Why Disney movies won't look their best on your new TV
It's 2017, Disney! Where's the 4K?
Credit:
Disney
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4K HDR is the latest and greatest in home theatre technology. For me, the combination of a crisp high-resolution image with the pixie dust of HDR color and brightness makes a difference in the movies I love to watch. It helps that it's also finally attainable to mere mortals—I could take the plunge today for only around $1,000 if I wanted to.
But content is king, right? And for fans of Disney movie, I've got some bad news: there's almost no Disney (or Disney-owned) movies you can add to your 4K HDR Blu-ray library.
Whether you like Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, or just Disney's back catalog of animated and live-action classics, the House of Mouse is nowhere to be found. What's worse, I can't find a single justification why. This isn't even a situation where they're giving a half-hearted excuse about "adoption rates" or "consumer awareness."
There's just nothing. And it's not like Disney isn't planning for future releases. After all, Disney loves re-releasing movies with new and better special features every few years. It's practically a tradition.
There have been a few exceptions, of course. Marvel's Iron Man trilogy got a 4K HDR Blu-ray release earlier this year…but only if you're in Germany. Why that movie? Because this Iron Man set is actually released by a third-party distributor with rights to Disney content, and not Disney itself.
Even Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn recently commented that he'd have to convince Disney to include a 4K version of the upcoming Guardians sequel when it's released on home video.
But, it's not like the studio doesn't have movies it could just release now on 4K Blu-ray, or through its streaming services. Recent mega-hits like Zootopia, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and Frozen were distributed to theaters in digital formats already. Reports indicate that at least the first Star Wars movie, Episode IV: A New Hope has been restored in 4K and screened for people like director Gareth Edwards.
And even if a 4K Blu-ray release isn't in the card, at the very least Disney could start upgrading its streaming Disney Movies Anywhere service to 4K. That said, I won't be satisfied until I can get my favorite Disney films on the highest quality format available—4K HDR Blu-ray.