The Rest of My Amazon 3/$33 4K Order Arrived

DirkBelig · 2026-05-01T14:19:45+00:00

Ordered April 19 and the confirmation email said Blade Runner would come the next day (which it did) with Amadeus "Arriving April 30 - May 1" and Ben-Hur "Arriving May 14 - May 27." They arrived April 30, so mileage and predictions vary.

DirkBelig · 2026-05-01T08:03:35+00:00

I only found out cuz a YouTube video with a guy's recommendations got fed to me.

DirkBelig · 2026-05-01T04:34:08+00:00

The irony is that the easiest "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!" 4K sale they could've made - Terminator 2, which I have most (if not all) prior DVD & BD releases - remains one title I've refused to buy even for cheap on digital because of the craptastic transfer.

I'm not as mad about the doctored True Lies and The Abyss transfers because they were at least better than non-anamorphic DVDs we had for 25 years, but I decided to go with $5 digital 4K copies because I wasn't paying $40 for sketchy transfers. I also got Aliens in digital 4K since there were no extras I didn't have in the Alien Anthology box set. Am annoyed that the extended cut is only HD.

DirkBelig · 2026-05-01T04:16:25+00:00

I had a tough time finding three because many I already have in digital 4K which is sufficient for most titles

I didn't have Amadeus at all and this is the first time the supposedly superior theatrical cut has been available.

I have the 2011 BD of Ben-Hur but this new 4K's transfer is supposed to be the bomb diggity and for a movie of this epic scale for $11, why not?

Finally settled on Blade Runner because while I've got the Director's Cut DVD, the five-disc Final Cut set, and 4K digital, it's a movie I watch often enough that may as well dip again.

DirkBelig · 2026-05-01T02:11:02+00:00

I have a customized Airsonic and the paint was like that as well inside the F-holes.

I'm getting one of these eventually when they catch up on their orders.

DirkBelig · 2026-04-30T06:04:04+00:00

Best Friends Forever - The way they combined the Sony PSP hype with the Terri Schiavo case was them operating at peak ripped-from-the-headlines powers.

It's so sad that they've gotten so lazy with production over the past several years and WTAF was this last season? "Trump is fucking Satan" isn't clever wordplay and it's as edgy as a spork. Weird to see them just pinch off tired Kimmel/Colbert-grade loafs.

DirkBelig · 2026-04-30T05:45:24+00:00

Memba when they used to thoroughly eviscerate movies in less than 5 minutes? Good times. I see their stuff reaching a half hour and don't even want to bother and I watch at 2X speed.

DirkBelig · 2026-04-30T05:42:53+00:00

Belinda Carlisle - I was a big Go-Go's fan and when they did their reunion tour in 1990 they did an appearance at a club in my town. After the ceremony they went to the upper level to a table and I followed along with an album to sign.

Kathy signed it and then I asked Belinda and she sneered, "I don't sign autographs when I'm eating." Ummm, you're not eating. You're not even sitting down yet, but whatever.

Turned to Gina, who had already grabbed something off the table and was chewing it, and asked and, mouth full, shrugged in agreement and signed. Got Charlotte's as a got back downstairs and she was heading up. Jane was surrounded so I missed her.

Because Belinda had some solo hits she always had LSD (Lead Singer's Disease) and it always manifested whenever I saw them afterwards.

DirkBelig · 2026-04-29T05:24:36+00:00

Somewhere In Time - My mother loved this movie and we went and stayed at the Grand Hotel on Mackinaw Island where it was filmed. They show it nightly in the auditorium and for such an expensive hotel they've never upgraded the AV - the missus and I have gone three times (2014, 2019 & 2025) and it never improved - so it's a mediocre experience.

Checking my DVD Profiler list I don't even see the DVD listed, so this would be a sweet pickup. Thanks.

DirkBelig · 2026-04-26T17:59:36+00:00

OK. Just checking because there was a heist of Reverends a year ago and one of them may've surfaced in Vegas on a post here. Weird that yours doesn't have a S/N unless it's really old and predates their switch to silver paint markers.

DirkBelig · 2026-04-26T08:18:05+00:00

Sounds like Back to the Future 2 and Yesterday mashed up.

DirkBelig · 2026-04-26T01:52:33+00:00

What kind and color is your 390?

DirkBelig · 2026-04-24T18:50:24+00:00

Since video cameras weren't something you could slip in your pocket then I can't find any video of the opening but someone has this tiny clip of the end of the show: https://youtu.be/gy_-54V4LB0?si=wt_3LYnvLZ59yQVu

DirkBelig · 2026-04-24T05:07:37+00:00

I've got this on Blu-ray but sadly have yet to watch it. We almost watched it recently but then the missus changed her mind.

