Star Trek movie Blu-ray reviews from thedigitalbits (too much DVNR)
Robo-man
Thanks for your patience, folks. As I mentioned earlier this morning, we've
been getting a lot of e-mails from concerned Star Trek fans regarding the
image quality of Paramount's new catalog Trek film Blu-rays, which street
tomorrow. When I contacted the studio about the issue on Friday, final
review product was still unavailable (it should be ready in the next few
days), but they were kind enough to send over a set of check discs for me to
evaluate the picture and sound quality. Last night, I looked carefully at
each film on a 110" projection screen using the Panasonic PT-AE1000U 1080p
LCD front projector. Here are my thoughts:
First of all, let me just say that the new Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
restoration looks spectacular. I've seen this film projected in high quality
in recent years, and the new presentation captures that experience
wonderfully. The film (in fact, nearly ALL the Trek films) have always had a
soft look about them, owing to the stock used and the sort of "budget
production" approach with which they were shot, but the overall detail is
quite good and is very true to the theatrical presentation. There's light,
refined grain structure visible, and color and contrast are excellent. The
image is very nicely film-like and it's just a wonderful viewing experience.
Bottom line: This is exactly how Khan is supposed to look, and don't let
anyone tell you otherwise. So that's the good news.
Now... here's the flip side: The other films are a somewhat different story,
image quality-wise. Here's the thing... when you look at them, they don't
look bad per-se. But they're also far from great. Contrast and color is
actually outstanding on virtually all of the other films (with the qualified
exception of Trek IV, which has somewhat less than optimal contrast). That's
not really the issue. The issue is that when these transfers were done, too
much Digital Video Noise Reduction was used to reduce visible grain, or some
kind of filtering was applied across the board that stripped out too much
high-frequency information in the image. Now... the fact is, some noise
reduction is applied to EVERY high-def master you see. That's the nature of
the business. The problem is, up until recently, how MUCH was applied to
Blu-ray was considered a matter of taste in the industry. And as you guys
know, from time to time, too much as been applied by various studios for the
image to hold up to large screen Blu-ray presentation.
As a result here, with Trek I and Trek III-VI on Blu-ray, a lot of fine
detail - the kind of detail that makes an image look film-like or not on
large screens - has been scrubbed away. That's not so much a concern if
you're watching the films on smaller plasma or CRT HD displays, but if
you're someone who likes to squeeze every bit of image quality out of your
Blu-rays with display sizes of over 50" and over, you're going to start
seeing the problems. And the bigger you view the image, the more it starts
to fall apart. I can tell you that at 110", film grain is almost completely
gone save for very coarse grain in select effects shots, and that looks
rather muddy.
To this point, Paramount has generally been excellent in my opinion in terms
of the overall high presentation quality of their Blu-ray releases, both new
and catalog. I know for a fact that they really work hard to sweat the
details on this stuff. I don't believe that corners were deliberately cut
here, I just suspect some of these transfers were done before people had
started to realize that excessive noise reduction was a problem on Blu-ray
at large screen sizes - one of the major reasons why many studios have had
to re-do HD transfers done even a just couple years ago. And as Trek II was
the most recently completed, I think it benefited the most from that
learning curve, if you will. Unfortunately, that's going to be of little
consolation to some of you here, because of the high expectations that film
and A/V fans naturally have for the Star Trek films on Blu-ray. These are
EXACTLY the kinds of titles high-end Blu-ray and home theatre enthusiasts
crave on the format, and many of them are going to buy these discs and (with
the exception of Khan) are likely to be a bit disappointed.
As I said, they're not bad. They're definitely better looking than the DVD
versions and very watchable, with generally great color and contrast. And
the new TrueHD audio mixes are fantastic. But the image quality here isn't
great, and it should be great... or at least very good. There are probably
going to be calls for the studio to "fix" these discs, and I just don't
think that's going to happen until the films are released again on the
format in the director's editions at some point down the line. So my advice
to all of you (and the whole point of my writing this today, prior to
street) is, this is probably a case of buyer beware. Those of you with
smaller displays should be fine. Those of you with larger displays... you
may wish to think twice.
If I were to rate these discs using the standards we normally apply to
Blu-ray picture and sound grading, here's how I would break them down. Keep
in mind that on our comparative grading scale (of 1-20), the best looking
DVDs would clock in at a 10 and the best looking Blu-rays would be 20:
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Video - 17
Audio - 19
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
V - 18.5
A - 17.5
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
V - 16
A - 17.5
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
V - 15.5
A - 17.5
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
V - 16
A - 18
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
V - 16
A - 18
FYI, the extras are quite good. I'll have more to say on that soon. So there
you go: You've been advised as best we can. Adjust your buying decisions (or
not) as you feel necessary. Thanks again to Paramount for making the check
discs available so that we could address this issue for all of you before
you make your purchases. They certainly didn't have to do that and we
appreciate the fact that they did. Let the discussion begin.
More later. Stay tuned..."
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/mytwocentsa167.html#trekbd2