Twentieth Century Fox had complaints when they released the original blu ray of Predator with some people saying the amount of grain in the image was too much for them.
When Predator 2 was released it had suffered from digital noise reduction and the image was less than optimal because of this. Many thought the reason for DNR on Predator 2 was because of the ignorant online reviews and complaints from a vocal minority.
Predators is being released in cinemas and so Fox have revisited Predator with the promise of a brand new digital restoration, many thought this meant the image quality was going to be dramatically improved upon the original release but this is not the case with early screencaps of Predator showing massive grain reduction and what appears to be some ringing and to my eyes a small amount of contrast boosting and colour changes.
To my eyes it does not look better but because it now looks clean and has a good amount of extra material it may sell very well as ignorant reviewers praise it from the hilltops.
If it sells well then Fox will think that clean grain free images are good and they may start to use DNR on other films in their back catalogue, this would be bad news for film fans.
The sad thing here is that many reviewers attacked the first release and are now praising this release and the casual person in the street will see the words ultimate edition and pick it up thinking it looks better, indeed many will consider the grain an issue and automatically think this new edition is better than the old release.
The problem with this sort of thing is that it may appease those who have their televisions set up wrongly and the film grain haters but it dimishes the whole point of high definition movie content which is to get as close as possible to the original filmed image, Predator was never meant to be clean looking like this and i love the texture a layer of film grain can add to a release.
For me one of the telltale signs of DNR is when you see an image with blur on it, other screencaps from the French release show this same blur effect and it stinks of digital noise reduction, you can read my glossary here for more info on DNR.
If your monitor is set up with the sharpness and contrast controls too high you will see unnatural heavy grain which indeed looks ugly as hell, reduce your sharpness and contrast and it will improve image quality, film grain should be preserved or you lose the finer detail.
Look at the first capture and note contrast levels in the new edition and check the treeline and rocks in both the releases and then look at the sea and the far off horizon, in the second image note the texture on the wood next to Arnie is now gone and it looks hideous to me.
Now the original release of Predator is not perfect and does suffer compression issues but this new edition looks to have gone too far in the opposite direction.
The use of DNR as seen on this release results in motion artifacts and the blur effect, the contrast boosting will also be an issue, if only Fox had went back to the original negatives and using the latest film scanners made a brand new master, doing this would have likely resulted in more detail and the best possible transfer. It's a pity Fox went cheap on this release.
Incidentally they have also used edge enhancement to artificially sharpen the image after the loss of detail from using DNR, you can see clear undisputable evidence of this in the first and fifth screencaps below, Twentieth Century Fox wants us to buy this rubbish, i think not.
It seems some people with their 40inch to 50inch sets who were brought up on smooth video games love this new release, they seem to think it has more detail than the old release, they are oblivious to edge enhancement and do not notice how processed things look even when you point it out to them, these people will eventually kill the film look stone dead as they have no understanding of what film grain is and are only interested in watching a super smooth image, they mistakenly believe they are getting more detail as they have not educated themselves on what DNR actually does to an image, such a shame really and i do wish people would take the time to learn and that way they might not be so quick to defend poor releases like this one.
Post now updated with new screencaps, its worse than i first thought, check out screencap 4 as an example of the smearing and blurry focus that DNR causes when used to excess, also check out screencap 5 which shows not only excessive DNR but you can see clear edge enhancement around Arnie's shoulders and all fine detail is now gone, Carl Weathers in screencap 3 would agree with me, this is a train wreck of a transfer, Twentieth Century Fox should be sacking the people responsible and recalling this release and giving people their money back.
You can see more information on the new Predators movie and view a Predators trailer here.
Check out the blu ray screencaps of Predator below – Click twice for the full DNR frame.
The fox saves me money! I’ve seen the film many times in the cinema and it never looked like what the screen captures. 20th Century Fox should be taken to law court over fair trading standards.
The people consumers verses 20th Century Fox cooperation.
I tried signing up to bluray.com a few weeks back and was promptly banned, my crime was putting a link in my signature to my website. The rules stated nothing about this being an issue and other sites allow it so unfortunately i cannot take part at that site.
I wrote about it below.
http://www.darkrealmfox.com/film_reviews/2010/05/18/bluray-com-forum-no-common-sense/
Thought ya mind be interested in this then… Everyone's been going back and forth with their debates. http://forum.blu-ray.com/blu-ray-movies-north-america/141479-predator-ultimate-hunter-edition-june-29th-56.html
My screen is 104inches if you want to talk size, i view on a calibrated projection screen and if you take the time to read my site you will see i am not one to jump to conclusions or overreact, i call it as i see it.
Incidentally you can see issues like DNR and contrast boosting on any size of screen, edge enhancement can be harder to spot on smaller screens although it all depends on viewing distance and how your screen is set up, some monitors have the sharpness too high which adds edge enhancement into the image and if the disc already has edge enhancement added then a monitor with too high a sharpness will just add to the issue and make it look worse.
Screencaps are a very good indication of quality, you will find many at my site with detailed descriptions of why i think something is bad or why i think it’s good.
It’s not as expensive as you think, $500,000 dollars would be a ballpark figure and they usually tie these sort of things in with the release of sequels and in this case it’s the release of Predators. It’s more a case that a proper restoration requires more time, this is not about money it’s about wrong decisions.
