The movie The Abyss was never properly released in any widescreen format. All of the releases of the Abyss on DVD had letter boxing all the way around the movie which drastically reduced the actual resolution of the content.

So who really wants a proper UHD HDR release of this movie? I would love to show my son this movie but I wouldn't dare show him the butchered DVD version or even worse the VHS version. Hopefully there will be a proper UHD version of the movie one day.

One of my favourite films. My sons (11 & 15) are still waiting to watch it. I NEED an UHD HDR version..

There's already a thread on this:
https://www.avsforum.com/forum/150-bl...2013-a-10.html

That was about it coming out on Blu-ray which never happened. We might as well start a new thread for UHD and just hope and pray.

Yeah, but if it comes out at all, it will come out for both. I wonder if we'll ever get a dedicated UHD Blu-ray forum?

Pretty sure one of the absurdly expensive special editions of The Abyss on laser disc I had was in the correct AR. But it was a long time ago

Love the film though, especially the director's cut or extended edition...whichever they called it.

When there is a UHD BD sub-forum you can put this in the wishlist thread. Abyss was never shot with HDR cameras btw, only the most current flicks have been recording true HDR. Will be writing that a lot I know...

Weren't all laser Discs 4:3 aspect ratio? If it was widescreen in a 4:3 aspect ratio then it would have letter boxing all the way around on a modern 16:9 display. Again that isn't what I am looking for.

I would settle for a proper 16:9 or 2.35:1 480p transfer. Anything is better than letterboxed 16:9 in a 4:3 frame.

Jesus, just having a commercially available 16:9 enhanced version would be a start! Yeah, I've got the HD broadcast of the Lowry remastered theatrical cut and it looks STUNNING, but this movie is crying out for a proper HD/UHD disc release and I simply can't fathom (heh) what's held it up so long.

Where did you get the HD broadcast from? I will lend you an El Gato HDMI capture device if you can let me "borrow" your copy for awhile.

Anamorphic LDs existed, but were not sold in the US due to the lack of a market that had 16:9 displays. That's why many initial DVDs sold here were widescreen and not anamorphic or only had 4:3 video. It wasn't until DVD came out that widescreen projection TVs proliferated and it wasn't until HDTV caught on that 16:9 displays became the norm for manufacturers.

Yes. Meant simply to note that this version was not 16:9 but wider (though can't remember the exact AR).

Yup.

Without HDR yes. I hope studios don't go changing the look of all films with HDR.

Incorrect. Old film stock can definitely result in HDR once remastered. This has been remarked upon many times here at AVS during interviews with industry giants such as Doug Trumbull and others.

Original film print was already inherently HDR.

However the CGI would have been rendered at much lower resolution.

I hope the studio preserved the original negative and/or made a Technicolor copy to have as pristine a starting point as possible, but they would need to re-render the CGI at higher resolution.

Then again, considering what has been available, I think everyone would just be happy with a UHD scan of the best print remaining.

And the final image was mastered at 14ftl for theaters. I don't need to see The Wizard of Oz in HDR, changing the look and feel of it that everyone has been used to for decades.

4K and 10 bit color will be enough.

Ok The Wizard of Oz is a perhaps bad example for HDR (or maybe not? without having seen it, how can you judge?), but what about Blade Runner. 2001? The Abyss, what this thread is about? Those would be stunning in HDR.

It's just your subjective opinion that HDR would mess up the "feel" of old movies, nothing more. HDR is the future, and they're definitely going to be HDR-ifying old movies for UHD Bluray. If anything, exploiting all the f-stops of dynamic range present in old film negatives would give us a more accurate presentation of what the filmmaker shot. Why do you want old classic films to not get remastered? They look far better once they're cleaned up. Extracting the HDR information is that extra step that will make those movies really POP.

Actually, I take it back, The Wizard of Oz would be AMAZING in HDR. Why? Because the color volume isn't dependent on just the width of the primaries, and HDR allows you much more saturated and true colours without getting blended into white or black at the extremes. So you will in fact see both more and better colours, with HDR than without.

People who don't like HDR will probably have to stick to the rec 709 layer on UHD Blurays.

Still in 10-bit, still in 4K. Ok you will lose on WCG but IMO HDR and WCG go hand in hand and if you want one but not the other, too bad. The entire movie industry is jumping into HDR with gusto. And that's great. I think one of the first things that people will realize with older movies is hey, "why don't these colours pop"...oh, because that wasn't the remastered HDR version.

HDR is going to completely dominate. Not to mention, how else can you convince the masses to buy something new without the full trio of UHD buzzwords present : 4K + HDR + WCG. HDR is actually the most important feature, way more important than 4K or even than WCG.

HDR affects all the intensities of colours even inside the rec 709 gamut triangle, so a P3 movie without HDR (I think, I'll have to verify) would have a much smaller colour volume, and hence less possible colours, than a rec 709 one with HDR. Of course that's academic, because we are getting UHD + HDR + WCG no matter what. The content producers are fully on board with HDR.

It's candy for the eyes. Not unlike Wizard of Oz. IMO those two things go hand in hand.

HDR did not exist at the time those movies were made. Every last one of them was timed for the color and contrast properties of the film prints available with projection at the standard ~15 FL.

I'm sorry, but that's not correct. The directors of these movies did not intend for them to be seen in HDR. HDR didn't even exist. Re-grading the movies for HDR now is revisionism, no better than colorizing black & white.

It may be your personal subjective opinion that HDRing old movies makes them look "better," but that was never the expectation or the intention when they were made.

It's exactly this kind of thinking that has resulted in countless old movies being color regraded into the modern teal-and-orange style.

