OPINION: Despite all the doom and gloom about physical media in recent months, it continues to walk – perhaps a little unsteady, but it’s still one foot in front of the other.
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4K Blu-ray has been in existence for about eight years, and after tentative launches of new films – it took Disney more than a year to launch its first 4K Blu-ray title in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 – there’s been an increasing amount of new films and catalogue (older titles) hitting the market.
jNot all the titles I’d like to be on 4K Blu-ray are making it to the format. It would have been nice to see a 4K physical version of Greta Lee’s Past Lives, but I can see the logic of a small film not being the biggest seller in the market. That Poor Things and The Iron Claw are new releases that aren’t getting a 4K release (at least for the time being) is disappointing, considering I think those two films would benefit from the boost in resolution and colour performance.
But what I find more frustrating is that, like vinyl, there is an increasingly big push towards 4K Blu-ray becoming a collectors market. As I write this Dune: Part Two has hit the cinemas, the home cinema releases have been announced and the film is getting a limited edition steelbook release on HMV, and the email I received on March 1st already had the words “limited copies available”
In the ‘olden’ days, you’d have expected this type of release a couple years after the film had been available, as a way of making people double dip. Instead, steelbooks are being used to push the price up while – aside from the visual design – there’s nothing particularly special about steelbooks themselves. And even more annoyingly, studios are now packaging the Blu-ray along with the 4K Blu-ray, but only with the steelbooks, so if you want a HD copy for your library then you’ll have to pay more.
More studios are employing this tactic, so what was once a 4K Blu-ray + Blu-ray combo that would (in the UK) set you back £24.99, the price has now been set to £34.99 for the steelbook, and all you’re getting is fancier looking packaging. I don’t even feel that current-day steelbooks look or feel as nice as steelbooks did in the DVD days either. I was walking through Fopp in London with a friend and they genuinely exclaimed when they saw a title going for £35.
We’re also still paying the same price for the standard release, but getting less in return. There’s very little –if any – effort with the special features which have dwindled to a few EPK vignettes. Studios such as Paramount (which seemed to start this trend), Warner Brothers, and Universal are all going down the road of single disc standard releases.
There are still some standouts, like Oppenheimer. If Godzilla Minus One has a 4k release with both color and B&W, that’s a preorder for me. Planet Earth III is also great.