The running list of 4K HDR titles in the Apple TV store got its July update and there is one entry on it that made me sit up: Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair. That cut has been a white whale for two decades, screened theatrically, endlessly rumoured for a home release, and now it turns up as a digital 4K HDR purchase. Alongside it this month: Fight Club, Con Air, Speed Racer, Sleepers, Deep Blue Sea, The Ninth Gate, Eraser, Drop Zone, Boogie Nights, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad from 1958, and Project Hail Mary.
That is a genuinely good catalog month, and the older titles are the interesting part. Speed Racer in particular is a film whose entire visual identity is saturated colour, and it has been badly served by every previous home format. A proper HDR grade of it is not a small thing.
But this is the disc subforum, so let me say the obvious. Every one of these is a licence, not a copy. Digital 4K on any storefront runs at a fraction of the bitrate of a UHD disc, the audio is a lossy Atmos variant rather than TrueHD, and the whole thing lives or dies on someone else's rights renewal. We have all watched titles quietly vanish from libraries people paid for. A 4K HDR digital release is better than nothing, but it is not the same object as a disc on a shelf and pretending otherwise is how the format gets buried.
What I actually want to know: does a digital-only 4K release of a catalog title make a physical release more likely or less? The master exists now and the grade is paid for, which argues for more. The studios might also decide the demand has been served. Anyone seen a pattern go one way or the other?
That is a genuinely good catalog month, and the older titles are the interesting part. Speed Racer in particular is a film whose entire visual identity is saturated colour, and it has been badly served by every previous home format. A proper HDR grade of it is not a small thing.
But this is the disc subforum, so let me say the obvious. Every one of these is a licence, not a copy. Digital 4K on any storefront runs at a fraction of the bitrate of a UHD disc, the audio is a lossy Atmos variant rather than TrueHD, and the whole thing lives or dies on someone else's rights renewal. We have all watched titles quietly vanish from libraries people paid for. A 4K HDR digital release is better than nothing, but it is not the same object as a disc on a shelf and pretending otherwise is how the format gets buried.
What I actually want to know: does a digital-only 4K release of a catalog title make a physical release more likely or less? The master exists now and the grade is paid for, which argues for more. The studios might also decide the demand has been served. Anyone seen a pattern go one way or the other?
