Is there a reason no (or very few?) David Fincher films are on 4K disc? (1 Viewer)

[ManW_TheUncool]

I wish nothing but the worst for Mark Zuckerberg but The Social Network is still one of the best movies of the 2010's.

I don't wish anything bad for Zuckerberg, but yeah, the movie is excellent regardless... and it certainly doesn't make him look good anyhow, LOL...

_Man_

 

[jayembee]

I wish nothing but the worst for Mark Zuckerberg but The Social Network is still one of the best movies of the 2010's.

I don't doubt it. But, well, ya know, at the end of my days when I'm lying in my death-bed, and the Grim Reaper is at the door crooking his finger for me to follow him, I don't think I'm going to dwell on the fact that I never got around to watching The Social Network. Or anything else that might be worth seeing. But that's me.

 

[JoshZ]

I'm a fan of Panic room as well. I'm pretty happy with the high bit version I have. (whatever that was called. MegaBit? been too long since I've watched that sucker! lol)

Superbit I think?

Yes, the line was called Superbit. The Panic Room DVD was a Superbit disc, though the case art only referenced this on the back cover.

Most Superbit titles splayed this info on the front cover where you couldn't miss it.

 

[Radioman970]

Superbit! thanks. It's a pretty good looking disc. Although I had Bram Stoker's Dracula like that as well but the blu ray looked a lot better to me.

 

[JoshZ]

Superbit! thanks. It's a pretty good looking disc. Although I had Bram Stoker's Dracula like that as well but the blu ray looked a lot better to me.

The only thing that differentiated a Superbit DVD from the regular DVD edition is that the Superbit copy would have a DTS soundtrack (half bit-rate 754 kb/s) and no bonus features. Sony otherwise used the same video masters on both editions, and the marketing hoopla about maximizing video bit rates really didn't make much discernible difference. The movies were not "remastered" in any other way. If the regular edition was plagued with edge enhancement (as many Sony titles were), the Superbit would be as well.

In essence, it was just a clever way for Sony to charge extra for a double-dip with fewer features than the older copy.

[Edited]Panic Room was one of the few titles released as Superbit from the start, not as a double-dip. The non-Superbit edition only followed later.

 

[Jeffrey D]

The only thing that differentiated a Superbit DVD from the regular DVD edition is that the Superbit copy would have a DTS soundtrack (half bit-rate 754 kb/s) and no bonus features. Sony otherwise used the same video masters on both editions, and the marketing hoopla about maximizing video bit rates really didn't make much discernible difference. The movies were not "remastered" in any other way. If the regular edition was plagued with edge enhancement (as many Sony titles were), the Superbit would be as well.

In essense, it was just a clever way for Sony to charge extra for a doube dip with fewer features than the older copy.

Panic Room was one of the few titles only released as Superbit from the start. There was never a non-Superbit edition of that movie.

I have a 3 disc DVD version of Panic Room that wasn’t Superbit.

 

[Carlo_M]

While I can agree that some (many? most?) films have diminishing improvement from a well authored and sourced blu-ray vs. 4K...as an owner of quite a lot of DVDs (and more than a few SuperBits)...there is no DVD of a major motion picture (i.e. not originally filmed on videotape) that wouldn't see a substantial improvement on BD alone. You're talking 720x480 pixels vs. 1920x1080, and MPEG-2 encoding, no matter how high the bit rate of the SuperBit transfer, is a much older and inefficient codec than either the VC-1 or the more common (and better) AVC codec used in BDs. It's not just a matter of 6X the pixel count, it's that the codec handles the compression much better and offers superior playback picture quality.

So while I'd love more Fincher on 4K, I find it a bit of a travesty that Panic Room never got even a barebones BD transfer.

 

[JoshZ]

I have a 3 disc DVD version of Panic Room that wasn’t Superbit.

Fair enough. Looks like that came later. I've edited the sentence. Thanks.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

While I can agree that some (many? most?) films have diminishing improvement from a well authored and sourced blu-ray vs. 4K...as an owner of quite a lot of DVDs (and more than a few SuperBits)...there is no DVD of a major motion picture (i.e. not originally filmed on videotape) that wouldn't see a substantial improvement on BD alone. You're talking 720x480 pixels vs. 1920x1080, and MPEG-2 encoding, no matter how high the bit rate of the SuperBit transfer, is a much older and inefficient codec than either the VC-1 or the more common (and better) AVC codec used in BDs. It's not just a matter of 6X the pixel count, it's that the codec handles the compression much better and offers superior playback picture quality.

So while I'd love more Fincher on 4K, I find it a bit of a travesty that Panic Room never got even a barebones BD transfer.

Until Sony gets around to releasing a BD (or 4K disc) of Panic Room, I'd suggest getting the HD digital from iTunes whenever it goes on sale for $5 again -- it seems to go on sale every few months or so... and you'd likely get the free upgrade to 4K if/whenever Sony offers that (potentially even if there's never a 4K disc release)...

I've retired my SuperBit DVD and just watch the substantially better HD digital whenever I get around to it again...

_Man_

 

[Lord Dalek]

The only thing that differentiated a Superbit DVD from the regular DVD edition is that the Superbit copy would have a DTS soundtrack (half bit-rate 754 kb/s) and no bonus features. Sony otherwise used the same video masters on both editions, and the marketing hoopla about maximizing video bit rates really didn't make much discernible difference. The movies were not "remastered" in any other way. If the regular edition was plagued with edge enhancement (as many Sony titles were), the Superbit would be as well.

In essence, it was just a clever way for Sony to charge extra for a double-dip with fewer features than the older copy.

[Edited]Panic Room was one of the few titles released as Superbit from the start, not as a double-dip. The non-Superbit edition only followed later.

This is all true except in the case of the Superbit of Lawrence of Arabia.