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Arriving at a Resolution: Remastering Movies for 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
The Sacrifice (courtesy of Kino Lorber) We have reached a tipping point in the format wars, with UHD poised to overtake standard definition DVDs for first place. Now, there’s a new species of reply guy—one who responds to every Blu-ray release announcement with, “Why no 4K?” As a home video producer for Kino Lorber, I will try to explain the continuing rise of 4K UHD, as well as the economic realities of why it’s not possible to release everything in the format.
4K UHD (full name: 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray) is the highest resolution disc available and the one preferred by collectors. Introduced in February 2016 with an inauspicious slate including Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014), the discs were too expensive to manufacture outside the major Hollywood studios. With increasing customer demand and costs dropping just enough, boutique distributors like Kino Lorber have started to fully embrace the format. KL’s first 4K UHD release was Hannibal (2001) in 2019; Criterion put out its first UHD titles in 2021.
As sales have spiked, Kino Lorber has continued to add UHD releases to its schedule, with more than 50 titles in 2024; judging by our social media feeds, customers can’t get enough. According to Media Play News research, for the week ending January 11, 2025, the percentage share of home video units sold was led by DVD with 43.1 percent, then UHD with 39.4 percent and ending with Blu-ray at 17.5 percent. For those surprised by DVD’s pole position, libraries continue to primarily purchase discs in the SD format, and big box stores remain full of bargain bin product. Blu-ray and UHD will never match the market penetration that DVD had or the comparatively cheap production cost. It’s about economies of scale, and Blu-ray and 4K UHD are not manufactured in large enough quantities for prices to ever come down to DVD’s relatively low level.
Each successive generation of home video raises the technical bar, causing escalating remastering costs. Every step in the workflow is more expensive and time consuming due to the sheer size and complexity of the format. 4K UHD provides 3840 × 2160 pixel resolution (as opposed to 1920 x 1080p for Blu-ray) and the ability to support the increased contrast, brightness and color range of the HDR color space. Samsung’s HDR10+ and Dolby’s DolbyVision are the two dominant HDR formats, taking full advantage of the capabilities of 4K televisions. The results can be stunning, though at a significant price.
There are major costs up and down the pipeline for a 4K UHD release. Jonathan Hertzberg of Fun City Editions, who is preparing his first 4K UHD title, notes, “Most rights holders, particularly Hollywood studios, treat 4K UHD as a separate format, with significantly higher licensing fees than they charge for Blu-ray.” They expect higher sales and are increasing their number accordingly. After that license is acquired, there are the scanning and color grading costs—and if you are creating an HDR master, “the colorists’ fees for this work are exponentially higher than for Blu-ray.” I also spoke with Frank Tarzi, SVP of acquisitions and business development at Kino Lorber and the curator of the Kino Lorber Studio Classics label, through which he has overseen the vast majority of the company’s 4K releases. He notes that, compared to Blu-ray, “the authoring cost can be five times more expensive and the replication two to three times more expensive.” These are all costs that need to be negotiated with the vendor, who must then consider its increasing equipment costs and longer labor hours. The manufacturing process takes a week or two longer than a Blu-ray, which has to be baked into the projected release schedule.
Kino Lorber works with Sean Sutton of Compound Production to author its 4K UHD releases, and he had to make hefty investments to handle the sheer amount of data required to author these discs. He needed to make upgrades to his computers, server capacity, visual monitoring, audio monitoring and network and backup capacity. But the biggest change he noted is the amount of time it takes to process each feature. “Everything just takes longer, moving terabytes of data files around [as well as] the encoding time. Initially, encodes could take several days of compute time before the QC and re-encode process. Faster computing has reduced the time, but it’s still over a day for a single feature.” He can encode a DVD feature in a couple hours, a Blu-ray in half a day.
Every label, big or small, has to make calculated decisions about what titles will realistically be able to turn a profit. Kino Lorber, which oversees the remastering of many features it licenses from the studios, cannot justify these costs for every title—it’s just not economically feasible. But we are expanding our sights a little bit. After focusing exclusively on Hollywood-licensed product, I recently oversaw the production of 4K discs for arthouse classics like Andrei Tarkovksy’s Nostalghia (1983) and The Sacrifice (1986), plus Alain Resnais’s Last Year at Marienbad (1961). I am currently working on a 4K disc for Lina Wertmüller’s Swept Away (1974) in partnership with Raro Video and Minerva Pictures. In those cases, we received 4K restorations directly from the licensors, which streamlined the process and cut out the added mastering expenses, making it an easier decision to go ahead.
Home video business has been declining for years, leading major studios to vacate the space, which has created an opening for smaller companies to fill the void. Sales that might be minimal for a Fortune 500 company can be significant for smaller entities, and Kino Lorber, Criterion, Fun City Editions, Vinegar Syndrome and many more labels are doing exceptional work to keep the disc coffers filled.
But scores of films are unlikely to make the leap to 4K UHD. These are the deep library titles that make up the bulk of film history, whether it’s an early silent from Alice Guy-Blaché, a WWII programmer starring Audie Murphy or NYC street theater from experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs. These are works readily available on Blu-ray, and I urge collectors to continue to embrace that format so we can continue to represent the full scope of film history. My favorite home video release of 2024 was a Blu-ray released by Sony Pictures with no bonus features or fanfare: Man’s Castle (1933, directed by Frank Borzage). This Spencer Tracy–Loretta Young Depression-era love story has been restored to its pre-code premiere length, unseen since the censors recut it in 1938, and it is a revelation. In this crusty old cinephile’s opinion, it’s not the bit rate or color space that should drive the collecting impulse, but the transportive power of the film itself.
