Shout Factory acquires Golden Princess library

[PDB]

Looks like City on Fire and the Better Tomorrow Trilogy are out on iTunes.

I wonder if ABT1 is the same transfer as the UHD BD?

COF


Edit: Looks like The Killer is released July 22nd

[PDB]

ABT3

[Serums]

If ABT1 is the same transfer it's had different correction/grading.

[SpaceBlackKnight]

I rented ABT 1 & 2 plus The Killer 4k off AV since their "rips" aren't out in the wild yet. I can say The Killer and ABT 2 are massive improvements over the janky Fortune Star upscales and the field blended DD Killer Blu. This generally covers all 3 I viewed and are entirely new scans, even ABT, and it's obvious these transfers don't exhibit redone texts, radical overscrubbing, "freeze frame" still frames, and recomposites Fortune Star likes to do on their masters. The opening/closing bookends and any shot that involves optical and VFX look grainy and like they came off a battered dupe print, but I assume that's how they were edited on the negs back in the day. Color timing seemed proper with no major yellow/teal tinge (some scenes exhibit it likely due to lighting conditions or condition of the elements). EN and Can mono audio sounded proper mono to my ears, but there are some sections in the dubs and Cantonese audio where the sync and SFX/cues placement is different and/or way off, but I assume that's how these elements were. I noticed one spot in The Killer where a background song started a second earlier on the Canton mono, and another scene with music faded out at the end rather than cut out completely like on the Criterion/Fox Lorber mono and the 7.1 remixes.

ABT being a completely different scan than the FS 4k, is mostly free of strong Ritrovata tinting that plagued the FS masters. Again, some sections exhibit a natural yellow/teal lighting and other a blue cast (some of which was missing on the Fortune Star 4k SDR/HDR). The titles and texts on Shout's 4k are all original (where different frozen sets of dirt and specs appear when texts fade in and out) compared to the digital comp rebuilds on the Fortune Star 4ks. I also noticed scenes that have freeze frames are original opticals compared to the digitally redone stills on the FS (which run a little shorter there and crossfade rather than cut). Cantonese mono sounded a bit different, clearer high end and not as muffled but had some sort of hiss NR, as silent moments stay silent until someone starts talking and the hiss comes back on. Theres a JPN BD with a 2.0 mono and I heard that sounded OK but some sections were very muffled.