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I don't have much physical media since finally going 4K HDR, but so far my experience hasn't been great. I purchased the Mission:Impossible boxed set, and it ca

I don't have much physical media since finally going 4K HDR, but so far my experience hasn't been great. I purchased the Mission:Impossible boxed set, and it came with a download code to use on iTunes. The discs look like trash. Noisy, grainy, just bad. The iTunes versions look phenomenal. It would be nice if there was a way to know how good the quality of a particular release is before buying it. Reviews I read don't seem to go into a lot of detail. I realize it's probably somewhat subjective and hard to put into words how an image looks.

gjsman-1000 4y ago
"Noisy, grainy, just bad." AKA, it was shot on film. Film has film grain, which can only be removed by Digital Noise Reduction. DNR removes film grain, but also scrubs away detail and can leave waxy faces among other artifacts, as well as a fairly artificial and non-cinematic look. Film grain compresses very badly over streaming, so DNRing the streaming version before compression is probably what you are seeing. In this case, you prefer the DNR - but if you read online forums, most collectors hate it and consider it a crime against humanity to have ever been invented.
- nsxwolf 4y ago
  Which explains the downvotes I'm getting. I've apparently angered the cinephiles. Edit: I'm bemused that my subjective personal preferences have made multiple people this upset.
  - p_j_w 4y ago
    Or maybe you're getting downvoted because you were denigrating other people's personal preferences when you called the disc version "trash." You're guilty of what you accuse others.
  - f1refly 4y ago
    I think you're getting downvoted because the solution to your issue was one "why does my bluray look grainy" search away, yet you chose to stay uninformed on purpose and complained about it in a public forum without understanding the mechanics.
- kranke155 4y ago
  It’s funny if the poster is actually complaining about grain. Digital compression, like the one that Netflix uses, will often clean up the image of grain as a secondary effect of the compression algo. Essentially grain is a lot of detail that video compression algorithms have been taught to ignore/remove. H.264 was notorious for virtually removing all grain making it impossible to have authentic film grain on YouTube for years. (I work in advertising). Exactly like you said - grain is a common first victim of video compression. The other curious thing - modern movies that are shot on film / have grain actually get it removed during VFX stages. You have to do it so you can integrate CGI - grain is usually “sampled” first by the compositing software (The Foundry’s Nuke in 99% of occasions) and removed since the CGI image won’t have any grain from the CG renderer so you have to integrate it onto a denoised image. You then re add it at the end! Using the same software you then re-add the sampled noise back onto the image, and since you’ve now integrated the CGI, the noise goes on top of everything helping it all get integrated. Just saying this because you are right - using noise reduction to remove film grain for release is considered a sin (I myself would agree with the sentiment). Yet actually most films today will go through some denoise stage in VFX. Which is an interesting thing to think about - we actually remove the grain for a lot of the work then re add to keep the filmic texture.
  - account42 4y ago
    Aren't films usually shot at higher resolutions (5K to 8K) so DNR or not you are going to throw away information during the editing/mastering process even with 4K output.
  - nsxwolf 4y ago
    I wonder: If film grain never existed, would we invent it? If we had originally developed film technology where everything looked completely clean, would anyone have thought "Hey I've got a great idea, let's figure out how to make this look grainy"?
    - account42 4y ago
      Perhaps. Eyes do have "film grain" in low light conditions.
- justsomehnguy 4y ago
