Video Quality
Mary Poppins Returns' UHD release offers a modest upgrade over the 1080p Blu-ray. This is not a wholly revelatory image but rather a good fundamental tweaking of the material to add color depth and contrast as well as modest gains in sharpness and clarity. The film was digitally photographed, reportedly at a resolution of 3.4K. The resultant upscaled 4K image, bolstered by HDR color enhancements, produces a mild increase in sharpness, offering slightly more clear and nuanced textures across the board, whether considering London streets, attire, or faces. There's not a sudden or massive increase in raw detail, but the perceptible and predictable adds to sharpness do help bring out a little more textural finesse than the Blu-ray can offer.Most of the image's areas of improvement can be traced to the enhanced HDR color palette, which offers an expanded color gamut and a deepening of the film's colors, whether the bleary and gray/blue opening all the way to the film's finale, where abundant color has taken over. The picture sees a gradual increase in color saturation as a stylistic visual aid to reinforce themes, and by the time the picture reaches its end, the HDR colors explode with extreme vitality that is much more intense and agreeable than the Blu-ray, where blue skies, green grasses, and colorful balloons offer greatly improved depth and contrast. The animated sequence is likewise a beneficiary mid-film, where the pastels enjoy the greater color depth and improvements to finely tuned contrast. Even the bleaker blue and gray scenes and locations enjoy added color depth, as do some of the warmer interiors, such as inside Wilkins' office at the bank. The UHD handles would-be problematic areas, like a few scenes featuring dense fog, with nary a hiccup or sign of banding. Light noise remains but no other encode or source flaws are apparent. This is not a significant upgrade over Blu-ray, but fans will appreciate the added sharpness and color boost the format provides; this is certainly the definitive home video version of the film.
Credit: blu-ray.com
Audio Quality
Mary Poppins Returns' Dolby Atmos soundtrack is not radically different from the counterpart Blu-ray's DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 lossless soundtrack. It requires the now obligatory volume increase from calibrated reference listening levels. The track is proficient in all areas, though certainly not magnificent in any area. It's cheerful and carefree, offering plenty of surround usage in all of its key scenes and smaller moments alike, whether whimsical and magical adventures or when recreating city bustle and bank lobby din in chapter 11. The previous chapter yields one of the more prominent examples of overhead usage in the movie when Poppins and the children meet Topsy in her rotating room. The track never makes fully discrete use of the top end, but the added channels do create a fuller sense of spatial awareness and immersion in more involved scenes. Music is lively and clear with appropriately wide front end engagement and a healthy allotment of back channel support. The subwoofer chimes in to support a few canon shots used to signal time in the film. None of the blasts are prodigious, but they do offer enough of a low end push to satisfy the moment's sonic requirements. Dialogue is clear and well prioritized for the duration. It plays from a natural front-center position.
4K Bluray details
VideoCodec: HEVC / H.265
Resolution: Upscaled 4K (2160p)
HDR: HDR10
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Audio
English: Dolby TrueHD 7.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
French: Dolby Digital Plus 7.1
Spanish: Dolby Digital Plus 7.1
4K Ultra HD
Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD-66, 1 BD-50)
Digital
Movies Anywhere
Packaging
Slipcover in original pressing
Embossed print
Playback
4K Blu-ray: Region free
2K Blu-ray: Region A, B