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.

I consider the original King Kong to be a classic and this remake may improve things as far as effects go but it does not capture the innocent charm of the original film.

The HD DVD theatrical edition had a better image than this blu ray theatrical/extended cut. The reason is simple and it's because the blu ray edition has had minor DNR applied and the grain structure which was already light has been scrubbed even more clean. I first noticed this problem when i viewed King Kong over a year ago.

I came away from my first viewing feeling slightly disappointed, it just was so plain to see that Universal had removed some of the grain and the film look in many scenes just went with it and to me it just did not look great. Good yes but not great and i want great. I decided when doing the movie screencaps for this release to look closer into why i was disappointed last year and with the computer you can clearly see the film grain structure in many scenes has been a little compressed and this is due to DNR processing. I do not understand why Universal cannot encode a 201 minute film on a 50GB disc and leave the grain alone. I also do not understand why Peter Jackson sanctioned this release.

As an example of what is possible with the Blu Ray format let's look at a film like Poltergeist which is on a single layer 25GB disc and has a far more prominent grain structure than this film and looks excellent and film like but Universal for some strange reason cannot encode 100 minutes per layer without removing the grain and making the film far too smooth for my eyes.

I'll say this again but all the studio's should be able to encode at least four hour films and  the film's grain structure can be left untouched. Blu Ray capacity and bitrate allows for this and the only reason DNR is applied is to make some people's jobs easier and those people should not be in that job in the first place. Long films such as The Lord Of The Rings extended editions or Lawrence Of Arabia should looks beautiful on Blu Ray and should have their natural grain structure preserved as the capacity of a Blu Ray disc allows this.

I was disappointed by this and i am disappointed with Universal for using DNR on many scenes and robbing us of the film like texture that a light application of grain brings. I will happily watch a film like Zodiac and not complain about grain because it was shot with digital camera's and not shot with 35mm camera's but if the film originally had grain then leave it alone and give us the film with grain in our homes.

Regarding the actual film i do think the bug pit scene was a mistake, the original film was to have had a spider pit sequence which was removed and burned after test screenings as they felt it was too horrific and more importantly it slowed the original film down and i feel this bug pit sequence does not work in this film and the main characters should never have been put in the pit.  It felt like Frank Darabont had a hand in that scene especially after watching his awful The Mist and knowing how he was around Peter Jackson while the script was being written.

I enjoyed this remake of King Kong but i still feel the original 1933 version of Kong is superior and despite CGI advances the original Kong is still a better film.

Check out the blu ray screencaps for this film below, you may think it looks superb but i didn't and i felt this film falls into the just good enough category of transfers but it should have looked better if only someone working on it had kept their hands away from the DNR switch. I have read much praise of this release so i'm sure many will disagree with my opinion.

View blu ray screencaps of King Kong below. Click twice for the full HD image.