Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 4K Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		5.0
Overall		4.0

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

Dumbledore's Army 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 Order of the Phoenix, please see the previous reviews of the film's original release by Greg Maltz and the "Ultimate Edition" by Kenneth Brown. The Feature score has been retained from prior reviews.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 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 Order of the Phoenix 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. You can see the difference immediately in the opening overhead shot of Little Whinging that zooms down to find Harry being harassed by Dudley and his pals. With the benefits of HDR, the figures on the ground are distinct and separate even at a distance, whereas on the Blu-ray they blur into the background. Similar improvements are visible in any large expanse, e.g., the dining hall at Hogwarts, where the receding tables and enchanted chandeliers seem to extend even further back, or the climactic sequence in the Department of Mysteries, with its endless aisles and towering shelves of mystical objects.

The palette of Order of the Phoenix on UHD reflects a trend that affects all four of these new versions, albeit to varying degrees. Despite the array of cinematographers—Slawomir Idziak for this film, Bruno Delbonnel for The Half-Blood Prince and Eduardo Serra for The Deathly Hallows: Part 1 and Part 2—director David Yates seems to have had a consistent vision of darkness, shadow and desaturation, with manifestations of magic typically supplying the brightest hues. The creators of the UHDs seem to have taken their cue from Yates's preference for darkness, because to the extent the film's palette has been changed, color intensity has actually been dialed down. This is readily apparent in one of Order of the Phoenix's most memorable uses of color, the pink-and-lavender wardrobe of the odious Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton), who joins the Hogwarts faculty as an agent of the Ministry of Magic (and, at least indirectly, of Voldemort). On the Blu-ray, Professor Umbridge's outfits were almost comically bright and cheerful, much like her duplicitous demeanor, but they are subtler on the UHD, so that the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher tends to blend more effectively into the film's visual fabric. The change isn't major, but it's a revealing indicator of the philosophy that appears to have guided Order of the Phoenix's HDR colorist—less color, more darkness.

[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 Order of the Phoenix 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Previous releases of The Order of the Phoenix contained a 5.1 soundtrack (in either PCM 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. As Greg Maltz noted in his original review, the 5.1 mix was already superb, featuring "excellent use of surrounds, . . . prodigious LFE content [and] great attention to detail". The DTS:X encoding refines the mix and expands the listening space even further. In the opening Dementor attack, the winds and the attackers sweep from behind and throughout the listening space. When Harry takes refuge with Dudley in a pedestrian tunnel, the sound of dripping water is even more pervasive, and the same applies to the suburban lawn sprinklers (a subtle effect, to be sure) when Harry drags the injured Dudley home to his parents. In general, the sounds of magical spells and teleporting wizards are bigger and travel with greater specificity through the listening space. The already-impressive bass extension is even deeper and more pervasive, especially in the climactic Department of Mysteries sequence, where the sonic experience is so enveloping that the shattering of glass (or whatever is on those endless shelves) seems to come from all directions. None of these enhancements come 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 Order of the Phoenix 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 Order of the Phoenix 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 Order of the Phoenix 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".