Once Upon A Time In America - Page 2

Not the movie though, extras and whatnots yes. You can have about 25Mbps for this movie with one DTSHDMA- and couple dub-tracks, which is plenty.

I had my hopes up as Warner was on a roll with the catalogue titles lately, but this looks like an old transfer with low level of detail and very blocky grain to boot.

I might still buy it since the UK release is pretty cheap and unlike say, Universal, many of Warner's old transfers are still watchable, but what a disappointing beginning to the new year.

Epic Fail

It's Hamlet all over again.

A rental it is. I find the movie pretty boring so I wouldn't likely see it more than once anyway.

Why not two disc's? The did it on DVD all the time

maybe its a problem of perception that people would then believe the new format is not really much better than DVD, like DVD 2 discs, BD 2 discs --> no change.

The master that effects things the most.... Hmm. No, it's not. They both affect the film to a large degree. It is not one's own opinion that is fact when concerning these scientific variables. The bitrate is directly related to the detail available in the source as is the master. Lesser bitrate means more compression. More compression means less detail. You cannot argue this. All you can do to escalate the argument is that you personally don't notice. But then again you are not directly comparing the actual lossless masters so we have no idea. The best bet is a nice cinema to see what it may look like at a decent bitrate and decent intermediate or digital master.

Your nice theater is producing 4k at 250Mbps. Reducing this theater to 1080p along with bitrate accordingly you can still see that the bitrate in any theater would be above that of bluray's best, around 60Mbps. It could be argued very much so that 250Mbps standard is really not that great at all as 3D is going to require more than this and even normal films could benefit on large screens with something like 500Mbps. Anyway, reducing what you would get from this standard at 1080p 4 times more is going to seriously affect what you are seeing on film. And guess what, that is what you are seeing here. Personally, I think that something like 60 or 70Mbps would be close to perfection depending on the master for 50 inch TV's sitting close.

I was not expecting much here and this is a terrible release in all respects that does nothing to convince people that bluray is a must own format. You can tell the difference only because the dvd was so horrible. Of course we all expected this but this is a perfect film for flipping in between discs at some point. I can't for the life of me think how people have managed to convince themselves that a good master is going to save the dirt low bitrates that couldn't resolve any real grain if they tried. I hope this can convince some of you hard ups about bitrate. The bitrate is the film. It is directly related to the content on the film and the film itself.

When Pixar is using 24Mbps for animation how the hell can anyone expect anything miraculous from actual film below this is beyond me. 10 whole Mbps below this and you are in a hole that you simply cannot get out of. There is no light you can see. This is about as starved as high definition can get. They are going to make major concessions at anything below 30 or so. Some people don't notice some people convince themselves that it is not apparent because they truly forget what a nice theater looks like. More and more will definitely notice as we begin the gradual shift to higher bitrates and new formats. It might not be huge on some releases but on films like this it will be a gigantic improvement. Oh well. I did rather like this film and I guess it will be nice to see in bluray if I sit a bit farther back. The colors and such look much improved.

As for reaching 25Mbps I doubt it but maybe close. It would be a hell of a lot better than this for sure.

I am such a Leone fan I picked this up at walmart today. Skimming through the disc and reading all the positive reviews online I am perplexed. Sure it looks better than the dvd, it should! I want to rent the dvd to compare but a very mediocre release for picture quality. Clearly an old transfer and my main bitch is the lack of detail. I 4K scan and master would easily remedy all this. Especially from Warner I am surprised here. It is really bull$h!+ at this point to be using old transfers on new bluray titles. They need to be remastered period! No recent remaster, leave them off the format. We will probably have to wait till the Italians release a quality transfer as with FFOD and TGTBTU for such a master craftsman as Leone. I truly love his films!

Can anyone tell me what's on the second disc? Just special features?

What 2nd disc? Just 1 disc in the case.

There's only one disc.