  I'm not a collector, but I hate vaxy faces. Which is also the reason I could spot CGI for years, until we had the ability to simulate even a pores of skin, but then again it were tuned to 11 and I could spot it again.
- maskros 4y ago
  It's not just extra DNR applied, modern image and video compression formats almost make it a point to erase all detail and texture from images. For example, compare the WebP and AVIF (VP8/AV1) compression artefacts with JPEG (and MPEG). With WebP and AVIF all textures and low contrast details tend to be erased or smoothed out, preserving only high contrast parts of the image. The JPEG image may have some visible ringing and block edge artefacts, but at least the textures and fine details are preserved!
  - account42 4y ago
    I've noticed that too with cwebp (and other libwebp-based tools) encoding for darker images. My guess was that they their difference function is using the wrong colorspace so it does not match the perceptive difference. My quick tests of cjxl fared much better so all hope is not lost. But essentially, losless compression is all about throwing away impercetible details. Noise is an interesting case here because the presence and fequency of the noise (the texture) is significant to the viewer but having the noise match 1:1 is not. Which is why newer codecs remove the noise and then re-add generated noise during decoding.
- chaxor 4y ago
  On the other (semi-unrelated) hand, film can be much, much better than digital for some applications. For example, a transmission electron microscope that uses an emulsion film to capture the image compared to a digital capture device - the film can be magnified again with a light microscope later for much more magnification than may be accessible when all of the information is registered to a single pixel. Just something to remind us that there are pros and cons to everything.
tigen 4y ago
Film grain is a funny topic... if it was the original look then it can be considered highest quality/fidelity to retain it. Filtering it makes for easier video compression.
kranke155 4y ago
There are sites who do this exact kind of review. https://www.google.com/search?q=review+picture+quality+bluray+mission+inpossible&hl=en&sxsrf=ALiCzsZQGVDNv3dIPGleeaDpPs52EaAJUg%3A1664891522795&ei=gjo8Y6iEMMXylwS-0IGwCw&oq=review+picture+quality+bluray+mission+inpossible&gs_lcp=ChNtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1zZXJwEAMyBwghEKABEAoyBwghEKABEAoyBwghEKABEAo6BwgAEEcQsAM6BAgjECc6CAghEB4QFhAdOgUIIRCgAToECCEQFToKCCEQHhAPEBYQHToHCCMQsAIQJ0oECEEYAFDXBlj4PWCvP2gFcAB4AYABxQKIAZsikgEIMC4yOC4xLjGYAQCgAQHIAQjAAQE&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-serp https://www.google.com/search?q=review+picture+quality+blura...
rthomas6 4y ago
Wow, that's really surprising and disappointing. Usually the disc is considered the ideal "canonical" way to watch the movie, but I guess not always. I think blu-ray.com has user reviews that are focused on the quality of the disc specifically, but I usually don't look at them. I looked at MI:1 and they talked a lot about the grain, but seemed to see it as a stylistic choice. Film grain from pre-digital era movies is a divisive issue. All older movies originally had some amount of film grain from the analog film. Some people like it and want it there on purpose. Some people prefer the movie run through a de-noise filter. The pro-grain people claim this removes fine detail. The anti-grain people say why the hell would you want it there on purpose. Some modern movies even add film grain on purpose. See Disney's Luca as an example. I personally don't care for it but it usually doesn't bother me as long as it's not extreme.
badcppdev 4y ago
This is a totally uninformed question. Are you sure the bad quality from the discs is the fault of the discs rather than your blu-ray reader? I'm assuming you've had good quality from the reader for other discs??
- deadbunny 4y ago
  It's a digital signal, either it reads and works or it doesn't. You don't lose quality because a "bad" player.
  - account42 4y ago
    That's oversimplifying things. Players and TVs can and do apply their own processing and then there are sometimes parts (e.g. Dolby Vision) that are just ignored by non-supporting players.

