LOTR POLL II: Is FellowShip of the Rings better than the reviews suggested? - Page 3

minor correction: LOTR was shot in spherical super35 (like Minority Report), not anamorphic Panavision (like Braveheart ).

Based on the blu-rays I've seen, modern lenses are good enough that "true" anamorphic movies are only soft if the filmmakers desire it, and deliberately use old-school lenses. And optical distortion would probably be at odds with capturing imagery for VFX work for a movie like this.

I did, and the issues remain. Some scenes looks good, other looks DNRed.

Spot on!

Better than what you saw in the theater?? Must have been a crap-ass theater. 35mm film should be WAY better than 1080p which is just barely 2K.

What resolution do you think most of the scenes in LOTR was scanned in.

Bickering removed. Further bickering will result in a loss of posting privileges.

Not to be a dick,but can someone ANYONE explain what a "Professional" screenshot is? What is Eric and Xylons background? Are they part of the industry? Do they actively work with film stock,the techline process,etc. etc.? If they simply use software or hardware to cap screens', if I did such, would I then be a professional?

Having said that, I dont see any EVIDENCE of tampering, nor do I see an attempt on Eric or Xylon's behalf to commit fraud of any kind.

While I dont see how they are "professionals", I do see them as wanting the best possible quality out of a release.

Enthusiast yes.

Professionals??

Only half right. 35mm film is capable of about 4K resolution in digital terms, but rarely achieves that. The release prints that go out to the vast majority of venues are high speed dupes on polyester stock printed from a master that can be several generations away from the camera negative. Factor in the wear and tear of often poorly maintained projection systems and matters get even worse.

I read an article a little while back that compared film to digital projection, and at the time, it was stated that the average release print in the average multi-plex theater was about 720p real resolution.

My thoughts:

The International it is not, but it is much better than all this swirling negativity would lead one to believe. Filtering, yes. Inconsistency, yes. It's still abundantly better than the DVD.

The sound is superb--actually knocked one of my lamps over. I don't regret the purchase whatsoever.

Sorry but a higher resolution doesn't necessarly means a better PQ for a movie theater. How many times have I had to endure dirt and scratches on the image (unless you go see the movie in its first days, you always end up with a dirty image), a picture not properly centered on the screen? and let's not talk about the sound... Some of todays theaters are so badly designed, the projector is so high that the picture looks like a trapezoid! So more than once, yes, our HTs do give us a "better" picture than what we see in theaters. And of course I'm not talking about digital projection.

This needs to be quoted again. I was able to watch FOTR last night and I have to say that while I was a little disappointed with the PQ (it is inconsistent) it is definitely not as bad as "Gladiator" or "Patton". I am watching 11.5ft away on a 100" screen using a calibrated 1080p projector. I was expecting it to look worse. And as far as the audio goes, I found it to be a noticeable upgrade over the DVD's. Luckily, I was able to borrow the movie from a family member who purchased the Blu-Ray so it did not cost me a dime.

Knowing that the other two movies are better (PQ-wise) than FOTR, I don't really see any reason not to recommend buying this set for fans of the franchise who like the theatricals.

Any time the HDTV presentation looks better than the Blu-ray you know something horrible has gone down. Both Gladiator and FOTR are worse than what was available on HDTV, in this case 8 years ago.

This is not acceptable, but feel free to pretend otherwise.

yes, but that's the *** LOOK OF THE ACTUAL MOVIE ***

Folks are blamming the BD for simply looking like the actual movie. It's not the fault of WB that Jackson's team created the film to look this way.

Since 2000 post-production on these films has progressed immensely so the newer films look better, but in 2000 the post-production for CGI films was in its infancy. Basically, LOTR was one of the key films that helped develop the tools that were used to good advantage later on, but weren't in play when the first film was produced.

Whether or not a very, very slight layer of fine detail has been slightly filtered in some scenes (the HDTV versus BD screen shot comparisons) has nothing to do with the soft image that people are complaining about in these threads. That's just the movie. Take it or leave it, but it's Jackson's film and the BD is showing it as it really is.



I think some folks hear that the HDTV encode has a little more detail and are assuming that it fixes everything unnatractive about this Blu-ray Disc and that WB botched this job. Not at all... it's the same soft processed looking image with all of the same problems, with a *hair* more detail in a few shots that is so slight most folks might not have noticed unless it was pointed out. That doesn't mean WB could and should have done a little better, but it's not the fault of WB that Jackson's LOTR Fellowship looks soft focus and processed.

Generally that's true.

But bear in mind that LOTR was 2K compromised for all effects shots already on the 2K DI, and the 35mm native sequences were also heavily processed. LOTR Fellowship 35mm release prints fell FAR BELOW the "average" 35mm release print in image qualtiy. The release prints were so bad I went to 3 theaters thinking each time that I had seen a faulty print... the prints were muddy, blurry, and far softer than the blu-ray Disc.

Films carefully crafted that never go through a 2K reduction cycle during production can and often do look superior on *good* 35mm release prints than 1080pHD, but most modern-day films fall far short of that goal.

I've watched all of FoTR (and TTT) and the problems that have been discussed here are readily apparent to me on my setup and definitely don't require microscopic still-frame examination to spot. Image manipulation in the vein of DNR and EE sticks out to me in all but the gentlest of cases as it gives the presentation an immediately apparent digital cast that I find bothersome.

