Monday, 02 June 2025 22:27A Digital Bits Exclusive: Peter Weir’s MASTER AND COMMANDER is coming soon to 4K disc from 20th Century via Sony!by Bill HuntNow here’s a title I’ve known about for a while, and that I’m very excited to finally share with all of you!Longtime Bits readers will know that this film is another huge favorite of mine. And back in January of last year… not long before we first broke the exclusive news of the new Sony/Disney distribution deal here at The Digital Bits… I was invited by Disney reps to submit a list of films that I thought the studio should consider for release on physical 4K UHD.I compiled a list of fifty titles, an A-list of twenty-five, and a B-list of twenty-five more.Kevin Jarre, Kurt Russell, and George P. Cosmatos’ Tombstone (1993) was at the very top of that A-list.The third film on that A-list was Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven: Director’s Cut (2005).Both titles have now obviously been released on physical 4K Ultra HD from Disney/Touchstone and 20th Century Studios via Sony Pictures Home Entertainment—Tombstone on 4/22, and Kingdom of Heaven on 5/27. (Initial supplies of both titles are hard to come by, but I’m told that Sony is working hard to replicate more copies.)Well… now I can confirm that the second title on the list I submitted is finally coming to 4K Ultra HD as well, and I couldn’t possibly be more excited. That title is none other than…Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)Yes, indeed… director Peter Weir’s magnificent historical drama Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is finally coming to physical 4K Ultra HD later this summer—huzzah!Based on the acclaimed historical novels by Patrick O’Brian, the film tracks the exploits of Captain Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe), his friend and ship’s surgeon Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany), and the crew of the HMS Surprise as they follow their orders around the globe to pursue and capture or sink the wily French privateer Acheron during the Napoleonic Wars in 1805.Per the pattern established with those two previous releases, Master and Commander will likely come in 2-disc Steelbook packaging with the film in 4K, as well as a Blu-ray Disc, and a Digital code. I would imagine it’ll probably include Dolby Vision HDR and English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio.To be clear, that’s just an educated guess though—I don’t have any other details except that the street date will likely be sometime in August or September.My knowledge that this title is coming is based on The Bits’ longtime industry sources. And retail sites in Europe have begun to list it as well, so I can indeed confirm that it’s for real.As soon as I have additional details to share, I’ll be sure to let you all know. Watch for official word from the studio sometime in the next few weeks.In the meantime, suffice it to say that Surprise is most definitely on our side! Stay tuned...
I wonder if they'll restore the bass that was featured in the DVD release or use the neutered bass that was put on the Blu-ray?
There used to be good overlapping graphs on AVS showing the difference between the two discs, but I can't find them; they may have been subject to the Photobucket purge that happened to free accounts years ago.I did find two independent images and merged them together. The scale is slightly off, but you can still get the idea. The one on the left is from the DVD the one on the right is from the BD. On the BD graph, try not to pay any attention to the solid line, that's the result after BEQ has been applied. The bass is shown on the two dotted lines. For both graphs, the green line is peak output at each frequency, while the red line is the average level at each frequency.Master & Commander coming to 4KPeak output on the DVD is at 30 Hz, while the 30 Hz peak on the Blu-ray has been lowered to be in line with bass output at 38 Hz. Bass rolls off more rapidly after 30 Hz as well on the Blu-ray with almost nothing below 20 Hz. That's readily visible on the graphed averages.Some of the guys there went so far as to pull the DVD soundtrack and mux it with the BD video to try and get the best of both worlds.Hopefully they'll upgrade the sound to match the 4K visuals on this new release. Who knows, we may even get an Atmos remix. This is a movie that could take advantage of the format.
That's a great idea! I should do that with War of the Worlds!
That one's easy. It's one of the illustrations used on the first post of the BEQ thread on AVS: Bass EQ for Filtered Movies | AVS ForumThe Blu-ray has strong bass that goes all the way down to 1 Hz. The 4K UHD starts dropping dramatically at around 32 Hz and all but dies at 20 Hz.
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