gjsman-1000 4y ago

"Noisy, grainy, just bad." AKA, it was shot on film. Film has film grain, which can only be removed by Digital Noise Reduction. DNR removes film grain, but also scrubs away detail and can leave waxy faces among other artifacts, as well as a fairly artificial and non-cinematic look. Film grain compresses very badly over streaming, so DNRing the streaming version before compression is probably what you are seeing. In this case, you prefer the DNR - but if you read online forums, most collectors hate it and consider it a crime against humanity to have ever been invented.

nsxwolf 4y ago
Which explains the downvotes I'm getting. I've apparently angered the cinephiles. Edit: I'm bemused that my subjective personal preferences have made multiple people this upset.
- p_j_w 4y ago
  Or maybe you're getting downvoted because you were denigrating other people's personal preferences when you called the disc version "trash." You're guilty of what you accuse others.
- f1refly 4y ago
  I think you're getting downvoted because the solution to your issue was one "why does my bluray look grainy" search away, yet you chose to stay uninformed on purpose and complained about it in a public forum without understanding the mechanics.
kranke155 4y ago
It’s funny if the poster is actually complaining about grain. Digital compression, like the one that Netflix uses, will often clean up the image of grain as a secondary effect of the compression algo. Essentially grain is a lot of detail that video compression algorithms have been taught to ignore/remove. H.264 was notorious for virtually removing all grain making it impossible to have authentic film grain on YouTube for years. (I work in advertising). Exactly like you said - grain is a common first victim of video compression. The other curious thing - modern movies that are shot on film / have grain actually get it removed during VFX stages. You have to do it so you can integrate CGI - grain is usually “sampled” first by the compositing software (The Foundry’s Nuke in 99% of occasions) and removed since the CGI image won’t have any grain from the CG renderer so you have to integrate it onto a denoised image. You then re add it at the end! Using the same software you then re-add the sampled noise back onto the image, and since you’ve now integrated the CGI, the noise goes on top of everything helping it all get integrated. Just saying this because you are right - using noise reduction to remove film grain for release is considered a sin (I myself would agree with the sentiment). Yet actually most films today will go through some denoise stage in VFX. Which is an interesting thing to think about - we actually remove the grain for a lot of the work then re add to keep the filmic texture.
- account42 4y ago
  Aren't films usually shot at higher resolutions (5K to 8K) so DNR or not you are going to throw away information during the editing/mastering process even with 4K output.
- nsxwolf 4y ago
  I wonder: If film grain never existed, would we invent it? If we had originally developed film technology where everything looked completely clean, would anyone have thought "Hey I've got a great idea, let's figure out how to make this look grainy"?
  - account42 4y ago
    Perhaps. Eyes do have "film grain" in low light conditions.
justsomehnguy 4y ago
I'm not a collector, but I hate vaxy faces. Which is also the reason I could spot CGI for years, until we had the ability to simulate even a pores of skin, but then again it were tuned to 11 and I could spot it again.
maskros 4y ago
It's not just extra DNR applied, modern image and video compression formats almost make it a point to erase all detail and texture from images. For example, compare the WebP and AVIF (VP8/AV1) compression artefacts with JPEG (and MPEG). With WebP and AVIF all textures and low contrast details tend to be erased or smoothed out, preserving only high contrast parts of the image. The JPEG image may have some visible ringing and block edge artefacts, but at least the textures and fine details are preserved!
- account42 4y ago
  I've noticed that too with cwebp (and other libwebp-based tools) encoding for darker images. My guess was that they their difference function is using the wrong colorspace so it does not match the perceptive difference. My quick tests of cjxl fared much better so all hope is not lost. But essentially, losless compression is all about throwing away impercetible details. Noise is an interesting case here because the presence and fequency of the noise (the texture) is significant to the viewer but having the noise match 1:1 is not. Which is why newer codecs remove the noise and then re-add generated noise during decoding.
chaxor 4y ago
On the other (semi-unrelated) hand, film can be much, much better than digital for some applications. For example, a transmission electron microscope that uses an emulsion film to capture the image compared to a digital capture device - the film can be magnified again with a light microscope later for much more magnification than may be accessible when all of the information is registered to a single pixel. Just something to remind us that there are pros and cons to everything.

tigen 4y ago

Film grain is a funny topic... if it was the original look then it can be considered highest quality/fidelity to retain it. Filtering it makes for easier video compression.

kranke155 4y ago

There are sites who do this exact kind of review. https://www.google.com/search?q=review+picture+quality+bluray+mission+inpossible&hl=en&sxsrf=ALiCzsZQGVDNv3dIPGleeaDpPs52EaAJUg%3A1664891522795&ei=gjo8Y6iEMMXylwS-0IGwCw&oq=review+picture+quality+bluray+mission+inpossible&gs_lcp=ChNtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1zZXJwEAMyBwghEKABEAoyBwghEKABEAoyBwghEKABEAo6BwgAEEcQsAM6BAgjECc6CAghEB4QFhAdOgUIIRCgAToECCEQFToKCCEQHhAPEBYQHToHCCMQsAIQJ0oECEEYAFDXBlj4PWCvP2gFcAB4AYABxQKIAZsikgEIMC4yOC4xLjGYAQCgAQHIAQjAAQE&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-serp https://www.google.com/search?q=review+picture+quality+blura...

rthomas6 4y ago

Wow, that's really surprising and disappointing. Usually the disc is considered the ideal "canonical" way to watch the movie, but I guess not always. I think blu-ray.com has user reviews that are focused on the quality of the disc specifically, but I usually don't look at them. I looked at MI:1 and they talked a lot about the grain, but seemed to see it as a stylistic choice. Film grain from pre-digital era movies is a divisive issue. All older movies originally had some amount of film grain from the analog film. Some people like it and want it there on purpose. Some people prefer the movie run through a de-noise filter. The pro-grain people claim this removes fine detail. The anti-grain people say why the hell would you want it there on purpose. Some modern movies even add film grain on purpose. See Disney's Luca as an example. I personally don't care for it but it usually doesn't bother me as long as it's not extreme.

badcppdev 4y ago

This is a totally uninformed question. Are you sure the bad quality from the discs is the fault of the discs rather than your blu-ray reader? I'm assuming you've had good quality from the reader for other discs??

deadbunny 4y ago
It's a digital signal, either it reads and works or it doesn't. You don't lose quality because a "bad" player.
- account42 4y ago
  That's oversimplifying things. Players and TVs can and do apply their own processing and then there are sometimes parts (e.g. Dolby Vision) that are just ignored by non-supporting players.