Video Quality
Spectre offers easily the most dramatic UHD upgrade over any of the four Daniel Craig Bond films. The picture is gorgeous, a perfectly filmic, visually robust viewing experience that features an organic, complimentary, consistent, and critical grain structure. It's beautifully rendered and supportive from beginning to end. The picture enjoys a firm boost in texture clarity and fine detail over the Blu-ray. The increase is obvious everywhere but it is perhaps nowhere as noticeable as on character close-ups, where pores are dramatically more detailed, hairs sharper, and other skin details appreciably more clear. The various environments -- from the bright and sunny expansive open to intimately low light and very warm interiors -- enjoy superbly robust accuracy and total clarity.
The Dolby Vision color grading is also of great benefit for the film. While there's no wholesale overhaul to the palette, there is a great feel for tonal solidification and enhanced accuracy. While there's a slight green tint to the image, there's no mistaking the bolder, deeper, truer tones, particularly whites which find positive foundational brilliance and integrity, whether crisp and bright overlay titles or fallen snow in Austria (both can be seen simultaneously at the 52:57 mark). The Dolby Vision color further enhances blacks, adding depth and integrity without veering into crush, even in the darkest and most challenging shots. In general, Dolby Vision strengthens the palette, adding a fairly substantial feel for overall tonal accuracy, fullness, and clarity throughout the expanded spectrum. Combined with the fairly substantial increase in overall image clarity and sharpness, this one's fairly special and in every way a very good and thorough upgrade from the Blu-ray, the best of the four Craig Bond films.
Credit: blu-ray.com
Audio Quality
With some exceptions it's standard practice for studios to release films -- new and not-so-new -- to the UHD format with either a Dolby Atmos or DTS:X soundtrack. Skyfall is one of those exceptions. For this UHD, MGM has simply repurposed the legendary DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 lossless soundtrack from the previously issued Blu-ray. Some fans might bemoan the omission, but in truth there's absolutely nothing wrong with the 7.1 presentation. It's every bit as dynamic, large, and fun as a contemporary Bond soundtrack should be, and even lacking the added overhead channels there are no obvious gaps in coverage or areas where more speakers might have greatly benefited the track beyond adding some very minor nuance. In fact, even at 7.1 only, this is one of the fullest, more robust, most dominantly immersive, clear, and powerful soundtracks ever released to market. Please click here for a full review from the 2016 Blu-ray.
4K Bluray details
Video
Codec: HEVC / H.265 (42.47 Mbps)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR10
Aspect ratio: 2.38:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Audio
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1
French: DTS 5.1
Spanish: DTS 5.1
German: DTS 5.1
Italian: DTS 5.1
Czech: Dolby Digital 5.1
Hungarian: Dolby Digital 5.1
Polish: Dolby Digital 5.1
(less)
Note: Spanish DTS=Castellano
Subtitles
English SDH, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Hungarian, Korean, Mandarin (Simplified), Mandarin (Traditional), Norwegian, Polish, Swedish (less)
Discs
4K Ultra HD
Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD-66, 1 BD-50)
Playback
4K Blu-ray: Region free
2K Blu-ray: Region A, B