Venom 4K Ultra HD Bluray

Video Quality

Venom was digitally photographed, primarily at a resolution of 2.8K and finished at 2K, unsurprising given the digital roots and effects-heavy picture. The UHD looks terrific even upscaled and offers a solid boost over the Blu-ray, a sharper, clearer, cleaner image in every way. The digital source photography shines on the UHD, enjoying a razor-sharpness and near filmic qualities that the Blu-ray cannot quite achieve, evident throughout the film but perhaps most obvious in well lit and dense scenes. A good shot for comparison comes near film's end in chapter 16 with Anne and Eddie sitting on a doorstep, the hilly San Francisco landscape around them. The UHD reveals tack-sharp details on pavement, structures, and cars, not to mention a healthy increase in clarity when the scene shifts from a broad location overview to more intimate facial portraits. The increase in clarity is not astronomical, but it is critical in terms of extracting the absolute best case scenario texturing and intimacy for the home video presentation. Even the digital effects in darker scenes manage to find another gear of clarity and complexity, revealing some of the finer details with more definition and distinction than the Blu-ray can provide.

The Dolby Vision color enhancement yields an impressive depth and distinction over its SDR Blu-ray counterpart. Skin tones are firmer, clothing hues appear more finely revealing, and the colorfully diverse array of items in a convenience store that appears in several scenes in the film enjoy more robust splash, even under the harsh fluorescent lighting which is more stabilized and less garish on UHD. Brights are shinier and more brilliant. Black levels are deep and pure, and the Venom digital effects, a combination of inky, black reflective coloring and contrasting whites, look terrific, finding a much more sinister and revealing coloring on the UHD that, combined with the increase in sharpness and digital revelation, make this hands-down the finest way to watch the film. Noise management is improved and as with the Blu-ray there are no other source or encode artifacts of note. This is a very good example of a 2K upscale digitally-sourced new release improving on the Blu-ray and highlighting the format's capabilities.

Credit: blu-ray.com

Audio Quality

Venom's Dolby Atmos soundtrack comes as close as most will ever get to joining with a symbiote. The track offers little core change from the Blu-ray's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack, maintaining the terrifically large, seamless spacing, the wonderful instrumental and effect clarity, and the prodigious bass. The added surround and overhead channels offer additional opportunity for more fluid sound movement and precise positioning, two components the track embraces throughout. Whether mundane sound effects like communication emanating via overhead speaker in chapter eight or more prominent action effects that encircle and saturate the listener such as when Eddie/Venom flees from Drake's henchmen in a key action scene partway through the movie, Venom's track encircles and envelops the listener with a tight, precise grasp that never relents. The added fill makes not a huge difference compared to the 5.1 track but an appreciable one to be sure. Combined with the exacting instrumental and effects clarity, the prodigious bass, and the reference dialogue delivery (which includes a greater sense of expansion around and above the listener when "Venom voice" speaks), this ranks as one of the better Atmos tracks on the market.

4K Bluray details