Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		5.0
Overall		4.0

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

The Secret of Slughorn—in HDR

Reviewed by Michael Reuben April 11, 2017

To accompany the Blu-ray and 4K releases of the latest chapter in J.K. Rowling's wizarding world, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Warner Brothers has begun remastering all eight Harry Potter films for UHD, adding yet another version to the series' plethora of existing editions. Harry's odyssey is being issued in two parts, with the last four installments appearing first. The reverse order is dictated by technical considerations, as the earliest chapters in the franchise were not completed on digital intermediates, which means that the negatives have to be rescanned and regraded for 4K and HDR.

All four of the films in this first group—The Order of the Phoenix, The Half-Blood Prince and The Deathly Hallows: Part 1 and Part 2—were shot on film with post-production on digital intermediates at 2K. Accordingly, all of them arrive on UHD as up-conversions, with visual benefits principally derived from HDR encoding (as well as some subtle, and not so subtle, tweaking of the palette). As a sweetener, Warner has remixed all four soundtracks from the original PCM, Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD MA 5.1 to the object-based DTS:X, providing an audio upgrade for those who have the appropriate hardware. Included with each UHD disc are two standard Blu-rays comprising the so-called "Ultimate Editions" of the Potter films that Warner began releasing in 2009. A digital copy completes each package.

For further discussion of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, please see the previous reviews of the film's original release and "Ultimate Edition" by Kenneth Brown. The Feature score has been retained from prior reviews.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

(Note: Screenshots included with this review are 1080p captures from the standard Blu-ray disc. Watch for 4K screenshots at a later date. The Video score has been retained from prior reviews.)

According to the best available information, Warner's 2160p, HEVC/H.265-encoded UHD presentation of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has been sourced from a 2K digital intermediate, which limits the prospect that the format's superior resolution will reveal additional detail. Still, the HDR encoding provides subtle but noticeable improvements over the standard Blu-ray, courtesy of enhanced contrast, black levels and highlights. As with The Order of the Phoenix, the effect is most noticeable in large, crowded expanses, e.g., the Room of Requirement where Draco is repairing a Vanishing Cabinet hidden amongst stacks of other objects, the crowded Christmas dinner table at the Weasleys with Harry and others joining the whole family, or the huge field of reeds into which Harry runs (and others follow) when the Weasley home is attacked by Bellatrix Lestrange and her posse.

The palette of The Half-Blood Prince on UHD continues the trend toward darkening and desaturation by director David Yates that can been seen in all four of his Potter films, even though they are the work of three different cinematographers—Slawomir Idziak for The Order of the Phoenix, Bruno Delbonnel for this film and Eduardo Serra for The Deathly Hallows: Part 1 and Part 2. Here, as in The Order of the Phoenex, the UHD's creators seem to have taken Yates's preference for darkness even further, and the effect is most pronounced in the lengthy scene in a seaside cave where Harry and Dumbledore look for a Horcrux at the bottom of a poisonous fountain. On Blu-ray, the scene was already drained of color to a point that approached black-and-white photography, but on UHD the last vestiges of color have been removed, including the slight reddish tint of Harry's jacket. With the deeper blacks, added contrast and enhanced highlights of HDR, the scene is now strikingly stark in its focused intensity, like something from a classic horror film—which is appropriate, since the scene concludes with a horde of zombie-like Inferi swarming to the attack. The remainder of Half-Blood Prince appears to have been regraded with a similar eye to adding darkness and reducing color, though nowhere as obviously noticeable as the cave sequence. As in Order of the Phoenix, the brightest colors are reserved for magic, including the mystically-induced flames that Bellatrix and her gang ignite to encircle, and then destroy, the Weasley home.

[System calibrated using a Klein K10-A Colorimeter with a custom profile created with a Colorimetry Research CR250 Spectraradiometer, powered by SpectraCal CalMAN 2016 5.7, using the Samsung Reference 2016 UHD HDR Blu-ray test disc authored by Florian Friedrich from AV Top in Munich, Germany. Calibration performed by Kevin Miller of ISFTV.]

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Previous releases of The Half-Blood Prince contained a 5.1 soundtrack (in either Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD MA), but the UHD arrives with a DTS:X soundtrack that, on audio systems not yet equipped to decode that format, should play as DTS-HD MA 7.1. The previous mix was a first-rate soundtrack, as noted by Kenneth Brown's review: "Blazing flame serpents, a cursed young girl, a battle of wands, a crowded marketplace, Dumbledore's teleportation, a rush of recalled memories, a horde of undead guardians, an enraged master wizard, a harrowing field chase and many other absolutely electric magic-infused scenes take full advantage of the LFE channel and rear speakers." The DTS:X encoding refines these effects and expands the listening space even further. The Dementor attack that opens the films is even more active and enveloping, and the destruction of the Millennium Bridge carries even more sonic impact. The Christmas attack on the Weasley residence is even more forceful, with an expanded sense of the attackers' flight and a larger auditory sense of the reedy field into which Harry pursues Bellatrix. Dumbledore's reassembly of the Muggle residence where he and Harry first find Horace Slughorne (Jim Broadbent) sounds like it's happening all around you, as glass tinkles into coherent shapes and pottery and bric-a-brac clatter back into their rightful place. Similar enhancements are audible throughout, but none of them comes at the expense of dialogue intelligibility or the reproduction of Nicholas Hooper's score.

It should be noted that "object-based" sound formats are designed to be adaptive, and DTS:X in particular touts its ability to adjust to a wide variety of speaker configurations. Still, the degree to which the new mix produces audible benefits in the home theater will no doubt vary depending on individual sound systems and speaker arrays. For reference, I listened to The Half-Blood Prince on a 7.1.2 speaker configuration, consisting of front left, right and center, and two each of side, rear and "height" speakers, plus subwoofer.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The UHD disc contains no extras. The included pair of standard Blu-ray discs contains the same extras listed in the prior review of the "Ultimate Edition". The Special Features and Extras score from that review has been retained.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Warner's release of Harry Potter on UHD is a welcome addition to the format, even with the limits on resolution that are inherent in the source. But the most interesting potential lies ahead, as parts 1 and 2 of the series, The Sorcerer's Stone and The Chamber of Secrets, undergo new 4K scans that should yield even greater benefits, compared to their Blu-ray counterparts. In the meantime, the UHD presentations of the series' back end is a worthwhile and recommended upgrade, especially for anyone who doesn't already own the "Ultimate Editions".