But it's still far better than Gladiator, far far better than the DVDs, and the audio tracks are basically perfect. In fact, I'd probably call these discs "above average" and would gladly recommend them to anyone who enjoys the movies themselves. LoTR, however, deserves better. I'm not expecting Braveheart (I don't think even a quality remastering would accomplish that), but certainly these films are capable of a good deal more than this.

I got these this weekend and watched FOTR with the company we had in from out of state. We all loved the movie. Look good sounded good. Not one of us said " Hey, that don't look right or there was too much DNR done". It was better than the DVD and the EE's. To say that a strand of hair looks different on blu than it did on HDTV is like WOW. People have to pause a movie and take stills to determine if the picture meets the standards of what they think a blu ray is supposed to look like. Probably can find a needle in a hay stack as well. These are great movies and the fact that I went to 2 Targets, 2 Walmarts and 3 Best Buys on Saturday before I finally got them tells me there are true fans of the movies out there and these Blu Rays are worthy of it.

Funny how the "look of the actual movie" is much better in the opening flashback in The Two Towers. I guess a wizard did that.

No need to. Warner's temporal denoising actually tends to be more obvious in motion than in screen caps, from where I sit relative to my TV.

Its the same way in the EE dvds! Watch FOTR EE Gandolf fighting the Balrog...then watch TTT EE dvd opening flashback....It looks much better on the TTT dvd than the FOTR dvd.

Kram,

I didn't say "the look of the source negatives", I said "the look of the movie".

The problem with Fellowship is in the *post production* where the negatives were scanned at only 2K and then interwoven with CGI using now-obsolete software to render the final, soft and processed looking print master... which is "the movie".

The later films re-scanned the 35mm negatives (prior to any effects work) using better gear, and used improved post-production processing to do color grading and interweave the CGI which resulted in the same camera-shots looking much better.

The only way to make Fellowship to look better is literally to "remake" the movie from the ground up... take all of the original camera negatives and rescan them, then have the effects teams rebuild all of the effects and do a new combination DI master. That would take several years and it would require the original team of technicians. That's not just like taking an existing print, and doing a new telecine for HD.

Make more sense now?

See my above post.

Rescanning the existing IP would be easier. That's basically what everyone was expecting with this release. A new transfer. Instead we got the same master seen on tv for the past decade with DNR filtering applied. They pulled a Gladiator.

The deficiencies everyone is bothered by are locked into the IP/print master. The are resultant from the post-production of the film and not the fault of subsequent processing during "mastering" for video. In fact, it's believed that WB did, in fact, do a fresh scan of the final print master (or IP, not sure which is the case for Fellowship) for this set. If any confirmation is obtained, I'm sure it will find it's way into these threads.

The deficiencies most people are bothered by is the Blu-ray disc exclusive DNR filtering that is not present in the broadcast HD versions. Same scan, same transfer, new DNR.

i agree. if fight club, mr&mrs smith, day after tomorrow, and the remastered fifth element can look excellent...no reason fotr can't be at least a four star transfer. no excuses. i will wait for the extended editions unless this boxset drops below $30. but they ain't worth their current prices.

No, folks who have seen the HDTV version report the same softness in exactly the same scenes, which is also what was sceen in the theater and also on previous editions. There was DNR applied *in post-production* that's on the actual print master, and the HDTV encode and the HDTV encode shows the same scene-by-scene inconsistency as the blu-ray. The fine-detail difference between HDTV and Blu is there in a few scenes because WB may have applied a *touch* more DNR in a few scenes for the blu-ray, but the difference is subtle and is not responsible for the soft and processed look in these scenes. The HDTV image looks soft and processed in the Shire and Rivendale scenes just like the blu-ray.

The HDTV image is not the panecea some folks presume it to be... it shares all of the warts with the blu-ray except having perhaps a tad more detail in a few scenes which is mostly negligible (though I don't dispute that it shouldn't be the case) but it also has problems of its own that are not objections on the new blu. Overall the blu-ray is getting praised as looking subjectively better than the HDTV all things considered:


http://forum.blu-ray.com/blu-ray-mov...ml#post3143192

I'm a huge LOTR fan and haven't been more excited for a Blu Ray release. After reading reviews I grew nervous and expected the movies (mostly fellowship) to have a bad transfer. I watched the first 2 movies yesterday. Fellowship was inconsistent, but was far better than I expected. The sound was amazing! The bass made my center channel speaker fall off the shelf, and that's never happened before. Two towers looked great, and I can't wait to watch ROTK tonight

This all may be true.

However, something that doesn't add up for me.

Why is there so much film grain structure missing in the first half hour of Fellowship BD? This largely seems to be true on the broadcast screencaps too. I cannot help but think some heavy filtering was done in the BD/broadcast process because there should still be grain structure. I have no doubt that if I were to see Fellowship at the theater (I wish I could now!), I could see the grain structure in the actual film print even during the shire scenes. However, it's been largely removed on the BD and broadcast. Grain structure can often be seen during the rest of the movie.

Something happened here which also leads me to question the way the film might have been (mis) handled to some degree. There is also some EE which definitely should not be there.

Similarly, I watched Two Towers last night. During the first half hour, there is some slight DNR than seems to disappear though as the movie goes on. Overall, TT looks quite good. However, it's worth noting this issue.

It seems like a pattern here with some slight DNR in the first parts of both BDs. I haven't watched King yet.