I think DrDre has done a fantastic job and I really appreciate the hardwork he has put in to make this release.
This is the best the original FOTR EE Blu-ray release has ever looked. The 4k AI upscaling is amazing. Also the 4k HVEC encoding is great, a very high standard. How can this release look so much better than the original source from an encoding perspective? Some alchemy there.
I have spent the last 3 nights comparing the encode and colours across a number of versions of FOTR. The only release that can match DrDre work from an upscale, resolution and encoding perspective is the 1080p blu-ray remaster done at the same time as the recent 4K UHD edition. I’m ignoring the 4k UHD HDR/WCG version, haven’t even used it during these comparisons. HDR/WCG introduces too many other variables.
I used my 65" 4k LG E6 OLED for the comparisons, this is an OLED from late 2017, and the near black handling is horrendous for revealing encoding problems, in a dark room it makes a lot of content unwatchable for how it handles near black from 1 - 5%. Basically if you thought the Game of Thrones blu-rays had poor encoding, on this TV they are unwatchable. Vincent Teoh always uses a GOT scene in the crypt at Winterfell with Jon Snow to illustrate this problem. This release has no such encoding problems and looks great.
This is where most of the other versions suffer. Both KK650 & Dwalin have encoding that is not as good as the source. My own version using the You_Too AVIsynth GIMP re-colour script, can’t compare to this version.
I come to this release wanting the best version of the FOTR EE without the green tint. The new remaster has too many colour revisions for my taste. I’m no expert on the colours of FOTR or how it should look. I’m used to the version I made, which has a particular look. I have not watched the original theatrical or EE release since 2011. Out of the earlier versions Dwalin had the best colours, but the encoding was average, so I stuck with my version. 44rh1n version also has good colours, but the source has too many other problems.
For 95% of this version the colours were great. But there are a few scenes where I prefer the look in other versions. It goes without saying, that the colours here are a huge improvement over the original EE blu-ray. I’m going to make another post with some specifics.