Star Trek V in 4K

[JamesRye]

I finally got around to getting a 4K TV and a player - solely because of the TOS movies coming out in 4K. I have just finished watching V in 4K and the difference is probably the most remarkable of all the Trek movies so far.

TMP and TWOK already had decent standalone releases. TSFS and TVH have much better color timing in 4K, but they didn't seem to suffer from DNR and this weird gray wash that was all over Star Trek V and VI on blu-ray.

Watching V is something of a revelation, there's better detail and heck, even some of the VFX now seem to blend in better. The moon with the Enterprise hanging around it looks great - and there's so much more detail than on the blu-ray. The God scene is no longer a blown out mess and some of the location work is by far the best out of any of the original movies.

It isn't all gold though, the higher resolution shows how clumsy some of the compositing is - particularly the shuttle slapped onto that beautiful matte painting of Yosemite. And there is some weird sort of effects work around the Sybock reveal in the opening, clouds of dust - that are ropey as hell.

As for the movie, I have a soft spot for it now. It's grander than I remembered and I love the camp fire scenes and Deforest Kelley is great throughout. Kind of a glorious failure.

I am sad enough to have watched some scenes on blu-ray and then compared said scenes in Dolby Vision and there IS a difference. The monster maroons look 'truer to life' and there does seem to be a genuine improvement in picture quality. I mean, its not night and day, and I have no means to demonstrate it, but it is there.

Going to pick up VI, which is my all time favourite movie ASAP.

 

[ananta]

My TV doesn’t do 4K but I finally got around to streaming the new master from iTunes and ST V does indeed look fantastic. I wasn’t sure if the new scan of IV added much to it, but I did notice a marked improvement here. It’s still objectively not a good movie but I must say I’ve developed a fondness for it over the years and consider it a minor guilty pleasure. Some of the FX still suck and there’s a raft of story and execution problems, but, as noted, some lovely location work, perhaps the most delightful camaraderie between the big three of the entire movie series and a beautiful score by Jerry Goldsmith. The Enterprise bridge also never looked as good as it did here.

 

[Vger23]

The 4k disks all look great, but TFF and TMP really shine. Amazingly, I don’t think TWOK looks too good. It looks kind of muddy on my set up.

 

[JamesRye]

The 4k disks all look great, but TFF and TMP really shine. Amazingly, I don’t think TWOK looks too good. It looks kind of muddy on my set up.

Forgive me if you are an AV expert, but I wonder if the TV is set up OK?

I was disappointed with how mine looked out of the box - and I have spent far too long annoying my wife with my constant tinkering of the picture. I do find that TMP looks muddy in the opening scenes - but sharpens up when on the Enterprise. And why for the love of Vejur couldn't they fix those matte lines on the Klingon ships in the opening? Hell, I can do it using photoshop - just by making a mask and darkening down the feathering. When I figured out how to enable Dolby Vision, suddenly, the movies really sparkled.

On the subject of 4K and Dolby Vision, like I say, I got a 4K telly with a new 4K player - just for these movies. And I made darned sure that it came with DV because I had heard such good things about it.

I have learned some things the hard way. On the 4K player (its a Sony one - X700), you have to enable Dolby Vision, it is switched off by default!!! And it makes a massive difference. Like, I cannot overstate this enough. HDR10 does not cut it, you are not seeing these Trek films properly without DV (sorry).

The second thing is probably obvious to all - but disable motion smoothing. Otherwise it looks like a cheap soap opera.

Now turn off all the other processing. Mine even has an option for DNR - so you can make it look like the crappy blu-rays from 2009 if you like.

Less obviously, make sure (at least on my TV) that you choose Dolby Vision Bright mode.

Finally, on my TV, there is a gamma option, which I changed to dark and a color temperature, that I set to warm. Whites are still white.

Why is the Dolby Vision so good? Simply put, the uniform colors go closer to red (as they should be). On blu-ray - even the new one, they hue more towards orange. STVI suddenly looks contrasty, like its supposed to (actually, the VHS looks better than the cheap ass blu-ray from ST09! in terms of color reproduction)

I have now seen VI (my favorite movie ever) and it is superb. There is film grain, but it is beautiful.

EDITED TO ADD: The starfield flickers like crazy in the opening credits. I wish they'd fixed this - but never mind. Oh, yeah - and stolen from the link below, here are some wonderful comparison pics:
https://slow.pics/c/WSXBJTYu

For more nerdy stuff regarding the picture quality, there is this thread:
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=352379&page=29

 

[Vger23]

Forgive me if you are an AV expert, but I wonder if the TV is set up OK?

