos/X audio.

 

[RobertR]

I won't buy a movie simply for the sake of having something in UHD. If the day comes that a number of titles I'm interested in are available, including classic films, I'm in.

 

[DavidMiller]

I'm a avid buyer of the 4K media and will do my best to keep it growing. If no one buys these disks then what makes you think you will ever get a classic release. I saw a German release of The Bridge on the River Kwai on 4K UHD today as well as the 3 Ironman movies. So I imagine we will start see those movies at some point. I have 74 UHD discs so far with another 11 on pre-order.

 

[Edwin-S]

I'm doing the same thing. I'm up to about 40 titles already. The only one I regret buying is Deepwater Horizon. My first copy had the "skin" on the play-field peeling off after being played once....and refusing to finish the movie. It had a freeze-up in my Oppo 203. The replacement copy also did the freeze, late in the movie, on my 203. I didn't play it all through on my Samsung 850 but it played the chapter that was freezing on the 203.Deepwater Horizon looked plenty good on regular BD and the Atmos audio was very, very good.

Avoid Deepwater Horizon for now. Something about it might not be kosher...???

That is some bad luck. The 4K played without a hitch in my Samsung 8500.

 

[Rachael B]

That is some bad luck. The 4K played without a hitch in my Samsung 8500.

Somebody told me there were quite a few people over at the AVS Forum that have had problems with Deepwater Horizon. I have not been over there to check it out. My internet connection is not so fast and the gigantic AVS is slow for me to navigate. My first copy started coming apart overnight after the first play attempt. It looked fine out of the box but the next day the skin was peeling off when I was gonna try it again, this time in my 8500.

The 203 may just need new firmware to play Deepwater Horizon...? The 203 has performed magnificently with everything else I've thrown at it.

 

[Edwin-S]

I know that some people here were reporting issues with (I believe) audio dropouts when they played Deepwater Horizon on the 203. I took a look at my copy just now and I'm not noticing any layer peeling, but I may have just got lucky and missed out on a bad batch of the disk run. I'll keep an eye on it to see if any peeling starts to develop.

Edit: I expect that the 203 will need a firmware update to solve any issues that people have been having with the disk.

 

[Rob W]

Regarding classics on 4k UHD, I honestly think that the average consumer incorrectly thinks that 'old' movies don't have enough resolution to justify releasing on a new HD format such as 4K, when in fact it's the majority of new releases that are uprezzed from 2k to fake 4K, unbeknownst to them.

 

[DavidMiller]

Regarding classics on 4k UHD, I honestly think that the average consumer incorrectly thinks that 'old' movies don't have enough resolution to justify releasing on a new HD format such as 4K, when in fact it's the majority of new releases that are uprezzed from 2k to fake 4K, unbeknownst to them.

I actually think that the average consumer doesn't care at all. The only people that care are the home theater geeks that want to make a big deal of uprezzing. Which went on in the early days of Blu-ray and maybe going on now. Of coarse the studio doesn't tell us 90% of the time so it is all based off of guesses and Amazons website IMDB. The only time there is for sure knowledge is when digital cameras at less then 4K where used, then no mater what uprezzing was done somewhere. Although again I will say that the average consumer doesn't care and the average consumer doesn't care if HDR is applied to old movies either.

 

[David Norman]

Without some kind of context these numbers are meaningless.

Biggest context I can think of is the breakdown between disc sale rather than combined numbers.

Bluray sales were up about 0.5% - 1% in dollar sales 2016 vs 2015. Almost the entire loss in Disc sales $$$ was on the DVD component.
This is pretty similar pattern over the last 4 years. Bluray sales have stayed relatively flat or marginally down while DVD sales continue to fall rapidly. I suspect the sales wouldn't have been quite as flat if many items actually would have been released on Bluray -- esp the huge number of TV series that were abandoned or never released at all on Bluray.

 

[Robert Crawford]

I'm doing the same thing. I'm up to about 40 titles already. The only one I regret buying is Deepwater Horizon. My first copy had the "skin" on the play-field peeling off after being played once....and refusing to finish the movie. It had a freeze-up in my Oppo 203. The replacement copy also did the freeze, late in the movie, on my 203. I didn't play it all through on my Samsung 850 but it played the chapter that was freezing on the 203.Deepwater Horizon looked plenty good on regular BD and the Atmos audio was very, very good.

Avoid Deepwater Horizon for now. Something about it might not be kosher...???

Have any of you checkout "The Shallows" 4K/UHD disc? If not then you need to, another reference disc with a very suspenseful movie filmed in Australia with some spectacular visuals.

 

[Rachael B]

Have any of you checkout "The Shallows" 4K/UHD disc? If not then you need to, another reference disc with a very suspenseful movie filmed in Australia with some spectacular visuals.

....not yet. I have Arrival coming today. I'll put The Shallows on my list.

 

[Robert Crawford]

....not yet. I have Arrival coming today. I'll put The Shallows on my list.

Just a reminder about Arrival. The picture is going to be dark and that's the way it was filmed and shown in movie theaters.

 

[DavidJ]

I second The Shallows recommendation.

 

[JoeDeM]

Yes but it will never move beyond niche because it's geared toward a certain crowd that gravitate to blockbusters and current films. Classic film fans and the catalog crowd are shut out and as Robert Harris has said 4K UHD won't do much for films like All About Eve or Jules And Jim so it's never gonna happen.

Yes maybe not for films like that, but what about films like Bridge on the River Kwai, or The Guns of Navarone, which are supposedly getting a UHD release, I think pretty much any of the big films shot on 65/70mm would look great in UHD.

 

[Joel Fontenot]

Yes maybe not for films like that, but what about films like Bridge on the River Kwai, or The Guns of Navarone, which are supposedly getting a UHD release, I think pretty much any of the big films shot on 65/70mm would look great in UHD.

Both Bridge and Guns were shot on 35mm with anamorphic lenses.

Their 70mm presentations were blow-ups.

Of course, they could still look great.

 

[JoeDeM]

Both Bridge and Guns were shot on 35mm with anamorphic lenses.

Their 70mm presentations were blow-ups.

Of course, they could still look great.

You are of course correct, my bad. I still think there are many great potential catalog titles that would benefit from UHD, I would imagine that anything that was shot on 3 strip would benefit from the WCG. It will be interesting to see if B&W films will benefit from the wider grey scale.

 

[McHugh]

Planet Earth II a 4K HDR disk is scheduled to be released at the end of March. That along with the release of movies such as Lawrence of Arabia would be enough for me to buy a 4K HDR television along with a 4K player such as the Oppo UDP 203.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Am I wrong? It looks like the UHD 4k release of Planet Earth II will NOT include a Blu-ray version?

I thought it was a "standard" to include a Blu disc in any 4k release.