Video Quality
The UHD's clarity is stellar. The components that make the station's exteriors, panels and readouts in the interior, everything manmade is gorgeously crisp and revealing. The UHD finds a new level of precision that the Blu-ray cannot replicate along skin, space suits, basic attire, and environments down on Earth, but it's the HDR colors where the two formats are truly distinguished. Colors pop with resplendent intensity. Whites, which are plentiful around the ISS, are eye-popping for luminance and crispness. Red stripes on a shirt seen at the 8:48 mark are much more intensely deep and bright on the UHD. Black level depth in outer space shots is first-rate, particularly when it's offset against a bright white shuttle or the blue planet below. There are a few strange background anomalies. Look at a shimmering, shaking panel at screen's top-left at the 23:42 mark. The good news is that some of the issues the Blu-ray runs into, like banding at the 14:48 mark, are rendered far less visible on the UHD. The movie looks terrific on the format. The large-format IMAX footage, presented here at 1.78:1, certainly benefits from the resolution bump and color adjustments that bring the material to life like never before. Even absent the awe-inspiring 3-D visuals from the older release, the film has tremendous value on UHD for a new kind of immersion, this one by way of top-flight clarity and stupendous color reproduction.
Credit: blu-ray.com
Audio Quality
Space Station's DTS:X Master Audio soundtrack is regularly, and fully, fantastic. The multichannel configuration only adds to the IMAX experience, offering a tremendously large, airy, fully realized presentation even from the opening sounds where it seems each minuscule detail has been hand-placed around the stage. The feel for openness, width, and depth is practically uncanny, yielding one of the most precise and positively immersive experiences one can have in a home theater in 2019. But it's not just light and precise sound details that see the track excel. Voices pepper the listening area for effect, seeming to emanate from anywhere and everywhere, while narration maintains a firmly entrenched front-center location and presents with the appropriate level of clarity and prioritization. On the opposite end of the spectrum are two of the most incredible sound moments any track has on offer. A rocket blasts off at the six-minute mark and the presentation is simply something else. The feel of powerful thrust and rushing debris (which breaks the camera lens) is spectacular. It's a rare occurrence when the combination of raw power and seemingly random excess and jumbles of noise merge in harmony to absolutely pull the listener right outside the launch. A similar effect is heard -- and felt -- in chapter five when Discovery blasts off with so much force and feeling and sounding so close that it's amazing one's skin isn't seared by the fiery blast. The track is a finely engineered masterpiece and is alone reason enough to warrant a purchase; the quality of the film and the superb 4K/HDR visuals are almost just icing on the cake.
Credit: blu-ray.com
4K Bluray details
Video
Codec: HEVC / H.265 (49.94Mbps)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: HDR10
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Audio
English: DTS:X
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
German: DTS:X
German: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1
French: DTS:X
French: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1
Spanish: DTS:X
Spanish: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 Subtitles
English SDH, Spanish
Subtitles
English SDH, French, German, Spanish
Discs
4K Ultra HD
Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD-66, 1 BD-25)
Playback
4K Blu-ray: Region free
2K Blu-ray: Region free