500 Mbps is total overkill for any distribution codec. Even for 4K 3D. It's more than the bit rate for Red One original recordings except for Red Epic's near lossless rates.
The requirements for a distribution codec are different than for a recording or intermediary codec. It suffices to see no image degradation in real time compared to the master. That is achievable with far lower bit rates than 500 Mbit/s. And if the material is clean as with low grain film and digital cameras you get excellent results at Blu Ray rates. Red Ray at 20 Mbit/s looks great with 4K material. No, it's not AVC but a new codec based on wavelets.

I've always kinda preferred quality over quantity. And far too often Warner seems to have a "it's good enough" attitude.

well I agree that Warner doesn't give each title it releases equal treatment, but wouldn't you agree people should at least wait until they actually see the release for themselves before they condemn it?
that was the main thing I was getting at.

I agree, but after owning 483 titles on both HD formats and renting my fair share as well something becomes perfectly clear. The screenshots don't lie! I have been very vocal about studios using very dated masters for thier titles as has Bill Hunt as this is a real problem in the industry. Using an 8 year old master simply is unacceptable! I loved the dvd format because it forced studios to do remasters for 95% of each and every title being 16:9 enhanced or anamorphic and in widescreen for the first time. If 4K bluray ever becomes a reality it will have the same effect except for the blurays already done with 4K masters.

Some screenshots (Blu-ray left, upsampled PAL DVD right)

It definitely looks better. Not by a whole lot, but the usual improvements in color rendering and detail are clearly apparent. It's only 15 dollars at wal-mart and I love the film, so I think I'm gonna pick it up.

Thanks for the screenshots Rigby. Yes if all blurays showed this kind of improvement the format would be dead by now and deservedly so. Any properly remastered bluray blows the dvd out of the water with a night and day difference. This is more like night and dusk.

The disc is unfortunately far from ideal, especially in the second half of the movie, which is clearly worse than the first for some reason. Besides the weak master, there are also many compression problems (which could probably have been largely avoided by making regional releases instead of a global release that includes a gazillion audio tracks). Overall there is still an appreciable improvement though if you have a large enough screen (I'm using a front projector), so I would still recommend the disc to fans of this magnificent movie.

Isn't the bigger size would be a double edged sword, I mean you could see the flaws just as badly as you see the resolution difference .

The DVD has much worse flaws. In fact, after getting used to HD it is increasingly difficult for me to watch (even good quality) DVDs on the projector due to the comparatively horrible artifacts, so even mediocre BDs (as well as some HD download/streaming offerings) are often worth it for me.

Glad to see more people noticing this. From the 2-hour mark on, it almost looks as if the telecine went out of focus.

I agree the BD could look better, but at least they didn't go out of the way to alter content, eg. DNR, sharpening, let's add teal and orange, etc. Aside from the softness, I can't complain. Excellent movie, too!

larry

If only. I'm going to have to strongly disagree with this statement.

Considering it doesn't have a first-rate transfer to begin with, and a rather poor bitrate, the first half of the movie actually looks perfectly decent. Almost exactly halfway through something happens though, maybe whoever supervised the transfer went on lunch break and someone else took over, with the first order of business being to turn the DNR knob way up, leaving nothing but a super-soft image with virtually no natural grain or detail.

This is fairly indicative of the quality of much of the first half:


And this is what it looks like a lot of the time during the second half:


In other words yet another release that could have been OK, but someone had to go and mess with it.

I've said this for years!

Dolph

I sold my DVD copy for this but it turns out it's fairly disappointing. Will not be purchasing this unless it's incredibly cheap. Hopefully the UK version is better but I doubt it will be

It's a Warner title. Unless there's a different distributor over there, it'll be the exact same disc.

That's not DNR, at least the type we're used to seeing.

larry

In motion it definitely does not look like traditional DNR, nor do I think it actually is any kind of intrusive filtering.

The last half of the transfer looks literally out of focus, as if watching the film through foggy glass.

The sharpness is so lousy at times, it really looks as if something went truly wrong along the way.

Does that problem show up on the DVD?