Proposal: The James Cameron Project

[PDB]

[Bilbofett]

Agreed, I use to really respect Harris but he has defended some objectively, bad work in the past and seems to be doing so again. I hope his defense is for political reasons and not that he is losing his competency.

The simple matter is these were almost all 1080p masters upscaled with DNR to 2160p in the worse way possible. We, in fact, have know TL was an upscale of the old 1080p for well over a year before its release based off the Hulu master.

I had a lot of downtime to peruse youtube lately and watched a lot of reviews. The defenses of these discs came off like a parody of the 7 Stages of Grief. I actually grew tired of the excuses placing the blame on S35, film stock, bad OCNs or bad lenses. You can only sell that to the uninformed. Or even worse, the excuse, "that's what Cameron wants". Also if your expertise is reviewing video media, then using the phrase "you need to lighten up about 4K releases" is antithetical to your existence as a reviewer.


Those of you that have been here long enough know I love Cameron's movies. Love them. What we got was a result of laziness. Pure and simple. Cameron was lazy, which is a thing I'd thought I'd never say. There is no technical reasons they couldn't of done a fresh 4K scan of all the OCNs or even the IPs. There is no way the TL OCN is that bad and if it is, a 4K scan of one of the IPs would be miles ahead of what we got.

It is a bad product. Pure and simple.

Well said. No reviewer with integrity should be telling their audience to "lighten up". And the thing about bad lenses, film stock.. etc, somehow didn't apply to the DVD and blu-ray releases then? Strange concept. We didn't know the lenses were bad because the resolution wasn't high enough on blu-ray to show that. Right, gotcha. Its fairly dumb and begs credulity.

[Stamper]

Nonetheless, even low res shows up some soft shots in past masters in Aliens and True Lies, mostly hidden by the grain texture. Nothing that couldn't be fixed with an 8K scan downgraded to 4K though.

The problem is JC decided the films should look like Avatar. As Harris says, theses are not restorations, but re-visualisations.

Me myself think JC went up the wrong road. No technology can really save the footage and make the films looking exactly like Avatar 1 & 2, at this moment, without something giving, if your aim is to re-invent their look completely (and not just going freestyle on the color timing)

[PDB]

Oh, I get what you guys are saying about the look being approved by Cameron. I don't doubt that. I just say lazy because no one checked the work. Seems like it was left in auto mode. I love this pic someone sent me (from BD.com?)



The AI work on the cheeks is totally off the charts. But hey you can see the nose hairs a little better so that might be a wash

Honestly, it could be the techs were forced to put out something that even they knew wasn't good. That has happened before to this movie....

Then again it is Peter Jackson's facility and I saw that Beatles' doc.

[maksnew]

I was accidentally sent this comparison, how a hair on my forehead from the WEB version turned into a scar on BD/UHD

[SwatDB]

Oh, I get what you guys are saying about the look being approved by Cameron. I don't doubt that. I just say lazy because no one checked the work. Seems like it was left in auto mode. I love this pic someone sent me (from BD.com?)



The AI work on the cheeks is totally off the charts. But hey you can see the nose hairs a little better so that might be a wash

Honestly, it could be the techs were forced to put out something that even they knew wasn't good. That has happened before to this movie....

Then again it is Peter Jackson's facility and I saw that Beatles' doc.

"Park Road Post Production" of course... (smh)

As I say: Better to do 4K (by default) Film Scanning and Film Restoration/Remastering than to use AI Picture Enhancement/Upscaled, in my opinion, as I also noticed that they also have a Director 10K Scanner

[Stamper]

You guys are off the charts! This is the best both films have ever looked!

More or less seriously, maybe it's time to issue WANTED for crimes against film restorations posters.

Those guys mugs are all over the website.

[wongfeihung]

It's the skin textures that bother me the most.

Everyone looks like a burns victim now!

And that poor guy from Aliens who appears to have a flesh-eating disease.

Ugh!

I'll take an old unfucked scan anyday.

[Stamper]

Most people watch it from 2,5m/3m away, and don't notice it. They just notice it looks clean and shiny.

I think that's the point. You wouldn't notice details also on your smartphone, being so small.

That's for these devices that those were made (and also, the Atmos remixes were made for people with soundbars, with no regards to people with an actual Atmos set up that wants the sound to be reminiscent from the theater experience).

Really the problem is they didn't label those remasters. If they had publicised them as "Smartphones/small screen/soundbars enhanced", just like you have headphones mixes, and released actual 4K remasters as optional buy, people would have found these interesting and would have collected them both.

Mostly.

[dvdmike]

You need to lighten up about 4K releases.

Let's not get personal and pick fights, or fights will happen.
You being able to settle is fine, others have higher standards, it's why this entire forum exists.