LORD OF THE RINGS TRILOGY 4K UHD BLU-RAY REVIEW - Bad 4K DNR and a 2K UPSCALE? Screencaps Comparison

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy is finally here on 4K UHD Blu-ray. There's a lot of good and a lot of bad. In this video, I address some of the issues with the Lord of the Rings Trilogy on 4K Blu-ray that I do not see being talked about elsewhere.

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00:00 Intro
00:42 Packaging
01:34 Audio Dolby Atmos Review
03:03 HDR Review
04:03 Colour changes
05:29 4K Restoration
08:34 Screencaps Comparisons
16:55 Conclusion

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[ElliotCoen]

Note - some people have picked up on my referring to Super 35 as Super Cine. My apologies if that is incorrect. I've always used the two terms interchangeably. Please do not let this take away from the issues I'm presenting in this video. Thanks!

[monopolizeme]

This is a brilliant review. Don’t apologize for being too detailed or that it may bother people. We come to you because these details ARE important to us and I appreciate all of your research. DNR has been crippling so many tv shows and films.

[TomlinsonHolman]

I feel that Peter Jackson's decision to make the 35mm transfers of TLOTR blend seamlessly with the digitally shot Hobbit have ruined the beauty of celluloid film. DNR has absolutely scrubbed away lovely grain, detail and depth. The benefit of these UHD discs over the Blu-ray's is high bit-rate and HDR - but they could have been so much better if the glorious 35mm had been allowed to breathe.

[AndyGilleand]

Apparently they added this processing to The Hobbit as well. As for "trying to make it look digital", you just can't do that. It's not actually possible. With film, detail is build FROM grain, so you take grain away, you take detail away. With digital, there's not as much grain, but you don't sacrifice detail to get there. It's just because the way they gather light causes less of a loss of accuracy. Although they often actually just shoot at a higher resolution and supersample it down to achieve the lower noise effect. The Hobbit for example shot on 5K and was edited in 2K.

[illustoja]

The grain and warmer color tones is what I actually adored about these movies, it gives them that magical/surreal feeling, with this new 4K treatment they lost that special thing, they look blend for the majority of time, plus all of the effects become more visible, so much they make it hard for me to enjoy the movie, since you can actually see the majority of effects (you can see the difference in color of characters and backgrounds etc). In old version everything was blended so much better. If it is possible they should've just upscale the resolution and leave everything as it is.

[koenprins]

I remember owning these movies on vhs...how far we have come.

[aarondelmonte]

100% agree with everything said, I will be sticking with my extended edition blu-rays as the more natural, closest to film experience. I don’t mind the black crush here and there cuz it looks like the actual photography. Let me ask you this guys, if viewing art in a museum would you prefer to view the art in it’s original (or closest to) form, or through some instagram filter that plays to a modern audience? HDR, 4K, and the process of remastering should be used as a tool to restore not change, not add or take away. As good as the audio might be watching the video this way with DNR and unnatural HDR effect is took distracting. It’s too shiny and slick, and the Lord of the Rings never looks like that. I should know, I projected them on film myself when they came out.

[rnw]

Lord of the rings are my favourite films of all time, the smoothing and dnr is really disappointing.

Fair play for going out of your way to cover it, in that much detail though.

[malteschmidt]

Great review. As much as I enjoyed the films in 4k (and it does look much better in motion than in still frames), I also noticed DNR and it bothered me. HOWEVER, my impression is that the quality varies immensely from shot to shot. I suspect that much of the live-action footage was indeed scanned in 4k from the original camera negative with only slight DNR processing applied. However, all shots that include special effects (which might not be noticeable special effects, such as removal of airplane condensation stripes in the sky) were taken from the existing 2k DI and subjected to EE and DNR. Often even within the same scene, some shots look extremely digitally processed, while other shots look much more natural. This is especially noticeable in the aftermath of the Warg battle in TTT (when Legolas and Theoden discuss leaving the dead behind). In contrast to this, look at the detail in Gandalf's face in FOTR when giving encouragement to Frodo in Moria (after Frodo notices Gollum). To me, this does not look like a 2k upsample.

[Danthehorse]

Remember that there are the original theatrical blurays, which have the original colours as per the theatrical DVDs, lovely! Those are my default versions to watch. The extended versions were then giving the revised colour grading 'scheme', on purpose. Green, brown and blue respectively (the box art colours give a big clue). Jackson said it was intentional and I dont know why this has been forgotten.
It drives me nuts that they keep effing around with colour grading on so many remasters.

[Prodrummer]

After watching the movies myself i completley agree with you.
Even my friends who never watched a 4k-bluray before noticed the lack of filmgrain and how all the CGI-effects (like Gollum) look much worse than on the bluray.

Sadly we have a massive problems with LotR:
Bluray (Standard Version) from 2011: heavy use of DNR, low contrast, but the color grading was fine
Bluray (Extended Version) from 2012: no heavy use of DNR, some edge enhancement but not offensive, great contrast, green tint in the first movie, other two look fine
4k Bluray: heavy use of DNR, loss of detail, edge enhancement, great color grading and impressive HDR-implementation

So each version has its own strength and weaknesses. I prefer the Extended Bluray. I can live with the green tint in the first movie. Got used to it :P

[aladdin]

This is incredibly informative, can't thank you enough!!

[SamDavies]

Really appreciate the attention to detain in this review Elliot, I have been tempted by the 4K release for a while, but I'll stick to the Blu-ray versions which I love!

[AlexanderDiviFilius]

Great review. I feel that far too few have reviewed this release with an actual eye for detail. The more people who talk about destructive film “remastering, ” the better. It’s absurd that companies try and pass off poor releases to the public, knowing most people won’t be able to see what they’re doing wrong.

[johnhansen]

I find it remarkable that, directly compared, the 1080p Bluray shows more detail than the 4k one. They didn't just mildly reduce noise. They completely smeared it. And what is all the "making it look digital" talk about? First of all it clearly harms the source material. And secondly why would you make two trilogies look more alike by using the inferior one as the reference?

[spikewilliam]

The Hobbit has probably one of the worse use of edge enhancement I have seen on UHD so far... The 1080p blu-ray discs look better. LOTR UHD has a better treatment with a very good HDR grading, but a radical change from the original photography. Again, definition wise it's sometimes slighty better as the 1080p discs, but for most of the time it has no improvement whatsoever due to a massive use of DNR.
5/5 on blu-ray dot con... They clearly are blind or have been paid by Warner to give these discs such good ratings.

[BluStarGalaxy]

Peter Jackson wants Lord of the Rings to fit in with the Hobbit, not the Hobbit to fit with Lord of the Rings. Sad to say I am getting George Lucas vibes from him.

[TheHauntedAngel]

I've watched so many reviews of the 4k release and they were all super positive. I'm thankful for this video for being the only one that's actually noticed these problems. That Shadowfax one was particularly egregious

[zanfear]

I keep reading reviews online: some love it, some hate it. But I really appreciate your review here. You go into great detail about how everything works and the costs of getting it "right". As well as providing screencaps to help show your point. Not to mention you have a soothing voice lol.

I'm torn between the film grain of the blu-rays, and the HDR and Dolby Atmos of the 4Ks.

[rdrxr]

You saved me money with this review. I’ll wait till they address these issues, if they ever do. I don’t know why they’d want to remove the grain anyways, it makes it timeless.