Toddarino

In case anyone missed out on the True Romance UHD set, it’s in stock on Amazon’s Italian site.

Josh Z

It's often hard to tell the difference between grain and noise in screenshots. It may look better (or worse) in motion than it does in a still. We also have to take into account that the above shot is a photo taken off a screen, which means that the calibration of the display and also the properties of the camera (probably phone camera, I'm guessing) can introduce plenty of issues that may not be inherent to the actual data on the disc.

I have a rip of the old Universal Blu-ray on my harddrive. I'll try to find that shot.

E Unit

Yeah, it looks marginally better when it’s playing. I called it out because even when in motion, that really does show up, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. I think it’s mostly noise, but I’ve never seen so much of it like that, especially on a 4K release.

Dan

$64 shipped! I'll wait for the standard edition

Yep, that's valid. I'm honestly not too worried about it or anything. My copy is arriving this week, and I'm looking forward to it regardless.

I have that same disc. Didn't bother to rip it since I knew the UHD was on the way.

Josh Z

Here's that shot on the Universal Blu-ray from 2010. Obviously, it looks very different. But, again, a cell phone photo off a screen is not a good reference to compare against. I don't have the Arrow disc yet, but I imagine that the colors and contrast probably look closer to this than to the image posted above. Is that fair to say, E Unit?

Toddarino

I had a mysterious credit on my account so it ended up being cheaper for me.

E Unit

I concur.

Also, for perspective, I was a sitting on my couch about 8 feet back when I noticed it. I went up close when I took the pictures.

OldBoy

Wait, saw new transfer good or bad? Would German, Koch release use same master for Blu?

Josh Z

Koch is using the same master. Arrow did the work. Koch licensed it from them.

Josh Z

Both Best Buy and Amazon have pushed the release date for the SteelBook back to October 5th. I contacted DiabolikDVD and convinced them to split my order up and ship the LE now, but I had to pay an extra $5 for shipping.

E Unit

Wow, what’s up with the steel book? That’s the one I bought from Diabolik, and I got it a day early.

Josh Z

Replication issues, maybe?

You have the SteelBook in hand now?

E Unit

Yep. And that’s my worry if it’s that.

clappj

If I remember correctly, all 4K titles are region-free correct? Thinking of picking up this TR set from Amazon.it, as it's one of my top 10 favorite films.

I think I like the cover for Zavvi steelbook more, but that one's apparently sold out.

E Unit

4K discs do not have region locks. They are by default region-free - or no region I suppose.

TomOpus

There have been a couple that were region-locked. Not sure if they figured out how it happened.

Josh Z

If there's a replication issue, it would be with the SteelBook itself, not with the disc. Perhaps they just couldn't make enough cases in time to meet demand?

OldBoy

Why is Koch not till October?

Josh Z

They pushed back their release in order to include the documentary that wasn't done on time.

OldBoy

nice. that'll be worth it then...

Adam Tyner

I just posted a review of the Ultra HD limited edition of The Cat O' Nine Tails.

This is my first stab at incorporating Ultra HD screenshots into my reviews, and hopefully I didn't muck it up too much. (Quite a learning curve! Downgrading the firmware on my optical drive, setting up madVR, HDR=>SDR downconversion for screenshots, yadda yadda.) I'd appreciate it if you'd read the review just so I don't feel like I invested all that time and effort for nothing.

Kurt D

The amount of effort put into that review is staggering. Nice work!

TomOpus

I remember seeing the movie in high school at the drive-in. It was, I think, my first shot of boobies in a movie.

Nice review. I wasn't planning on buying it but you may have changed my mind.

Dan

Excellent review, Adam. Very interested in knowing the process to get good screenshots like that (the HDR to SDR conversion seems to be quite a pickle!), but it looks great.

Adam Tyner

For regular ol' Blu-ray screenshots, the answer is (thankfully!) pretty boring now: just play the video in MPC-BE, find an image I want to use, and click File->Save Image. I keep notes when I watch movies to review and jot down timecodes when there's something particularly eye-catching on-screen, so it's pretty easy to just scrub to that point in the video afterwards. I'll use MPC's "Step" feature to advance frame-by-frame to really get just the right one. The setup for all this used to be hopelessly arcane, but now it all seems to be built into the software.

For Ultra HD Blu-ray, the process is generally the same, although some additional setup is required if you don't want your images to look overly dark. Install madVR. In MPC-BE, go to View->Options->Video and set "madVR" as the video renderer. As a video is playing, right-click on the display and select Filters->madVR Renderer. Then click "Edit Settings" and click the 'down' arrow next to your monitor (or whatever display you're using). There should be an option that looks something like Profile Group 1=>Profile 1->hdr. (If not, click "create profile group" and...err, mess around with things until you do. ) I set mine to "tone map HDR using pixel shaders" with target peak nits of 100. Everything else I left as it was, I believe. I also set render->screenshots to "100% view" and checked a lot of the "don't perform _____ processing" options.

I'm sure there's plenty more refining I can do when it comes to UHD screenshots, and I'm definitely not claiming to be an expert about these particular configurations. (Very familiar with complicated TV/player settings, but this is something else altogether!) But at least I'm on my way!