Someone raised the Curzon label question over on HTF and it hit a nerve, because I have been round this loop with boutique art-house discs more than once. The Three Colors Trilogy UHD gets pointed to as the example of them doing it properly. Then you go looking for Paris, Texas and it is out of print, with a rumour that a standard edition follows the limited one, and you have no way of knowing whether that rumour is six months or three years out.
That cycle is the actual cost of buying from small labels, and it is worth being honest about it. A limited pressing sells out fast, the secondary market prices it stupidly, and the sensible move would have been to buy on day one - except that buying every limited edition on day one is how people end up with shelves of discs they have never opened. The other trap in the same thread is the Double Life of Veronique disc having audio issues, which is the scenario where you buy once, live with a flaw, and then buy again when Criterion gets round to it.
What I would say to anyone starting on this stuff: with art-house catalog titles the restoration is usually the same master licensed out to whoever holds the territory, so the difference between labels is mostly encoding and how carefully the audio was handled, not the scan itself. That is why a technically flawed release stings more here than it does on a big studio title.
Which labels have actually delivered a standard edition after a limited UHD, and how long did the wait turn out to be? Real examples would help.
That cycle is the actual cost of buying from small labels, and it is worth being honest about it. A limited pressing sells out fast, the secondary market prices it stupidly, and the sensible move would have been to buy on day one - except that buying every limited edition on day one is how people end up with shelves of discs they have never opened. The other trap in the same thread is the Double Life of Veronique disc having audio issues, which is the scenario where you buy once, live with a flaw, and then buy again when Criterion gets round to it.
What I would say to anyone starting on this stuff: with art-house catalog titles the restoration is usually the same master licensed out to whoever holds the territory, so the difference between labels is mostly encoding and how carefully the audio was handled, not the scan itself. That is why a technically flawed release stings more here than it does on a big studio title.
Which labels have actually delivered a standard edition after a limited UHD, and how long did the wait turn out to be? Real examples would help.
