Alien Haunts 4K Ultra HD Blu-Ray on Alien Day 2019

Started by BonesawT101, Oct 14, 2017, 07:53:54 PM

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Alien Haunts 4K Ultra HD Blu-Ray on Alien Day 2019 (Read 70,029 times)

Voodoo Magic

Quote from: The Old One on Apr 12, 2019, 08:10:04 PM
Predator 1987's grain is 100% the original negative.
It's DNR Blu-ray is garbage.

I'm not 100% certain of that. Some of the grain, if I remember correctly, became static and locked into place during the 20th Century Fox logo if I recall correctly. But either way, I found it distracting.

It wasn't filmed in the highest quality to begin with I recall, and while in a dark low-res projected theater screen back in 1987 it looks good, on a super 4k high resolution television screen in 2019 some of the grain was an eyesore in my opinion. The "Predator 2" disc was better fortunately.

QuoteThe 'grain-management' is a version of DNR.

I know. If accurate, the 4K die hards will not be pleased.

The Old One

The Old One

#166
The reaction of Blu-ray.com (high 4K enthusiast population) is majority positive.

Voodoo Magic

Quote from: The Old One on Apr 12, 2019, 08:21:48 PM
The reaction of Blu-ray.com (high 4K enthusiast population) is majority positive.

Yo sis, what I say. I said so many reviewers found the transfer to be exemplary. And the more grain the better with the die-hards. But sometimes it's too much for me, and for Predator it was too much for me.

I know I'm definitely not the only one. With Predator, Matrix, Close Encounters and more. Go no further than youtube or reddit to find dissenting opinions. I'm not worried if my opinion doesn't align with the 4k enthusiast majority. Cheers.

The Old One

The Old One

#168
My post is regarding the Alien 4K transfer.
Geoff D's review;

Spoiler
Quote
Watched the UHD in full last night (Theatrical + 4.1 Audio), it really does look beautiful.
Yes, it has been 'grain managed' to varying degrees and no, this isn't anything to do with "mishandled" or "poorly shot" negatives.
The most overt signs of this treatment are restricted mainly to the examination scene with its smeary frozen grain,
and some of the exteriors of the ship on the planet can look a bit funky.
Apart from those there's a decent enough layer of grain here and there, not sure if it's of the correct vintage but I'll take it.

Detail is terrific, very finely resolved apart from the obvious moments where the focus wasn't nailed back in the day,
as well as a little bit of the usual anamorphic distortion like the softness at the very top and bottom of the frame in some shots.
But given the lenses they used, the likely 5247 stock and that they didn't have an awful lot of light to work with in some scenes,
this was a heroic effort by Derek Vanlint. I always find it funny that older movies shot anamorphic look a good bit sharper
than some modern movies shot on old ana glass, but then Vanlint didn't use much diffusion owing to the slower anamorphic glass
and that he was often running two cameras simultaneously (a Ridley Scott trademark, he'd be operating one and Vanlint the other)
which makes it even more tricky to light it properly for both angles and to hide said lights. Again: this was a heroic effort.

HDR is nicely handled. Certain sources of light are plenty brighter than you've ever seen them but they're not so bright that they distract,
instead it imparts that usual sense of depth and volume to the imagery. Highlight information is newly uncovered all over the place,
unless people are fans of light bulbs then maybe it's not much to get excited about when dealing with something shot entirely on a stage
but even so, it looks so much more naturalistic than the harshly blown out lighting seen on previous transfers.
I LOVED how the strobe lighting looked on Sigourney Weaver's face during the climactic moments,
you can see her expression frozen in place every time the strobe goes off and it comes through with so much clarity now.
(Those bits will of course be uncomfortable to watch if people are sensitive to flashing lights but then they always were.)
And, as with the 4K DCP, you can now see all the spotlights in the Narcissus' engines when Ripley fires them up to expel the Beast at the end.

Black levels are gorgeously dense, after watching the 4K DCP I remarked how much shadow detail seemed to have been soaked up
and now I know it wasn't just that specific cinema presentation. The approach to the blacks reminds of Blade Runner's UHD vs the BD,
in that some shots which had dark crushy blacks on the Alien BD have now been opened up a tad, and shots that had plenty of shadows
on the BD have now been darkened accordingly. Basically there isn't a blanket approach, if this kind of ultra dense black level
had been applied to the whole movie it would have been a bit suffocating IMO. As it is, it's just about perfect.

Colour matches the DCP very well, definitely desaturated vs the previous attempts and a general toning down of the teal menace,
though there's still a subtle green undertone to certain shots here and there. Skin tones look superb, layered and rich,
and those welts on John Hurt's face (look at his lower jaw) when we first see him after he wakes up from being facehugged
seem to be a fair bit angrier.

