The Expendables 3 Ultra HD Blu-ray Review & Comments

Agreed 100% steve, the 4K detail (shot on 5K RED) is amazing but the brightness is fubar. Personally I think it's nothing to do with HDR and is actually quite a simple problem which we've seen before on regular Blu-ray: it hasn't been mapped properly from the PC levels source (0-1023 for 10-bit) to the 'legal' video levels (64-940).

Apparently Ender's Game suffers from the same problem. It's no wonder these Lionsgate UHD cheapies are so cheap...it's because they're crap.
 
Agreed 100% steve, the 4K detail (shot on 5K RED) is amazing but the brightness is fubar. Personally I think it's nothing to do with HDR and is actually quite a simple problem which we've seen before on regular Blu-ray: it hasn't been mapped properly from the PC levels source (0-1023 for 10-bit) to the 'legal' video levels (64-940).

Apparently Ender's Game suffers from the same problem. It's no wonder these Lionsgate UHD cheapies are so cheap...it's because they're crap.

I brought Ender"s Game,have to say the blacks were not to bad on this title :)
 
Whatever the cause Geoff, they need to sort it out because it's simply unacceptable.
Have you tried contacting lionsgate?

If you are watching with a samsung k8500, you can switch the color to rgb enhanced in the home settings menu and it will sort of fix the black levels. Once I got it dialed in it looked great, but the default picture was quite a disappointment.
 
Like they'd listen to me! There are people with the connections who should be doing the running here, but most of the reviews have just glossed over this glaring problem by saying "it needs a bit more setting up than most" or some bull**** like that, like it's some HDR glitch that needs sorting. It's not IMO and kudos to @Steve Withers for calling it out.

But yes, the RGB enhanced trick (I can do the same on my Panasonic player) is a time honoured way of working around this issue because the player forces the source into PC levels and the TV (when set to normal/limited under HDMI settings) then hard clips the Video range out of the PC range which brings the black levels more or less back into line.

Unfortunately when something is encoded far too brightly like this it effectively destroys the bit depth, so even when it was 'corrected' I got some absolutely dreadful banding from it which ruined the presentation. The film is mince anyway, I kinda enjoyed it the first time but really it's pretty damned poor (the unrated version is a bust too, this movie was soooo blatantly intended for a PG-13).
 
Agreed 100% steve, the 4K detail (shot on 5K RED) is amazing but the brightness is fubar. Personally I think it's nothing to do with HDR and is actually quite a simple problem which we've seen before on regular Blu-ray: it hasn't been mapped properly from the PC levels source (0-1023 for 10-bit) to the 'legal' video levels (64-940).

Apparently Ender's Game suffers from the same problem. It's no wonder these Lionsgate UHD cheapies are so cheap...it's because they're crap.
Sicario Ultra HD Blu-ray Review fantastic picture. So don't write off Lionsgate just because of one or two bad transfers. We'll be feeding this back to them and reviewing more of their titles.
 
Sicario Ultra HD Blu-ray Review fantastic picture. So don't write off Lionsgate just because of one or two bad transfers. We'll be feeding this back to them and reviewing more of their titles.
I've got Sicario on UHD, I think it's superb and have said so, I also called out EX3. But my enmity stems more from their piss poor encoding for regular Blu-ray (so..much...banding) and I was kinda hoping they'd sort their arse from their elbow when it came time to UHD but nope, they've lived down to their usual low standards with EX3.
 
It always happen with a new format,your going to get quite a few duff conversion,i think the same still happening with blu ray,but because its not an new format it much less talked about.
Hopefully Liongate will keep an eye on this,and also start to bring out UHD UK releases.

:)
 
But I don't think it's a "duff conversion" which is why it ****ed me off so much, it's a very simple technical error (IMO) that's got nothing to do with WCG or UHD or HDR or any other acronyms. The same thing has happened with Blu-ray (the UK releases of Drunken Master 2 and Rumble in the Bronx spring to mind) but when people get lazy with an older format that's what happens...this should not be occuring on a new premium format. Still, as I said, maybe that's why these Lionsgate cheapies are so cheap, they've been mastered by Randy the intern. :D
 
But I don't think it's a "duff conversion" which is why it ****ed me off so much, it's a very simple technical error (IMO) that's got nothing to do with WCG or UHD or HDR or any other acronyms. The same thing has happened with Blu-ray (the UK releases of Drunken Master 2 and Rumble in the Bronx spring to mind) but when people get lazy with an older format that's what happens...this should not be occuring on a new premium format. Still, as I said, maybe that's why these Lionsgate cheapies are so cheap, they've been mastered by Randy the intern. :D

Your probably right about Randy the intern :D
 
Just to clarify then, even with HDR switched off along with no wide colour gamut via the Panny into a 4K display, it's still a stinker?
 
Just to clarify then, even with HDR switched off along with no wide colour gamut via the Panny into a 4K display, it's still a stinker?
I tried that on my Panny (switching HDR off for 4K SDR 709 playback) and it didn't fix it, but I have heard tell of other people having success with that method.
 
I tried that on my Panny (switching HDR off for 4K SDR 709 playback) and it didn't fix it, but I have heard tell of other people having success with that method.

Bizarre. I've no time for dilly dallying, so might just leave it then.
 
Considering the quality of the film itself, I'd say that's a wise move sammy

I've seen a bit of it on blu..it's a shame they didn't utilise Mel Gibson more creatively as he looked pretty well. His new one is out in August - Blood Father, I think- I'm a Mel fan so it'll be a cinema trip.
 
Really? My copy is pretty bad with blacks. It should be called Ender's Grey.

Might have to check this rgb enhanced workaround.

Lol, well I stuck Ender's Game in (sorry if :offtopic: just putting an answer to this) and it looked great, perfect blacks even, very high bit-rate on the Panny ub900 display hitting 80+ in places.

So I decided to change settings and found two things.
On the Panny at least, if it is not in hdr, it will be washed out and possibly the reason it has had poor feedback, from myself included,
as I forced it into 4:4:4 with Deep Colour off, which disables hdr on my tv, and them pesky grey bars popped back up.

So number 1 finding - No other titles have done this when I have tested 4:4:4/Deep Colour off before.

And number 2 finding - The first "hdr" uhd movie I decided to watch on the ub900 and I never had it set up properly! :suicide::D I'll put that down to new beginnings.
 
Lol, well I stuck Ender's Game in (sorry if :offtopic: just putting an answer to this) and it looked great, perfect blacks even, very high bit-rate on the Panny ub900 display hitting 80+ in places.

So I decided to change settings and found two things.
On the Panny at least, if it is not in hdr, it will be washed out and possibly the reason it has had poor feedback, from myself included,
as I forced it into 4:4:4 with Deep Colour off, which disables hdr on my tv, and them pesky grey bars popped back up.

So number 1 finding - No other titles have done this when I have tested 4:4:4/Deep Colour off before.

And number 2 finding - The first "hdr" uhd movie I decided to watch on the ub900 and I never had it set up properly! :suicide::D I'll put that down to new beginnings.
Thing is though, people who are watching in HDR have reported them thar grey bars, not just me with my SDR 2020 output...
 

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