You can throw the highest bitrate at a film but there comes a point when you get dimishing returns, the last release has some compression issues and thats because it’s on a BD-25 and not because of MPEG2, give it a BD-50 and up the average bitrate to around 25mbp/s and the last release would have had no compression issues.
I also don’t need to linger on a screenshot to see issues, if it’s on the screencap then it’s on the disc and it’s noticeable onscreen, it’s really that simple, contrast boosting, edge enhancement and dnr are all major issues, i will slam this new release because they took the wrong decision, they decided to just tinker with the original image instead of preserving the original filmed look, a proper restoration is the only way to improve anything and retain the filmed look.
The shot you refer to is blown up as are a few other scenes due to time constraints and money they didn’t have enough time for coverage shots and the stuntman broke his leg in that waterfall scene.
I do not “linger” on every shot to see if it’s sharp, indeed i like all aspects of photography, soft focus, sharp focus, it’s all the same to me as long as they give us the original intended film look and lay off the processing tools which absolutely destroy fine detail, can you not see that this new transfer is contrast boosted and edge enhanced likely due to the use of DNR, you see they use the digital noise reduction tools and then say to themselves, “wow the picture lacks detail” so they add a sharpening effect to it, this gives artificial detail and adds halo’s around objects, it’s not real detail, it’s clearly in this release, to finish the job off they decide to contrast boost which pumps up the image but in the process you lose some detail, now obviously the artificial sharpening will make some people think there is better detail than the original release, there isn’t and it looks very ugly and processed now.
You don’t think the early screencaps represent the likely quality of this release, i get it, you either don’t see an issue or are in denial, i really get it, i have seen it all too often online when people bury their heads in the sand and try and pretend everything is ok, well at this site i will not do that and i can only repeat that the screencaps do show exactly what this release will look like, enjoy the artificial sharpening and contrast boosting and all that lovely DNR and i will stick with my original release.
Finally, the old grain was great, it gave the film texture, if you dislike grain then my site is not for you. I never had a problem with the film grain in the original release, only the compression issues annoyed me.
I have merged your two posts into one.
These are only screenshots dude. It's true that DNR can be bad but doesn't mean this is an instant failure. I mean NONE of us have even seen the upcoming US release for real yet now have we?? Remember these releases boil down to how they move when they're played back in front of you on a big screen. Mine's 50" btw so I have seen examples where it's not 'that' horrific as you claim. Remember going back to the original negative involves a 'very' expensive restoration that even Fox will have to outsource and spend much more money. This is usually reserved for certain classics. And I doubt Predator has reached the acclaim status of say, Blade Runner or Citizen Kane just to name a few… I wish this and Robocop1 would but this is the reality [so far]. But one things for sure… the bitrate should be much higher than the first blu-ray release which was only on a lame 25gb disc… If Fox still releases this new edition with that capacity instead of a 50gb, then I'll share your sentiment all the way… Till then, let's not try to pretend we know way more with just a few snapshots.
Here’s one more thing I’d like to add. Remember that when you even watch a movie, any movie, you’re looking at the overall image, the ENTIRE frame as a whole…. You are not doing what we would do with a screenshot, which is to linger on every small corner or area to see if the pixels are razor sharp. We know all of that goes by in a flash at 24frames per second… The dirt and grain on the original Predator bluray release is considered ‘excessive’ in an odd way… Sometimes it seems balanced/ controlled, other times it’s way too much especially in the grand climax where you can tell the filmmakers didn’t use enough lights. So for those of you who think the old grain was great, you’re mistaken. Predator is not like Evil Dead or Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw where the constant ugly grain is part of the image-characteristics. Predator can benefit from a clean-up so don’t slam it just because of the DNR…. least not just yet til we’ve all seen it for real.
What I’m sure that probably WON’T be fixed are some of the blown-up shots that have plagued the movie since its theatrical release —- Watch that classic shot of when Dutch/ Arnie hits the water as he plunges straight down after fleeing from the Predator — that shot is clearly blown up. Why? We’ll never know… I feel this shot won’t ever be fixed correctly unless they actually go back to the original negative.
On another interesting note… to some of you who don’t know yet, John Mctiernan used a blown-up anamorphic shot of the Fox logo at the beginning. It’s cos he wanted to shoot the movie in anamorphic 2.35 and the studio disagreed cos of the opticals & budget. He retorted by using a grainy anamorphic Fox logo shot —- so that shot will ALWAYS be filled with grain and will always look distinctly larger than other normal Fox releases like say, Aliens. My point being, don’t expect the opening Fox logo to ever look pristine cos it wont… unless someone literally cuts it out and replaces it. The foreign bluray reviewer said he was flabbergasted by the dirty Fox logo when he first plopped the disc in….. Duh!! I thought to myself…
This is just an early report concerning the French release, it is likely that one transfer has been used for the entire world though and this is probably the transfer that the UK, Australia and the USA will get.
I have a feeling many will probably enjoy this transfer, a couple of scenes looked acceptable to me but i’m not really into this clean scrubbed look, i prefer some film texture to the image.
The issues you get with motion artifacts and blur when DNR is used are going to be problems with this release, i wish reviewers would just call it instead of being so oblivious to these faults.
Oh and i almost forgot but its certain that edge enhancement will have been used to sharpen this after the loss of detail from using the DNR to eradicate the grain.
Thanks Foxy for the detailed review and saving my $$$.