8.4 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
"Friends" is an American sitcom about six friends struggling to survive on their own in Manhattan. In each episode, they find the companionship, comfort and support from each other to be the perfect solutions to the pressures of everyday life.
Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matthew Perry, Matt LeBlancComedy | 100% |
Romance | 62% |
Video codec: HEVC / H.265
Video resolution: 4K (2160p)
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.33:1, 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 16-bit)
German: Dolby Digital 2.0
French: Dolby Digital 2.0
Japanese: Dolby Digital 2.0
Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0
English SDH, French, German SDH, Japanese, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Mandarin (Traditional), Norwegian, Swedish
Blu-ray Disc
Twenty five-disc set (25 BDs)
4K Ultra HD
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 0.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 4.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
One of the most surprising UHD announcements of this year, Friends has made the jump to 4K following complete series releases on Blu-ray (later repackaged) and DVD, the latter of which is still unique for including longer extended versions of select episodes. As such, fans were basically told to expect a cosmetic upgrade of the Blu-ray edition, one that had been newly rebuilt from recent 4K scans of the original camera negatives with added HDR10 and Dolby Vision support as well as long-overdue lossless audio tracks. Add in two bonus discs worth of bonus features (some of them new) along with plenty of legacy extras and you've got what should be perfectly good reasons to justify why seeing even more detail in a surprisingly roomy NYC apartment and cozy coffeehouse is worth almost $200.
"Hoping" is the key word here. As you'll soon find out, several hasty decisions in regards to Friends' new look in 4K doesn't make this collection the landslide victor it should have been. Some may find that certain visual improvements overshadow the numerous drawbacks (or at least sidesteps), but others won't be nearly as forgiving.
As for the show itself, most should already be familiar with Friends' plot and characters; if not, it's been covered at length in previous
reviews such as Kenneth Brown's coverage of the Complete Series Blu-ray set. So I'll spare you the cursory synopsis along with my basically identical
take on the material, which is conveyed quite capably in Ken's 2012 review that also includes a season-by-season episode list. Fortunately,
this sleek but user-friendly 25-disc set -- 23 triple-layered 4K discs for the episodes, two dual-layered Blu-rays for the non-commentary bonus
features -- doesn't chop everything up in "books" like the old DVD collection and instead contains five main keepcases with two seasons apiece,
making it relatively easy to find what you're looking for if you're not marathoning the whole series.
NOTE: These screenshots are sourced from the 4K discs but have been downsampled to 1080p/SDR; while at least representative of Friends' new appearance in UHD, they obviously should not be considered truly accurate.
Any film-shot show like Friends should have been more or less a slam-dunk on UHD, but unfortunately this set will prove to be somewhat controversial to most fans of the series. But let's get the basics out of the way first: these new 2160p/HDR10 (Dolby Vision compatible) transfers are better-compressed and typically more detail-minded versions of what we got on Blu-ray, albeit still framed at a consistent 1.78:1 from start to finish. At a glance, they're vibrant and eye-catching, actually closer to the show's general aesthetic on DVD with its substantially warmer color palette. In fact, in direct comparison to the Blu-rays, the differences in overall color timing can be almost staggering.
That's not necessarily a good thing. Any sense of "naturalness" has more or less been thrown out the window here, leaving an almost candy-colored picture in its wake. This might not normally be a problem, but Friends is a very colorful show with lots of vivid hues found in its 90s-era fashions, set designs, and other background details, and cranking them up even further than normal has led to visual overload. Skin tones typically lean towards bronze and already-warm reds now practically leap off the screen, while other primaries aren't very far behind. Black levels also run extremely deep, occasionally threatening to crush details (and sometimes doing just that)... but in other instances, they actually look more refined and frustratingly less boosted than their Blu-ray counterparts, especially in mid-range details. Whites are a similar story; they pop out in an attractive manner at first glance, but elsewhere are pushed to within an inch of their life and generally just seem, well, too white. I'll admit that some shots, scenes, and entire episodes are more attractive at first glance than their Blu-ray counterparts, because these heightened colors are designed to be visually stimulating and the effect actually works well at times. But it's quite simply overwhelming on the whole, enough so that I couldn't imagine watching more than three or four episodes without having to take a break. (Pun intended.) Hindsight reveals that many portions of the Blu-ray's transfers were actually a little on the drab side color-wise, but I firmly believe that a more satisfying middle ground could have been achieved here. And just for the record, even if you dial back the color on your TV settings by a few notches, that doesn't solve the sporadic problems with black and white levels.
