Disney Denies Ditching 4KHD
Last week we posted about the possibility that Disney was going away from 4K Ultra HD.
John Archer from Forbes.com picked up on the story and here’s his report:
I’ve asked Disney to comment on these rumors, though, and the studio has issued me with a fairly blunt rebuttal. The statement – which I’m instructed to attribute to a Disney spokesperson – reads as follows:
There are no plans to discontinue releases in a particular format. We evaluate each release on a case by case basis and pursue the best strategy to bring our content into consumer homes across platforms that meet a variety of demands.”
However, that’s not to say that collectors won’t find it difficult to procure new titles:
You can, of course, try to read all sorts of things into some of these words if you want to. For instance, maybe in evaluating each catalog release on a case by case basis Disney could decide more often than not that a title being considered don’t seem right for 4K Blu-ray.
And Mr. Archer agreed that circumstances confirm the worry that Disney isn’t overly fond of the format:
[I]t’s pretty easy, in truth, to reinforce the rumors’ narrative with other possible signs of Disney not being especially enthusiastic about 4K Blu-ray. Such as, say, its decision to ditch Dolby Vision from its 4K discs, its consistent use of BD60 discs for 4K Blu-ray releases rather than larger capacity BD100s, and the bizarre way it summarily dumped a large number of Marvel movies out on 4K Blu-ray on one day last year with minimal marketing fanfare.
However, hope springs eternal, and hopefully for collectors, 4K Ultra HD is as eternal as the content.