I was disappointed with how mine looked out of the box - and I have spent far too long annoying my wife with my constant tinkering of the picture. I do find that TMP looks muddy in the opening scenes - but sharpens up when on the Enterprise. And why for the love of Vejur couldn't they fix those matte lines on the Klingon ships in the opening? Hell, I can do it using photoshop - just by making a mask and darkening down the feathering. When I figured out how to enable Dolby Vision, suddenly, the movies really sparkled.

On the subject of 4K and Dolby Vision, like I say, I got a 4K telly with a new 4K player - just for these movies. And I made darned sure that it came with DV because I had heard such good things about it.

I have learned some things the hard way. On the 4K player (its a Sony one - X700), you have to enable Dolby Vision, it is switched off by default!!! And it makes a massive difference. Like, I cannot overstate this enough. HDR10 does not cut it, you are not seeing these Trek films properly without DV (sorry).

The second thing is probably obvious to all - but disable motion smoothing. Otherwise it looks like a cheap soap opera.

Now turn off all the other processing. Mine even has an option for DNR - so you can make it look like the crappy blu-rays from 2009 if you like.

Less obviously, make sure (at least on my TV) that you choose Dolby Vision Bright mode.

Finally, on my TV, there is a gamma option, which I changed to dark and a color temperature, that I set to warm. Whites are still white.

Why is the Dolby Vision so good? Simply put, the uniform colors go closer to red (as they should be). On blu-ray - even the new one, they hue more towards orange. STVI suddenly looks contrasty, like its supposed to (actually, the VHS looks better than the cheap ass blu-ray from ST09! in terms of color reproduction)

I have now seen VI (my favorite movie ever) and it is superb. There is film grain, but it is beautiful.

EDITED TO ADD: The starfield flickers like crazy in the opening credits. I wish they'd fixed this - but never mind. Oh, yeah - and stolen from the link below, here are some wonderful comparison pics:
https://slow.pics/c/WSXBJTYu

For more nerdy stuff regarding the picture quality, there is this thread:
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=352379&page=29

Haha! I appreciate this, but yes I am a total AV nerd. I have a home theater with a 4k projector and a 109 inch screen. It’s been professionally calibrated, and I’ve made a few special modifications myself.

At the end of the day, no matter what, TWOK jus doesn’t look as good as the other films. I just think it’s the way it was filmed.

 

[ananta]

I noticed it too. I’m not an AV nerd but, as an artist, have a keen sense of aesthetics. For some reason TWOK just doesn’t “pop” off the screen as the other new masters do. I mean, it’s good, it just didn’t stand out as much of an improvement compared to the others. Especially odd since it comes after TMP which, now, thanks to the remastering, looks absolutely phenomenal. I agree with Vger23 that it must be something to do with the way it was filmed.

 

[JamesRye]

Haha! I appreciate this, but yes I am a total AV nerd. I have a home theater with a 4k projector and a 109 inch screen. It’s been professionally calibrated, and I’ve made a few special modifications myself.

At the end of the day, no matter what, TWOK jus doesn’t look as good as the other films. I just think it’s the way it was filmed.

Man, I should have read your post properly. I thought that you said TMP looked muddy!

For sure TWOK looks dingy by comparison to the others. And some of that is intentional by Meyer. Who was obviously going for a radically different tone.

Also, the use of cheaper Movielab colour gives the film a muddy look and a distinctly red hue. Good thread here about Movielab.

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/films-with-the-movielab-or-metrocolor-process.336132/

 

[Vger23]

Man, I should have read your post properly. I thought that you said TMP looked muddy!

For sure TWOK looks dingy by comparison to the others. And some of that is intentional by Meyer. Who was obviously going for a radically different tone.

Also, the use of cheaper Movielab colour gives the film a muddy look and a distinctly red hue. Good thread here about Movielab.

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/films-with-the-movielab-or-metrocolor-process.336132/

Thanks!

Yes, TMP looks absolutely amazing. Even the previous theatrical 4k release (non-directors cut disk) looked really great. Thanks again for linking to some of this. These are interesting reads, for sure!

 

[MFB]

Yes, the colors of the TWOK remastered version look very desaturated. When I increase the color settings on my TV to maximum it looks fine, but of course that's not a setting one can maintain because the colors in every other movie would look abnormal with maximum color saturation. TWOK in it's remastered version is the only movie in my (huge) collection wich requires me to adjust my TV settings. So form my perspective something went wrong with that remastering and it would be interesting to know what Meyers intention behind that new color grading was.

 

[Doug Otte]

The 4k version of TWOK was completed several years ago, but the rest of the films are newer versions. Is it possible the 4k tech and/or knowledge of its optimal usage have improved?