News|Movies|BD & DVD|Writings|Other

Oooh, I can't wait to see your comments on THIS one! :)

(Posted on Friday, June 24, 2011 at 12:08 PM)

Let's just say I'm green with envy. ;)

(Posted on Friday, June 24, 2011 at 12:21 PM)

I was relatively mild on Fellowship, but I imagine your judgement being closer to your findings on Last of the Mohicans.

It's somewhat of a miracle Warner removed the ugly processing on TTT and ROTK, though.

(Posted on Friday, June 24, 2011 at 1:08 PM)

I had been waiting seven years for LOTR in HD by the time the BD was finally released. I just can't enjoy LOTR on DVD. Watched them once, didn't feel anything, despite loving them in the cinema and seeing them many times. It was the poor quality of the TTT DVD compared to the cinema that first made me aware of the inadequacy of DVD video and led to me discovering the concept of HD. I wanted to count the Orcs to see if there really were 10 000 marching on Helm’s Deep, but was disappointed to discover nothing more mushy, artifacted mess when I tried playing the DVD on my computer monitor.

I decided not to buy BD and went back to hoping for an Australian cinema re-release after seeing the poor quality screenshots, especially of Gandalf in Bilbo’s house. However when I saw the box set on Amazon UK a couple of months ago for only 13 pounds with free international shipping I couldn’t resist and decided to see if it really was as bad as everyone said.

I skimmed through the FotR, expecting terrible things, but was pleasantly surprised. It was rather soft and undetailed, but natural and film-like. Other than the botched scene in Bilbo’s house I had no complaints and found it enjoyable to watch. I don't know what everyone was complaining about, with the crying out for a new master or a 4k scan of the original negative and other such nonsense.

I then tried skimming TTT, which was meant to be better than the FOTR. Apart from the harsh, artificial digital look, many scenes had the worst DNR I have ever seen. It wasn't just soft, or waxy, or even mushy, but worst of all was that some faces had pieces of over-sharpened frozen grain stuck in them. I turned it off in disgust after only a minute.

The skimming of the ROTK went better. Apart from the constant harsh, over sharpened digital look the only dodgy parts I noticed was the Paths of the Dead, and the lighting of the beacons. When Aragorn says “Fight for us, and regain your honour” the green sparkles in the background are filtered out and Aragorn's face is so mushy it looks as almost bad as some of the HD-DSLR acquired shots from the last season of House. As the camera swings around the beacons you can see frozen artifacts in the sky, and as the camera sweeps towards the last beacon in particular a large section of the sky is completely static.

I've only skimmed the monster AVS thread, but have they really removed the dodgy processing in TTT and ROTK? All anyone seems to care about is the FotR, but it is TTT and the ROTK that I have a problem with.

(Posted on Saturday, June 25, 2011 at 6:08 PM)

Thanks for that link, TTT and ROTK look a hell of a lot better. I was worried because I had only seen a couple of screenshots from TTT/ROTK and they didn't look any different so I was afraid that with all the criticism directed towards FOTR Warner had overlooked TTT/ROTK.

After 8 years, I can finally watch and enjoy the Lord of the Rings again! All I need to do is double dip and combine my Theatrical FOTR with the extended TTT and ROTK, easy!

Oddly, I don't particularly care for the extra detail in the FOTR. Normally I love ultra-detailed disks like Braveheart and Gladiator, but the softness suits the FOTR. Having everything super sharp, combined with the more muted colour makes it look just a little too real.

I don't understand the colour timing changes on the FOTR. Back when it was released in 2001, a time when digital intermediates were the hot new thing one of the big selling points of DIs was the fact that movies could be easily transferred to home video with accurate colour. It seems they have tried to modernize the look of the film with the teal tint, but they have basically just taken a distinctive looking film and made it look the same as 99% of everything else released these days.

(Posted on Saturday, June 25, 2011 at 7:29 PM)

Tim, let me see if I get this right: You like that the latter two movies have gotten rid of the DNR, but you much prefer the heavily DNRed edition of Fellowship? So the first one should be soft and the two others should be sharp?

Michael, what's the verdict on the colour on FotR? There's been some conflicting reports about whether the UK edition also had the green tint.

(Posted on Saturday, June 25, 2011 at 7:57 PM)

I admit, I'm not very good when it comes to identifying DNR or EE, unless it is particularly bad like in TTT, so I could very well be wrong. The FOTR still appeared to me to contain fine detail and grain, just at reduced contrast. This is quite different to the standard DNR+EE combo such as in Bilbo's house, where the fine detail is obliterated and everything else looks waxy.

I therefore assumed that the softness was simply a result of low pass filtering, caused by the original photography (the lenses have lots of chromatic aberration) and scanning a later generation film element using a low quality (2000 era) film scanner, rather than DNR. Have people actually noticed DNR artifacts in the FOTR, or are people simply assuming DNR due to the softness?

(Posted on Sunday, June 26, 2011 at 6:05 AM)

I had completely forgotten about the thread on AVS with screenshots comparing the BD of the FOTR to the HDTV broadcast. Looking at the shots again, the entire movie has clearly been subject to light DNR. So the softness was not simply due to the movie itself, but partially a result of Warner's standard filtering process. Now I'm embarrassed, I like to think of myself as a DNR hating grain fanatic, yet I thought the light grain in FOTR looked natural and called the presentation "film-like".

(Posted on Sunday, June 26, 2011 at 5:07 PM)

OT, but dammit, Mike, get yer brother to restore Spumboard. :p I need my cartoon discussing geekery.

(Posted on Monday, June 27, 2011 at 7:36 AM)

imho they fuxxed up FOTR, but of course wont admit that now. would be too expensive for them to do an exchange program. the greenish grading goes across the whole movie and is not only used selectively as in TTT or ROTK.

although I also have to say that its not that big of a problem when watching the movie instead of comparing screenshots. its rather easy to forget about it in most scenes, if you only want to and are not overly sensitive, dont know about the comparison screenshots or look out for something really teal. the effect is rather sublte. of course, if you want to have it look more closely to the TEs or to what it most likely should have looked like, then you dont want it to be like that.

I guess Im a bit in between. I could get used to it, but since Ive already seen too many screenshots of how bad it looks, I will stick to watching FOTR with adjusted colours only.

Have to say that, apart from right or wrong, I dont really like this greenish tone very much though and especially on ROTK I found many scenes rather dull and ugly because of it (especially the battle taking place in front of gondor).

(Posted on Tuesday, June 28, 2011 at 9:37 AM)

I'd say to me it seems that in addition to the changes jackson made and wanted, theres some kind of basic colour setting running accidentally through the whole movie which creates the additional teal push which can be seen throughout. that would explain both, why the amount of colour change differs quite a bit from scene to scene (these are those changes which jackson wanted) and why there is still a certain amount of greenish tone to be seen in every scene (that must have happened accidentaly) so that some scenes then look especially overblown and that there are for example no pure white colours at all (scrolling end credits aside).

(Posted on Tuesday, June 28, 2011 at 10:13 PM)

Well, you've gotta hand it to Arrow - when they fucked up with The Beyond, they set up an exchange program, but with this, it has been called a "creative decision" by Peter Jackson, thereby avoiding such a costly thing.

The same thing happened when the Star Wars trilogy was released on DVD and the suuround music tracks were reversed during Star Wars - Fox robustly called it an "artistic decision". Wanna bet that this "artistic decision" is going to be fixed for the Blu release...?

(Posted on Thursday, June 30, 2011 at 7:07 AM)