Unless I missed it The Spy Who Loved Me is not a Lowry restoration either. There are no Lowry restoration credits at the end of the film. There is actual film grain in the print and the level of fine detail is head and shoulders above any of the non 4K Lowry efforts. It also looks vastly superior than any of the remasters being non 4K.
Also these masters were not done in 2006. They started remastering them in 2004 and finished them in 2005 to coincide with the release of Bond 21, but were delayed after Martin Campbell agreed to direct CR and was finishing the Zorro sequel which delayed the film a year.
http://www.bondmovies.com/news/3.shtml http://www.velocityreviews.com/forum...ames-bond.html
In a nutshell folks we are getting 7-8 year old dvd masters slapped onto bluray. To include the old menus from the UE dvd's. Quantum of Solace is the identical disc from 4 years ago to include opening trailers for Australia!? WTF!! They couldn't even redo the munus for this one title too match the set? The extras disc is simply horrid aside from the Skyfall blogs. Any youtube member could have put together a better set of extras with far more substance. Thankfully YOLT, OHMSS, DAF and TSWLM are showing new and improved masters which are superior to the older Lowry masters, but obviously still using the older Lowry transfers to make the newer masters, except for TSWLM .
To clear up confusion Lowry did a 4K frame to frame restoration of Dr. No through LALD + Moonraker in 2004-05. Lowry digitally tweaked existing HD masters supplied from MGM for TMWTGG through DAD. MGM has since found a better print for TSWLM altogether and tweaked Lowry's masters for Thunderball through Live and Let Die in which the color timing, black levels, contrast have clearly been changed.
No one is arguing the effort put forth for the UE dvd's. Using 4K scans for dvd was state of the art. They tweaked numerous films concerning the audio and surround effects and unearthed some fantastic extras. So I would give them an A+ for effort. Unfortunately many of the films were desaturated and lost contrast due to decreased black levels compared to the SE dvd's. To boot these films were greatly degrained by Lowry. They have a propriety process and supposedly removes film grain and not detail. I am not buying it. Some of these films were totally scrubbed with fake film grain added back in. Film historian/preservationist Robert A. Harris found that out and confirmed that all the Connery films have added fake film grain to them. Meaning that fine details in many of these films is simply lost.
Concerning the newer Bond's looking so poorly it is because they are using the HD dvd masters that Lowry tweaked 7-8 years ago, when these masters were originally done before given to Lowry is dating the initial transfer even more. 4K mastering is vastly cheaper now than in 2004. In actuality all of the Bond's need better masters, especially for films of this significance. Maybe with the super-duper beyond ultimate edition 4K blurays on an actual 4K format will deliver sometime in the future.
As is at the end of the day the Bond 50 edition is a pretty half a$$ed effort and it clearly show's. I glady would have paid 3-4 times the price for recent 4K quality transfers of all the films.
