Home Video (VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, 4k)

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.