I'll always want a physical copy. However, I may not live for ever...
Paramount's first 4K UHD Blu-ray release is a $47.99 Star Trek combo pack
- Thread starter RAMA
- Start date
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/item/star-trek-into-darkness-4k-uhd-bd
Whatever you think of the film itself, Star Trek Into Darkness is a flat-out stunner on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray. This is what the current reference quality looks and sounds like for experiencing movies at home. The only way this could get any better would be if the entire film had been shot in IMAX, and composer Michael Giacchino and his orchestra were performing right in your living room. Paramount’s $49.99 SRP for this disc is still too high, but this is the rare title I’ve seen on the format that I could almost argue is worth that price. Get this package on sale if you can, but definitely get your hands on it.
- Bill Hunt
Whatever you think of the film itself, Star Trek Into Darkness is a flat-out stunner on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray. This is what the current reference quality looks and sounds like for experiencing movies at home. The only way this could get any better would be if the entire film had been shot in IMAX, and composer Michael Giacchino and his orchestra were performing right in your living room. Paramount’s $49.99 SRP for this disc is still too high, but this is the rare title I’ve seen on the format that I could almost argue is worth that price. Get this package on sale if you can, but definitely get your hands on it.
- Bill Hunt
Even then, despite having unlimited bandwidth in Ireland, the best 4K stream you'll find will be bitrate-starved and require a high speed internet connection. Physical media will continue to reign supreme for quite a while.
RAMA, you already have a 4K thread, so I don't really see the need for a new one just because it's for STiD now. I can change the title to make it a general Star Trek 4K announcement thread if you like.
Unfortunately, a lot of films and television shows filmed between the late '90s and 2013 or so used 2K masters. They weren't very forward thinking. The best you'll get is up-rezzing. The Martian is also up-rezzed from a 2K source.
For The Martian, they uprezzed the DI and then replaced live-action shots with 4K shots from the original footage. Any shots with VFX were left as 2K, though.
Even if a film has a 4K DI/master, the effects are likely still only in 2K. (Even big tentpole pictures that the studios know will be around for a while, like The Force Awakens, suffer from this.)
The "good" news is, even if the VFX or movie are only in 2K, the movie can still benefit from the extended color space on UHD Blu-rays, even if the picture isn't necessarily any higher resolution.
This. The biggest appeal of UHD BRs will be the high dynamic colour range, IMO. While in some films it won't be all that noticeable of an upgrade from Blu-ray, in others it'll look 10x better. I wonder how TOS would look with all of its vibrant colours in UHD 4K.
Films from the '80s and earlier will probably fare a lot better than most modern movies. Films like The Wrath of Khan that were shot on 35mm and didn't use any CG effects will be scanned at full 4K or higher and given beautiful remasters. If I'm ever convincing someone to upgrade from HD to UHD, I'll be showing them an older film like that, not some HD upscale job which will be most films from the late '90s onwards.
