Captain America: Civil War 4K Ultra HD Bluray

Video Quality

Captain America: Civil War's 4K/HDR UHD release is quite similar to the companion day-and-date disc for The Winter Soldier in terms of its overall appearance and the level of upgrade over the Blu-ray. Like that film, Civil War was digitally photographed and finished at 2K. The UHD offers a noticeable increase in sharpness around every frame. Clarity is quite good, with characters, clothes, environments, and props all appearing nicely sharp and refined, showcasing both essential elements and minor support odds and ends with reasonably improved definition over the older 1080p image. Basic adds to sharpness bring out finer facial details that present more intimately defined skin textures, improved clarity on individual strands of hair, and better visibility of finer clothing and costume details. The image's more robust construction extends to every corner and throughout every location. Texturally, this is a solid improvement over the Blu-ray. It's not a substantial improvement, but Disney's presentation does stabilize and enhance the picture a good bit in all areas of concern.

The HDR color improvements are just as critical to the UHD's visual success. There's no remaking or rebranding the movie here, just a simple improvement to color depth and saturation, tonal nuance, and contrast. Colors are deeper as a rule, ranging from costumes to skin tones, from props to deep shadow details that find much more depth without crushing out anything within. The image combines improved saturation, and a slightly darker overall appearance, with more brilliant brights that accentuate explosions, colorful costumes, lipstick, red hair (Natasha, basically), and any and every point of color interest. Whites appear significantly more crisp and intense, including the various location title cards that fill the screen throughout the film or several examples of crisp white attire, such a T-shirt a young Tony Stark is wearing in chapter three. The HDR colors are tastefully applied, enhancing, not recreating, the palette. The UHD exhibits no source or encode anomalies of note; even noise is kept in check. This is certainly not the format's pinnacle but it makes for a solid, well-rounded upgrade over the Blu-ray. Fans should be pleased.

Credit: blu-ray.com

Audio Quality

Captain America: Civil War's UHD disc features a Dolby Atmos soundtrack. Per Disney norms, the track lacks volume at calibrated reference levels and requires an upward volume adjustment (around 7 db) to fully enjoy. Once it's there, the track's dynamics and details emerge. The track is fairly active generally and enjoyably chaotic, particularly during action scenes. The stage always feels expansive, whether considering the widely presented music or environmental fill, but finds its stride in action, where frenzied details harmoniously merge to create a balanced, deep, and precise symphony of comic book movie action. Sounds swing and swoop, part of the track's good directional and location-specific sound elements that clearly and forcefully, as the situation warrants, draw the listener into the movie's most exciting, and as the case may be in this film, important, scenes. An explosion in chapter seven offers a quality heft and weighty push through the stage, and various thumps in chapter eight offer some well-rounded bass, too. The low end adds bit of critical weight to music as well. It's a well rounded track, carrying both action and light environmental details with equal attention to clarity and positioning and immersion. The overhead channels offer little of discrete significance, but action is certainly enhanced, as are some smaller details, such as when when Stark addresses an MIT audience in chapter three. General dialogue is clear and well prioritized. It's firmly positioned in the front-center channel.

4K Bluray details