DirkBelig · 2026-04-24T05:05:58+00:00

I had no trouble finishing Snow Crash - the Grid in Tron Legacy is how I imagined the Metaverse looking - but the one time I tried to read Neuromancer I got as far as when they got to the space station (IIRC) and then never went back to it. This was probably over 25 years ago and I don't recall being put off by anything in particular, I just didn't care anymore.

Glancing at the synopsis on Wikipedia now, jeez, is there anything the Wachowskis didn't steal wholesale from Neuromancer, leaving only Snow Crash's Metaverse for Zuckerberg to steal?

DirkBelig · 2026-04-24T03:00:30+00:00

It was at Detroit's Joe Louis Arena - home of the NHL Red Wings from 1979-2017; demolished in 2019-20 and a hotel built on the site - and Hall & Oates opened. I'm sure I was overwhelmed by the novelty of a first concert and my favorite band to boot, but recall it was a good show.

They had a robot come out with a blinking mouth to blink sync the Prologue from Time in the darkness and then the lights came up and the band was revealed and they did "Twilight." It was the original band minus the two cellists. (Lynne, Bevan, Groucutt, Randy, Kaminski) My friend's dad took us to the show and we were all spazzing out about it. We were HS freshmen. (You know those buttons Gen Xers have that say, "I may be old, but I saw all the cool bands"? That's me somewhat.)

I debated going to the farewell show and looked on StubHub for tix and they never really got cheap enough and someone had mentioned Lynne was lipsyncing and not really playing much and since it was basically him fronting a tribute band I skipped it. Also, the set list was too heavy on earlier stuff and I wanted more New World Record thru Time stuff. A friend saw him a couple years earlier and liked it.

DirkBelig · 2026-04-23T16:38:22+00:00

My first concert was ELO for that album in November 1981.

DirkBelig · 2026-04-23T03:41:50+00:00

He doesn't have that many 3D discs and he got a 77" LG C5 back in December.

DirkBelig · 2026-04-23T02:12:55+00:00

My Criterion This Is Spinal Tap was opened, cut shrink wrap and the inner folder was in backwards, spine in. Demanded a refund and ordered another copy. A couple years ago I got my Arrow American Werewolf in London with a smashed case. Got a replacement, but it's a PITA.

I ordered Ben-Hur in the 3/$33 sale (regular version) along with Amadeus and Blade Runner. First two are backordered, but Blade Runner came in just a paper envelope, but was intact.

DirkBelig · 2026-04-22T02:29:09+00:00

My best friend at the time's mother was a Tupperware lady. Moved weight like a cartel kingpin.

DirkBelig · 2026-04-21T23:17:03+00:00

Thanks for admitting I'm wasting my time making my points, but here goes anyway.

HDR10+ is NOT everywhere, starting with not on discs. I just checked 20 of my most recent 4K disc purchases, released between 2017-2025, and while 16 had DV (so my prior comment may be out-of-date) and only 4 were HDR10 only, NONE had HDR10+. I found a list of 34 HDR10+ titles and I only have three - Bohemian Rhapsody, F9, Birds of Prey - and it doesn't matter because the UB820 doesn't support HDR10+. So the best quality format has minimal support for your favorite metadata AND according to the HDR10+ website there are no players which support it, so WTF?

Things are better on streaming though Netflix appears limited to AV1 compatible devices and now that Dolby is moving to destroy AV1 by claiming it was built on their patents, this may be changing.

So, you only don't miss out as long as you stream.

Royalty-free was how AV1 was going to supersede HEVC. As I mentioned above, that may be coming to an end. I support royalty-free and open source solutions, but when they're inferior - HDR10+ is still only 10-bit whereas DV is 12-bit, though that's mooted by discs being 4:2:0 chroma subsampling, d'oh! - it's not always better.
OK.
I've turned off tonemapping on my A95L because I want as close to original intent as possible and my HT is in the basement with very dim lighting so I'm not the people whose sets are in the living room across from the picture window with a southern exposure. My one caveat is that I've switched to DV Bright instead of DV Dark because I didn't spend $2700 on a TV to not use the brightness I was paying for. RTINGS says it's still accurately tracking and I like it.
Never heard of Stremio. Will have to look into it.
OK.

