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Planes, Trains & Automobiles (4K+2D Blu-ray SteelBook) [USA]
- Thread starter paulboland
- Start date
I recommend reading the reviews on blu-ray.com because they have a dedicated section on all their reviews for picture quality, so they saved me from it. I own this steelbook which is nice enough but it only has the blu--ray disc.
Video quality 2.5/5 Reviewed by Martin Liebman, November 15, 2022 blu-ray.com
Planes, Trains & Automobiles boards the UHD format with a decidedly underwhelming 2160p/Dolby Vision UHD presentation. The picture appears to fall victim to unnecessary processing; it seems that grain has been removed and the image smoothed and softened, only to have an artificial grain returned. The result is an uneven image that looks nothing like the rich, organic, natural film texture that should be in evidence (and sometimes is) from beginning to end. The image should have been a home run for filmic purity on a format well capable of revealing that; this is a simple image with very little complexity about it, but the end result is a picture that has been clearly tampered with, lessening sharpness and reducing all of the good, natural characteristics in favor of bad, unnatural characteristics. There is still some decent natural sharpness evident here and there; skin details are occasionally rich and some of the shoddy interiors at the Braidwood Inn, even with relatively poor light, manage to show some grime and wear around the room, but this is a far, far cry from what could have been, and frankly what should have been.
The Dolby Vision grading hardly offers any sort of tonal revelation, either. True, the image enjoys some additional depth, but with that depth comes some crush. When Del's "dogs are barking" on the plane and he's rubbing his feet, his black sock entirely melts into the picture; it's a black glob and only when he removes the sock does the shot become clear. General tonal stability is fair on various clothes, cabs, and other colors throughout the film, but the palette never really sparkles or dazzles. This is a fairly flat and muted Dolby Vision grading that does offer improvements over the Blu-ray for color stability and depth and white balance, but overall, it's not very interesting. This is a disappointing catalogue UHD release overall, disappointing because it should look better and disappointing because this is a classic film that deserves a far better treatment than this.
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Ultrahd.highdefdigest.com is also a good resource. I dont’ see it as often, but I think the reviewer on Avsbforum (Ralph Potts) is pretty good too.
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