HDR isn't a new invention, our eyes have been seeing in high dynamic range for millions of years.

And yes, from the start, the film industry has been trying to, and succeeding in, improving film colour and I see no reason why we can't benefit from high dynamic range.

More importantly, neither do the studio execs. I work for a major studio and I can assure you, HDR is all over, it's the talk of the town. And it's not just some "buzz word", it represents huge progress.

Catalog titles can be re-released to take advantage of higher resolution, bit depth, colour gamut and HDR and will sell more as a result. What I see as your opinion is that only 3/4 of those are desirable for remasters.

HDR is necessary if your goal is to improve the colours.

Which the film industry has continuously tried to do from the beginning.

I mean, heck, they used to advertise the color process used in movies (Technicolor..etc) as a selling point. It's a little disingenuous to think that all those directors and actors wouldn't want people to see their performances in a more natural way, that obviously looks much, much better even to the untrained eye. HDR is simply better than SDR, there is no doubt.

Actually, wasn't it Technicolor itself that just came up with a chip to dynamically HDR-ify SDR content? Dynamic extrapolations will never be as good as the real thing, but in this case, we can actually get the real thing, because all that dynamic range is already there, waiting, in the film negatives.

There's a ton of image detail that has never before been seen on the screen that is dying to come out.

If you want want to see HDR, you want watch the 4K SDR version. Both will be on UHD Blurays and streaming apps. So I'm not sure what the point is of this, other than for me to say I like something that you don't, and we can both get exactly what we want. Nobody's forcing anyone to watch HDR content. Or even buy it.

On UHD Bluray you get both grades. There is literally no reason to complain or worry about HDR ruining people's Wizard of Oz experience on their tiny old black and white or early colour CRTs.

Btw, HDR is terrific for old black and white movies. I've done some tests with some old footage and you just see so much more detail, it's really stunning and makes the old new again.

And I mean, isn't that the point of watching those old movies on your new 2016 TV? It's absurd to upgrade just the TV but not the pixels that it's showing, in the best possible way. Nobody's saying that artistic intent shouldn't be preserved.

But SDR is not an artistic intent, it's a limitation that we no longer have to live with. There are tons of colorists who are loving working in this new HDR era, it gives them a much larger palette to choose from and that means their artistic vision can augment and improve upon the original work done a half century (or even a full century) ago.

Maybe it's just me, but I believe in progress. And HDR represents probably a far bigger step towards visual realism than any other aspect of image quality. It would be foolish to leave that on the table and take only those other things. WCG without HDR isn't the same.

The colour volume depends on the gamut and the DR. I think it's irrational to expand to P3 without HDR if your goal is to have more saturated colours. HDR makes a far bigger and better difference than rec 709 vs P3, although there's no reason to not get both.

THIS x1000

HDR is the new gimmick pushed by the majors! It should not be used for movies that were not meant to be viewed that way....

High-Definition should be about preserving the original movie, not changing it to sell new discs and players

If HDR is utilized to recreate master quality consumer video with a more pro grade contrast range, then I'm all for it, of course. That's what it's supposed to be about, not just searing your eyeballs like the non calibrated Dynamic settings on brick n mortar store displays.

Dolby Vision also, unless the specs were dumbed down, should allow for 12 bit video encoding as well, not just 10 bit as with standard SDR and HDR10 UHD Blu-ray's.

Count me in for the Director's Cut in full 4k glory with Dolby Atmos!!!

Which is completely irrelevant to this discussion. Movies were not made using HDR until last year.

Most of them are dead now, so it's not like we can ask them.

Filmmaking has rarely ever been about seeing things in a "more natural" way.

This is the exact same argument that Ted Turner made when he was colorizing black & white movies back in the '80s. "Those guys would have made their movies in color if they could have. I'm just going to go ahead and 'fix' all their stupid old broken movies for them and make them better. Because I have this fancy new tool and I know better than they did anyway."

You're trying to second-guess the alleged intentions of people who died decades ago. Would they have made movies in HDR if they could have? The question is irrelevant. They didn't make movies in HDR. They used the tools they had to make the best movies they could. HDR was not one of those tools. Applying it now is revisionism. This is not an opinion. It is a fact.

Which is all well and good for new movies made today. But it has absolutely nothing to do with old movies made in the past.

This post should be a sticky on this forum and millions of others...

Movies are not documentaries that require the most lifelike image. At the contrary, they try to create a "magic" not reality....

If you want to change movies because of that, why don't we speed up movies to 120 fps? We don't see in 24fps!

Oh wait, they already did! It's called the soap opera effect!

You guys do realize you're arguing unaltered preservation in a thread for The Abyss? By James Cameron, same guy who converted The Titanic into 3d. If/when The Abyss gets to HD/UHD it will be because Cameron finally stopped writing blue cat-fawn Pocahontas fan fiction to oversee the conversion himself. I'll just bet he uses HDR and anything else he can, its exactly who he is.

Discussion of Wizard of Oz and colorizing b&w is not just irrelevant but kinda antithetical to discussion of The Abyss. I'd bet a full msrp UHD Bluray disc that Cameron has been waiting until he can get the effects in the Abyss fully rerendered, altered, and probably even a new altered ending.

I hope your right.

I'd settle for a Bluray at this point.

Cameron released Titanic also in 2D OAR, not just 3D with altered aspect ratio

It is not Cameron that is holding up The Abyss, but Fox Studios. An Hd version has been approved by Cameron and it airs on TV from time to time as indicated from an earlier post. Fox is waiting for the next Avatar movie or the UHD to take off. If you want to slog through the pages, go to blu-ray.com forum and look for wish lists. And I'd settle for just a Blu-ray.