The Thin Red Line - BD Quality / Discussion

I am intrested also. Malick is a God!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Waiting....waiting....waiting.....

Can't wait.

I am crossing everything!

hmm... hopefully Criterion does this one justice. The hi-def DataCine transfers they usually use leave a lot to be desired, IMO.

Whatever they used for Ride With The Devil looked pretty good (and also very green), that is about the same vintage as Thin Red Line- which is also predominantly green.

I believe that was actually one of their few 4K-transferred discs, along with Lola Montes and Bigger Than Life (edit: and The Red Shoes). Maybe there's others, not sure.
Hopefully that's the case here as well.

Me too.
You have to with Criterion BDs...

Is this a Criterion release, not Fox?
In any case I'm hoping for the best as well, one of my ATF.

I really liked the look of this release. Until I saw all the extras in 1080p that supplement this already very long film at 170m. To my count that is almost 6 hours!!! of highdef on one BD! WTF! Good god and No thanks... was it really that hard to put all this crap on a second disc? Same thing was done to Wings of Desire and not nearly as much was on that disc and it came in at like 24mbps, looking fairly good but not near what it could have. Sorry, but the bitrate is going to leave a lot of scenes very bit starved imo. I am sure most people will look right past this so to each their own I just cannot understand for the life of me why they would not even consider a second disc. I guess there will be an inevitable release that gives it what it deserves as BD 50s are just another stopgap for longer films. Cannot wait to rent this. On another note, I really think bluray.com is not to be trusted anymore when it comes to extreme high fidelity. The guy says even the most.... will not be disappointed blah blah blah.

If you cannot even give this film a decent bitrate how are the crazies like myself ever going to be impressed. Not all of us sit 10 feet away from our screen. I can guarantee compression problems on a large screen if you are close. More and more I don't trust their reviews as they hardly ever critique anything for the people that care about preservation, 4k transfers, and maximum bitrates unless problems are exceedingly abundant as in Predator. To me, when you give a film 5 stars in video it needs to be the best the source can look on the format. And this is not the best the source can look on the format. So why and the heck give it 5 stars it doesn't make sense. And before people tell me to step away from the screen I would like to say that I am stepping away from my wallet not the screen. I don't double dip anymore and that is that. Until a format has these films looking state of the art I rent. Anyway, toodles.

Not this again....

It's early. Sorry. Must be the coffee. 6 hours is a bit much.

Wow. The Thin Red Line looks really great!

This shot is stunning: http://images.blu-ray.com/reviews/3262_3_1080p.jpg

Some great-looking shots there, they really need to do more new transfers like this.

If there are any serious compression issues remains to be seen, and while it would be unfortunate if it was due to the extras, I'd much rather have a 4K transfer with some compression artifacts than an old, dusty master at 30+ Mbps bitrate like what they've done with loads of their other releases.

That looks great. Criterion needs to do more transfers at 4K. Compression looks a bit funky but maybe that's just the screenshots.

Any thoughts on this screenshot?
http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/screen...300&position=4

That's the one of the shots that looks overcompressed to me. Really hope it's mostly JPEG artifacts, but frankly I don't think they can squeeze a film transfer this detailed into 5.5-hours-on-a-disc bitrates and not introduce some issues.

You'd think with the premium prices Criterion charges, they could afford to stick two discs in there...

2K is just fine on modern equipment, just not future proof

"fine" it may be, but not enough for the reference grade.

4K is better though even for Blu-ray, particularly when it comes to grain. Also if it's 4K that means they've transferred it on newer equipment and since it's more expensive they may take greater care in not messing it up (unless it's Warner who seem to be fine with pissing away 8K scans.)

I would bet half the reference discs were only done at 2k

Doubt it. High-end 2K DIs often start out as 4K scans, or maybe some scanners do internal oversampling.
Criterion's 2K and HD discs simply don't look as good.

Blu-ray.com's screenshots are actually extremely reliable. I've compare them to my own many times and they look utterly identical except for color space conversion differences.

Don't get me wrong, I would prefer 4k on just about everything.
But I do think you can get stunning results with 2k.
With the advent of digital film mostly being shot at 2k (Gamer apart) it's a weird time for things like this.
For a film like this I am happy it looks great (mine just shipped) and I am happy they paid for 4k.
Do we know if Fox paid for any of the remastering process?

The screenshots look pretty good.
But, yeah, Criterion should have made this a 2-disk release.

Do they have limited rights like most of their films? will we see a Fox release with just the movie?

TTRL has the potential to look stunning on BD.
IMO, the film has some fantastic cinematography.
The DVD has some compression artifacts but overall is very good.
And BTW I do sit 10 feet from my screen.