Ultra HD 4K Blu-ray

[MartyS (Gromit)]

OK, that system does have rear speakers, so you get some true surround sound.  Only reason to go to 7.1 is if you want the sound to move around you as you sit in the middle of the room watching the TV.   A lot can be done with phasing of the sound waves between a few speakers, so even with just 2 speakers it is possible to create sound that seems to come from any point between them.  That's why receivers now have a microphone you plug in for calibration, it measures the distance from each speaker to the mic, then if you sit where the mic was during calibration the system can create sounds that appear to come from points between the speakers.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

 Watched 5th Element 4K disc last night, I did notice more detail and some more color, but not a huge step up from the blu-ray.  This is probably going to be the trend for older movies, unless a new restoration and new scan is done for the 4K release there are not going to be big improvements over the blu-ray releases.  At least there was no crushing of blacks like there was on the Serenity 4K disc.  You can only get as good as the source material, so at some point more resolution is pointless.

 Looked up some info and 5th Element used the same 4K scan that was done for the blu-ray release, and Serenity is an upscale from the 2K scan done for the blu-ray, so that's why that one isn't really an improvement.

 

[RVR II]

Watched 5th Element 4K disc last night, I did notice more detail and some more color, but not a huge step up from the blu-ray.  This is probably going to be the trend for older movies, unless a new restoration and new scan is done for the 4K release there are not going to be big improvements over the blu-ray releases.  At least there was no crushing of blacks like there was on the Serenity 4K disc.  You can only get as good as the source material, so at some point more resolution is pointless.

 Looked up some info and 5th Element used the same 4K scan that was done for the blu-ray release, and Serenity is an upscale from the 2K scan done for the blu-ray, so that's why that one isn't really an improvement.

Glad you posted this as I was thinking seriously about getting this one but I didn't want to spend almost $20 it's not much better than the Blu-Ray I have of it already 

[MartyS (Gromit)]

Watched 5th Element 4K disc last night, I did notice more detail and some more color, but not a huge step up from the blu-ray.  This is probably going to be the trend for older movies, unless a new restoration and new scan is done for the 4K release there are not going to be big improvements over the blu-ray releases.  At least there was no crushing of blacks like there was on the Serenity 4K disc.  You can only get as good as the source material, so at some point more resolution is pointless.

 Looked up some info and 5th Element used the same 4K scan that was done for the blu-ray release, and Serenity is an upscale from the 2K scan done for the blu-ray, so that's why that one isn't really an improvement.

Glad you posted this as I was thinking seriously about getting this one but I didn't want to spend almost $20 it's not much better than the Blu-Ray I have of it already 

From now on I'm going to read reviews first before replacing any of my Blu-Rays with 4K.

Going to The Digital Bits website (http://www.thedigitalbits.com/) and reading the reviews of the discs I have they talked about the same stuff, that Serenity was not much of an upgrade and 5th Element was a slight upgrade.  They gushed about 2001 being a big improvement so looking forward to that, my cold is pretty much gone so maybe tomorrow night I'll watch that.

Got First Man when I got 5th Element, haven't seen that movie yet so looking forward to that one as well.  Anything new should look great, I was pretty blown away by The Martian and I've seen that a bunch of times.

[RVR II]

I should read the reviews on the other 4 4K Blu Rays (ID4, T2, Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind, & Die Hard) but I have a feeling that they may not be worth getting either 

Edit:
Review of ID4:

This is a gorgeous 4K film scan and remastering that benefits greatly from High Dynamic Range. If you like this film at all, Fox’s new 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray is well worth your time and money.

Ok maybe I will get this one..

Review of Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind:

This Blu-ray Disc is one of the very best special editions we’ve seen yet in either high-definition format.

As well as this one!

Review of Die Hard:

This film is still very much the product of its time, but that product has never looked better than it does here on Fox’s new 4K Ultra HD.

And this one!
Can't find a review of Terminator 2 though

[RVR II]

OK I went ahead and bought them.
I'll try to post my reviews of them when I get a chance to watch them.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

Reading the reviews on the digital bits for those 3 to see a big improvement over regular blu-ray it may depend on how well your TV does HDR, the extra shadow and highlight detail seem to be what they talk about most and all of that comes from HDR.

I guess we really should say improvement from HD to UHD, since they are all on blu-ray discs, they just added extra layers to hold more data for UHD.  Amazing they were able to do that, a 4 layer disc now holds 128GB of data.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

Wow, the restored 4K HDR version of 2001 is really something.

All the problems in previous releases, with color and aspect ratio have been fixed, the detail is incredible. 

The "travel" sequence at the end really benefits from the extra color gamut, especially in the parts that look like oil film or soap bubble effects, so many extra shades of color in those now.  Once you've seen that scene a few times it can feel like it goes on too long, but this time I was seeing so many new aspects of it that it did not seem too long.

[RVR II]

Wow, the restored 4K HDR version of 2001 is really something.

All the problems in previous releases, with color and aspect ratio have been fixed, the detail is incredible. 

The "travel" sequence at the end really benefits from the extra color gamut, especially in the parts that look like oil film or soap bubble effects, so many extra shades of color in those now.  Once you've seen that scene a few times it can feel like it goes on too long, but this time I was seeing so many new aspects of it that it did not seem too long.

Now I may have to get this one
I really wish they would 4K '2010' as that is my favorite between the 2..

[MartyS (Gromit)]

The really amazing thing about 2001 is the HDR, the white ships on black background never before had this level of detail, there are shades of grey all over the hulls of the ships, and the big round lunar lander has all kinds of grime and stuff painted on it to make it look well used, it was like watching those scenes for the first time.

[RVR II]

The really amazing thing about 2001 is the HDR, the white ships on black background never before had this level of detail, there are shades of grey all over the hulls of the ships, and the big round lunar lander has all kinds of grime and stuff painted on it to make it look well used, it was like watching those scenes for the first time.

I went ahead and ordered it. I'm intrigued now

[RVR II]

Got all my 4K's in and watched 5th Element tonight..
Yeah the 4K image is pretty impressive on the 75" Vizio The detail and color looked awesome! I'll try to watch the others sometime soon and post my reviews of them here as well.

[RVR II]

Watched Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind last night and overall it was pretty good. The lights seemed a bit blurry at times but still was pretty cool to watch in 4K

[RVR II]

Was watching 2001 Space Odyssey when the disc froze up with 38:22 left in the movie, when Dave was removing HAL's memory circuits

Contacted Amazon about returning it and they send me a square bar code I'm supposed to take a picture of and show it to someone at the UPS Store to print out a label.. 
I contacted them about sending me the label so I can print it out and just drop it off.
They will send me a replacement 4K ASAP.

Also; MakeMKV does not seem to work on ripping 4K Blu-Rays

[MartyS (Gromit)]

Also; MakeMKV does not seem to work on ripping 4K Blu-Rays

4K blu-rays are 3 or 4 layer discs (100 or 128 GB), so you need a new drive on your PC in order to read them.

Regular blu-rays are 1 or 2 layer, 25 or 50 GB