Letter from an Unknown Woman - French The Jokers 4K UHD. (1 Viewer)

[david hare]

Here is a note on this - let's call it tragically missed opportunity. I am adding two screens, one of the image projected with native SDR and the first with HDR forced on playback for demonstration only (taken with an Ipad).
Received this today. The gamma is screwed up with no depth or black level. unforgivable and frankly amateurish. If only they had paid half the attention to the disc authoring as they did to the booklet this wouldn't have happened. The forced subs may or may not be licensor prescribed or just stupidity but it's another negative for people who can't manually dial them out of the frame like us. I am inclined to think the master is the same one as used by the Olive Signature BluRay encode back when, which i believe was done by Paramount (before they went nuts with grain removal) and I say this because the optical shots still show slight density variations reflecting the older master for the Olive. But that's not to say the encode here including basic grading, sharpness and grain is very respectable. But the Olive disc remains the only realistic option. I fiddled for an hour with luminance and other settings to no avail, and there is imply no true black or grayscale in the image now. Then I decided to force the playback (Epson TW8400 projector) into HDR and I got what was close to a decent gamma and much wider grayscale but of course it plays havoc with whites, which blow out, and grain management which becomes noisy and unwatchable. So this alas is not a solution either. I would not advise anyone to buy this disc, sadly.

 

[titch]

Here is a note on this - let's call it tragically missed opportunity. I am adding two screens, one of the image projected with native SDR and the first with HDR forced on playback for demonstration only (taken with an Ipad).
Received this today. The gamma is screwed up with no depth or black level. unforgivable and frankly amateurish. If only they had paid half the attention to the disc authoring as they did to the booklet this wouldn't have happened. The forced subs may or may not be licensor prescribed or just stupidity but it's another negative for people who can't manually dial them out of the frame like us. I am inclined to think the master is the same one as used by the Olive Signature BluRay encode back when, which i believe was done by Paramount (before they went nuts with grain removal) and I say this because the optical shots still show slight density variations reflecting the older master for the Olive. But that's not to say the encode here including basic grading, sharpness and grain is very respectable. But the Olive disc remains the only realistic option. I fiddled for an hour with luminance and other settings to no avail, and there is imply no true black or grayscale in the image now. Then I decided to force the playback (Epson TW8400 projector) into HDR and I got what was close to a decent gamma and much wider grayscale but of course it plays havoc with whites, which blow out, and grain management which becomes noisy and unwatchable. So this alas is not a solution either. I would not advise anyone to buy this disc, sadly.

Thank you very much for this review, with your screenshots. I was hoping that this would be an upgrade from the Olive Signature blu-ray from 2017, which was from the Paramount 4K restoration - but, alas. This is an exquisite, unique film, something I've always hoped would find its way into the Criterion Collection. The Olive Signature blu-ray doesn't look bad at all, so the 4K master would be good, providing the publisher knows what they are doing. Fingers crossed Criterion, or another reputable boutique label will acquire it and do it right.

 

[david hare]

I would be very happy if Frank Tarzi picked up both this and Caught , which was another Paramount 4K scan and gave them both uncompromised UHD discs.

 

[cda1143]

Appreciate the review. It took me a bit of searching to find this release, so I’ll add a bit of clarification that this refers to a new Feb 2023 French 4K release of the film.