Kino Lorber

Kino UHD has frozen grain and other artifacts from a Paramount master with the usual lackluster Kino encoding.

StudioCanal EU has elevated blacks and inaccurate colors, Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray has poor encode.

All three are not ideal.

All three are not ideal.

• Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray has frozen grain, sharpening, lots of debris, and handles lesser materials. The supposed non-Superscope version is false advertising. It merely reveals more picture information. 

• Criterion CAV LaserDisc is the most consistent due to a lack of image processing.

Criterion LaserDisc has exclusive commentary. Olive Films Signature Blu-ray and BFI Blu-ray each have exclusive extras. Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray has exclusive commentary.

Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray's source is provided by Paramount has had DNR applied which affects the inherently soft looking film pretty strongly for at least a third of the running time

The Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray has poor encoding and auto cleanup issues

Twilight Time has an isolated score

Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray maybe better than StudioCanal 4K Blu-ray?

Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray maybe better than StudioCanal 4K Blu-ray?

StudioCanal 4K Blu-ray from nicolas:
The restoration is excellent and looks magnificent in 4K HDR. It’s a tasteful grade that comes across very naturally film-like. Couldn’t be much happier about that aspect of the release.Have to be the bearer of bad news though as the encode is bad. We’re almost back in the early 4K era with those terrible, bit-starved StudioCanal encodes that came out of France and brought us Total Recall, Basic Instinct etc. While they’ve done worse, this definitely isn’t FiM or VDMS. Highlights are terrible and essentially devoid of any detail, mushy grain also creeps into normal shots here and there, particularly walls or clothing. Essentially areas that are slightly larger and have similar colors and textures.

Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray see caps-a-holic, has good new master but as usual poorly encoded with macro blocking and chroma noise which is just as horrible. See also cap 4. Their Blu-ray looks much better in the above shot and is more consistently grainy.

Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray has mediocre encode

Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray is disappointing (review)

Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray is encoded in a wrong color space see post "A BT2020->P3 matrix corrects the issue (ignore tonemapping related errors)"

Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray has poor encodes: Dolby Vision caps

Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray is disappointing

Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray has a replaced soundtrack, see details here

Australia Umbrella Blu-ray and Germany NSM Blu-ray have the original soundtrack intact, don't know which sounds better

Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray is disappointing, heavy blockings see caps

Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray is a mediocre new master, the use of the Original Camera Negative as Kino Lorber claimed is doubted and there are two brightness and color fluctuations that appear erroneous

Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray is a poor new master with digital anomalies like smearing, flattening etc.

Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray has terrible encoding, "chock-full of all the usual frozen grain, mushy grain, trailing grain, missing grain,..."

Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray's HDR10 encode and audio tracks are poor, film looks fine in Dolby Vision

Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray is disappointing

Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray uses dated master & poor encode

Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray has poor encode: Dolby Vision caps

Thanks to the magic of Dolby Stereo encoding the 2.0 mix actually has much better surround activity compared to the 5.1 mix, which feels flat and lifeless. The surround mix is also missing elements (eg @ 0:04:58 the zapping sound doesn't extend to the surrounds on the 5.1 track, same with the flickering sound @ 0:21:46, etc)

4K is defective with color space issues and poor encoding, UHD replacement disc is also defective with worse encode. The UHD has visible artifacts from the bad encoding. The HDR is overdone and the Paramount 4K master has grain management.
The new Kino Blu-ray has none of the UHD's problems and is superior to the UHD in every way though it still uses the same Paramount master.

The Lionsgate BD and Paramount BD share the same lackluster HD master with DNR and image distortion. The Lionsgate is much better encoded but has a 7.1 remix which messed up the original mix design by lessening all the great Foley work in favor of the score. The Paramount BD had a 5.1 lossless version of the original mix but it's a new version where the bass has been tamed so the track has lost its punch. The Kino Lorber UHD and Blu-ray recycle this same lesser 5.1 mastering. The original mix can still be heard on LD and DVD. The 2.0 stereo on the Kino is matrixed but also does not sound as good as the 2.0 matrix audio on DVD or LD.
Kino has a replacement program for the defective UHD to fix the color space issue. The new disc is not marked, has a worse encode AND DOES NOT FIX THE COLOR SPACE! Thus it is a worse defective disc version of the original defective disc.
The Billy Zane interview on the Kino BD has technical issues in the editing and clip quality used.

Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray disappointing review

Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray worse than Blu-ray with poor encoding (review)

2017 JP Kadokawa Blu-ray has the best encoding out of all the older discs.

Kino Lorber and Artificial Eye Blu-ray use the same master, between the two the PQ on Kino's release is slightly better, but the difference is negligible.

The 4K restoration (Criterion, 4K etc) are cropped to 2.35:1, have revisionistic colour grading and other changes.

Caps: old master, old master vs 4K restoration

Wong Kar-Wai on the framing:

With Fallen Angels, I have changed the format to cinemascope, because it was originally what I had intended to release the film in. When we were cutting the film, we accidentally turned the Steenbeck on anamorphic instead of standard. I felt that the film looked much more interesting because it enhanced the distance of the characters on top of the extreme wide angle that we shot on. Back then, it was impossible to shoot a film in standard and release it in anamorphic. With this restoration, we have successfully fulfilled this wish.

Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray has color space error but otherwise an improvement upon previous Blu-rays. See caps

Maybe the included standard Blu-ray is better?

Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray has poor encoding see caps but still a huge improvement over the 2014 Universal Blu-ray

Both the 2.0 and 5.1 tracks are improvements over the 2014 Universal Blu-ray

Theatrical cut is on the 4K disc, but the restored Director's Cut is only on the Blu-Ray disc. Director's Cut utilizes the same 4K transfer as the theatrical cut for 86 minutes, but the 6 minutes of restored footage could only be salvaged from a standard definition source and are thus needed to be upscaled. 

Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray disappointing with their usual poor encoding - caps are here.

Maybe the Kino Lorber 1080p Blu-ray is better than the Universal Blu-ray?