After reading comments from one of the members in the blu-ray.com thread whose opinion I trust and usually agree with, I decided to give these discs a shot after all instead…
And there’s no way these are real 4K back-to-the-negative scans. No way.
Thanks for this review. Set aside the HDR, this is a real bummer for me. It seems I would do better if a upscale my 1080p Blu-ray’s/44rh1n´s TFotR to 4K myself and have more detail this way. Good I don’t have the skill set to implement HDR myself but for a nice sdr experience - there is madVR.
If you set aside the obviously problematic shots that have had copious amounts of new DNR applied, the 4K discs have more real detail than the 1080p discs. They’ve reduced the grain, which you may or may not like, but actual detail is (mostly) superior on the 4K version. And the HDR grade is nice.
That said, I watched the EE Blu-rays earlier this year with my display handling the upscaling, and aside from the issues those versions have—and they do have issues—I quite enjoyed them and thought they looked great overall.