These transfers obviously tend to outshine their Blu-ray counterparts for raw image detail and encoding quality, on average at least doubling the previous bit rate and storage space allotted per episode. But again, occasional problems can be spotted due to the number of episodes per disc -- roughly 12 on average, which is about 3 or 4 too many -- and these sporadic issues include lightly pulsing artifacts that tend to fight with film grain (some of which has clearly been subjected to digital noise reduction, especially the last two seasons for whatever reason) as well as light macro blocking which, to be fair, is much less pervasive than what we saw on those Blu-rays. In motion these are all certainly visible to varying degrees... but whether or not they're distracting might be up to viewer opinion and personal taste.
I will say this: for the most part, what's here looks more stable and film-like than earlier physical iterations, and as such any perceived softness in specific shots and scenes can likely be traced back to original source elements. Most of those other problems, however, seem to be a result of the color "enhancement" on display which, in my opinion, was done to appeal to the same folks who like colorized films, pan-and-scan video, and faux surround mixes. While I can certainly recognize that certain issues that bogged down the Blu-ray edition have finally been rectified, the drawbacks of this extremely vivid presentation (as in "your TV might look like it's stuck in Vivid mode") make the UHD edition more of a visual sidestep that sadly doesn't advance the show's appearance any more than the Blu-ray set.
Warner Bros.' early-format war against lossless Blu-ray audio counted Friends among its victims, as it contained only 640 kbps Dolby Digital 5.1 Audio for each episode. Not surprisingly they've finally given this show a courtesy bump to DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio, which predictably doesn't reinvent the wheel for this multi-camera sitcom but nonetheless offers a slightly more satisfying sonic experience. Dialogue remains clean and precise, sporadic music cuts (from The Rembrants' ubiquitous theme song all the way to that surprising Interpol track in Season 10) sound excellent, and the big studio laughs -- which change its tone greatly -- add support from the rears. It's not game-changing or the sole reason to buy this set, obviously, but fans should still appreciate finally having Friends with lossless audio.
A wide variety of subtitles, including English (SDH), are included during all episodes and most of the extras.
This 25-disc set ships in six keepcases: five slightly chunky hinged 4K cases with two seasons apiece (2-3 discs per season) and a sixth dual-hubbed Blu-ray case for the two bonus discs, which are all tucked inside an outer slipbox. A small booklet is also inside the bonus disc keepcase that lists all the included episodes and bonus features. The wide majority are simply recycled from the Complete Series Blu-ray set and are detailed in that review.
4K DISCS #1-23 (Various)
BLU-RAY BONUS DISC #1
Season 1-5 Extras (Previously included on the Blu-ray set's episode discs)
"True Friends" Documentaries (Previously included on the Blu-ray set's bonus disc)
BLU-RAY BONUS DISC #2
Season 6-10 Extras (Previously included on the Blu-ray set's episode discs)
Other Extras (Previously included on the Blu-ray set's bonus disc)
Friends was a huge part of the American and even worldwide TV landscape from 1994-2004, remaining continuously popular during its run and in the two decades since its final episode aired. It's almost no surprise, then, that Warner Bros.' 30th Anniversary Complete Series Collection is the studio's first venture into classic TV on 4K, although truth be told it's not exactly a home run. Featuring a somewhat questionable new appearance, long-overdue lossless audio, and only a paltry pair of new bonus features to go with a mountain of familiar ones, there's admittedly not as much to get excited about here as initially hoped. (The addition of the still DVD-exclusive extended episodes -- even in standard definition -- would have gone a long, long way towards making this a definitive set, to say nothing of the missing 2021 feature-length HBO Max reunion special.) I'll still say that this UHD collection is lightly recommended to die-hard fans for this things it actually does right, though I certainly wouldn't most people for waiting on an inevitable holiday sale. While this clearly isn't a great start for classic WB TV on UHD, I guess we'll see where they go from here.
1994-2004
1994-1995
1994-2004
1995-1996
2007-2019
2008-2009
Extended Cut
2008
Sex and the City: The Movie / Sex and the City 2
1998-2010
2009
2008
2016
2013
2007
Theatrical Version
2005
2009
Deluxe Edition
2003
Movie Only Edition
2011
25th Anniversary Edition
1997
2010
10th Anniversary Edition
2002
10th Anniversary Special Edition
2002
2008
35th Anniversary
1989
2009