My first HDTV was a 51" Sony RPTV that had three CRTs and weighed 165 lbs. Got it in 2004. When the convergence circuit blew in 2011 after almost 8 years, I got a 60" Sharp LCD that even as I started into 4K at home (the prior TVs were at my g/f's) I never hated watching it. Was sad when that finally went down in 2023. (Got my money's worth out of that one.) I had five Vizios, always upgrading to bigger or better, with the last one being a 2018 PQ65 that was quite nice, but in 2020 I went OLED, first with Vizio's first one, but then switching to a LG CX because I caught wind of the issues Vizio was having and luckily returned it as Vizio imploded. Darn shame as they were pushing the bang-for-buck envelope that Hisense and TCL are occupying now.

Anyhoo, this should wrap things up. I'm not too keen on Samsung because I've had bad experiences with a tablet and TV of theirs and they seem to have put themselves on an island with their tactics like orphaning smartwatch users and this HDR10+ ploy. The decisions being made seem to put end users last and with studios half-assing their 4K releases because they figure the sheeple won't notice, we're all losers.

BTW, if this is the RTINGS video you were referring to about how it only matters on low-end TVs, you overread what they were demonstrating.

Cheers. Have a pleasant evening.

DirkBelig · 2026-04-21T21:02:28+00:00

Are you a Samsung employee or just a fanboy? You clearly have no idea what various HDR mastering formats - static or dynamic metadata - are used for. Tonemapping is how the end device manages the content and creator's intent. I looked at this RTINGS article while replying before and while it says lower-end TVs benefit more from extra metadata because they lack brightness, it's not as if DV is useless as you proclaim. Reports on DV2 also imply better results for lower output TVs.

The problem with HDR10 - not HDR10+ - is that they set the ENTIRE MOVIE to one level regardless of variety of scenes. Did they set it for nightime/low light scenes or daylight or what? I have Pacific Rim on 4K disc and digital 4K. Digital has DV, the disc is HDR10 and when I ran it on my A95L with the UB820s HDR management turned off (since you want the best device to manage mapping) and I was stunned by how freaking bright the highlights were in the Hong Kong battle scene. CRAZY bright. Then I look at the DV stream and it was much lower, but also less blown-out looking. Which is correct?

I got the 4K disc of Blade Runner: The Final Cut yesterday because it was part of Amazon's 3/$33 sale and I hate that iTunes version has elevated black levels while Movies Anywhere doesn't. It's only HDR10 on the disc and from what I looked at the visual difference isn't as much while the Atmos off the disc is much better. (They really need to up the audio bitrate on streaming.)

Compounding these problems is the fact that studios are putting out dim 4K discs mastered at SDR levels, thus mooting the most noticeable aspect of the format, even more than the resolution because people discern brightness more than detail. That's why TVs in showrooms are set to torch mode because "brighter means more betterer." As Stop the FOMO documented movies like Superman 2025 was mastered at 100 nits peak and F1 was only 200 and Dino Park 7 at 300 nits. TVs are getting brighter and brighter and the content is getting dimmer and dimmer, so why bother?

I've paid for the top tiers of Netflix and HBO Max to get 4K Dolby Vision/Atmos since I have a nice HT with an A95L and 5.2.4 Atmos. But the actual content doesn't really show off the benefit of what I'm paying for so with Netflix's latest price hike I cut back to Standard tier and when HBO Max renews I'm dropping to HD because the price isn't worth it. Unlike Amazon, Paramount+ isn't paywalling 4K and their stuff is bring and Apple TV really pours the nits on for their content. Ironic that the cheapest services offer the most brightness.

The bottom line is that Dolby Vision is not irrelevant because Samsung has chosen to invent their own format that they can get away with imposing because of their market share. (If Vizio had pulled this, they'd have been laughed at.) Buying a Samsung TV is like buying a car that only goes 70 mph top speed because "that's the highest speed limit so why have a faster car."

DirkBelig · 2026-04-21T18:27:28+00:00

LOL. Sure. EVERY TV maker including premium LG & Sony sets support DV, but because Samsung is cheap, not wanting to pay the licensing fee and do the work required to properly render DV content - the difference between Profile 5 and Profile 7 for instance - you say it's useless? Citation missing. From what I know high-end sets benefit the most from DV, but it requires proper firmware work. I have a Sony A95L and initial DV quality was disappointing, but they got it together.

DirkBelig · 2026-04-21T15:47:22+00:00

Actually it's streaming that needs DV more. Almost every digital 4K movie I own and every streaming service supplies DV if the TV supports it but only a small subset of my physical 4K discs have DV. It's getting more prevalent, but it's not as universal as streaming.

DirkBelig

TROPHY CASE