The transfer still retains a fair bit of 'wobble' during the opening and end credits but that's likely baked in to the original opticals,
the rest of the movie looks rock solid (the DC 'Transmission' scene aside which is very juddery).
Diligent clean-up on the dirt and scratches, the occasional little blip might still sneak through.
Compression is excellent, I've griped a hell of a lot recently (I like griping) about how HEVC + HDR + YCbCr can't handle fire, smoke etc
but this encode takes those notions and flushes them out the nearest airlock as it's pristine, at least to the naked eye.
Perhaps it's precisely because the grain has been managed that the encoding handles it so well?
In any case, I didn't spot any of the usual chroma bugs.

And the movie, OH the movie. I've seen it more times than I can count, saw it again barely five weeks ago,
and it still had me rapt from start to finish. If Ash was a movie fan then he'd love Alien: it's the perfect cinematic organism.
[close]

Voodoo Magic

Quote from: The Old One on Apr 12, 2019, 08:45:01 PM
My post is regarding the Alien 4K transfer.
DGeoff's review;

Oh sorry. When you said "the reaction of Blu-ray.com" a.k.a. "the high 4K enthusiast population", I figured you meant Predator, because the sample size is so small with Alien. The vast majority on their forum haven't seen Alien 4k yet as they wait for the physical disc to be released.

The Old One

The Old One

#170
Apology accepted.

Voodoo Magic

Is DGeoff a forum member? I couldn't find an official blu-ray.com review.

The Old One


Voodoo Magic

Quote from: The Old One on Apr 12, 2019, 09:38:08 PM
http://tinyurl.com/DGeoffAlien

Yes.

Thanks. Sounds good!  And I'm all in for "grain managed'.

I also love the member's uncertainty with the grain being at the "correct vintage". That degree of grain analysis is more than I'm willing to commit to. :laugh:

The Old One

The Old One

#174
Oh, the level of analysis is crazy.

Huggs

I can deal with the level of noise reduction in predator. There are a few waxy shots, but overall the jungle and everything else looks fantastic.

Aliens really benefited from dnr from what I saw.

If this pack doesn't come with the Tongal shorts, than its a no go for me.

Elmazalman

I'm really looking forward to experiencing the 4K edition on my new 4K television. Thank God natural colours are back and the (grotesque) teal & orange cast is largely (or completely?) absent, along with the boosted contrast levels.

I'm not a fan of the DC (I do enjoy the additional material), but it also deserves to be (proper 4K) archived, alongside the classic 1979 original. Disappointing that the footage, exclusive to that cut, is upscaled only.

Hoping (praying) for a (complete) 4K edition of ALIENS SE.


SiL

Ah f**k, now I'll need to update to 4k to get the proper colours back :D

Corporal Hicks

I'm that used to the teal that the natural colours just look strange to me.  :laugh:

Salt The Fries

Salt The Fries

#179
Hey guys, the 4K UHD Blu-ray came out 3 days ago in Poland. I saw it with my wife and I believe I published one of the very first professional reviews on the Internet:

https://hdtvpolska.com/obcy-recenzja-wydanie-4k-ultra-hd-blu-ray/

it is written in Polish but if you click on the British flag at the top of the page, you'll get a Google translation.

There are some shots of the box (the front, back inside) there.

Below is also my quick impressions on the Blu-ray dot com forums (in English):

QuoteI just saw the Director's Cut in 4K UHD with my wife (the film came out today in Poland, actually, and I bough the physical copy). I've always preferred it and I'm proud to say that. I also saw Alien 2 years ago in the cinema in its DC albeit its scan looked very poor in comparison to Aliens remastered in 2010 by Cameron...

I gotta say - some scenes looked bit less focused than the others but then again that's the way Alien looked to me in the cinema 2 years ago as well, so I thought it was a matter of lenses / cameras / lighting / original scan that couldn't be completely fixed.

Make no mistake, though, the 4K UHD is a HUGE improvement over the 1080p version, I checked it meticulously myself. There is also a big difference in grain structure - in 4K UHD version it looks really, really small while it is way bigger in the 1080p version. Combined with much lower resolution, all the darker scenes (coupled with steam, fog, mist, etc.) and lots of motion - the HD version looks like crap at times.

It is especially especially noticeable in all the scenes on LV-426, for example when Kane is descending into egg lair. In the 1080p version you'll see macroblocks, and signs of compression. No such thing in 4K UHD.

Alien is already a quintessence of quality cinematography, colorization, lighting and composition, but this 4K UHD release makes it as good as it was possible from its master. Same goes for its sound track. Yes, it's no Atmos but it'd be extremely difficult to pull it off from 4.1 track.

If you have any questions, I'll be more than happy to assist you, guys :)

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