Westworld: Season Two 4K Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		5.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.5

Westworld: Season Two 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

Fidelity

Reviewed by Michael Reuben January 13, 2019

As with Season One of its hit HBO show, Warner is releasing Season Two of Westworld on both Blu-ray and UHD, even though HBO's broadcasts are limited to 1080i. But there's a big difference this time around. Season One's 4K presentation was something of an afterthought. As best as I have been able to determine, the film source for Season One was scanned at 2K and finished in SDR, so that the 4K UHD was the product of up-rezzing and the HDR grading was a last-minute "polish". The resulting image didn't offer any meaningful improvement over the standard Blu-ray, and the UHD's major attraction was a Dolby Atmos remix.

But series co-creator Jonathan Nolan has reportedly become a fan and supporter of the UHD format—a passion he shares with his brother, Christopher—and post-production on Westworld's second season anticipated its eventual presentation in 4K, with noteworthy results. Once again, the UHD's soundtrack offers a Dolby Atmos remix of the show's original 5.1 track, with improvements similar to those experienced with Season One.

For a discussion of Westworld's mind-bending Season Two, please see the standard Blu-ray review. I have done my best to keep the "Feature" description spoiler-free for those new to Season Two, but if you haven't seen the show's first season, skip both that review (and, to be safe, this one) and go here for an introduction.

Westworld: Season Two 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

To reiterate what I said about Season Two's standard Blu-rays: Westworld continues to be the rare contemporary TV show shot on film. The principal cinematographers for Season Two were John Grillo (Preacher) and Darran Tiernan (Star Trek: Discovery ), but arguably the most critical contributor to the show's distinctive look was colorist Shane Harris of the Encore facility owned by Deluxe. The footage from each shooting day was scanned at 4K by Encore and color-corrected by Harris in both SDR and HDR, in consultation with the cinematographers and showrunners, with the goal of producing masters suitable for broadcast, Blu-ray and UHD. According to Harris, care was taken to preserve the look of Season One for sequences set in familiar environs like the mountains, forests and deserts of Westworld itself and the underground control rooms, fabrication facilities and programming bays located within the formation known as "the Mesa". However, for entirely new locations like Shogun World and Raj World, Harris and the cinematographers aimed for new looks, with Shogun World subjected to a digital version of the "bleach bypass" technique from the days of analog film to desaturate colors, shifting the image toward black-and-white, and Raj World rendered warmer and more golden. Several other new environments are given their own distinctive palettes, but these cannot be described without spoilers.

The combination of 4K scanning and a separate grading for HDR has produced images of noticeable superiority and refinement on these three 2160p, HEVC/H.265-encoded UHD discs in direct comparison to the standard Blu-rays (which remain superb). Fleshtones are more subtly varied, and facial details are tighter and better resolved. The same is true of the multiple wardrobes seen in the Westworld theme park, as well as in Shogun World, Raj World and the real world outside. Similar improvements in subtlety and definition are visible in outdoor vistas of rock, forest, prairies and distant mountains. The darkness of the underground facilities is darker and more finely graded, with the scattered bursts of color (especially red) popping out more noticeably. The differences between Season Two's 1080p and 4K versions may not be night and day, but they are immediately evident, unlike the Season One UHDs, where one had to stare closely and struggle to spot any improvement.

Note that these discs also include Dolby Vision encoding, which I have not viewed.

Westworld: Season Two 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Let me begin by saluting the producers of Season Two for resisting Warner's usual Stupid Disc Authoring (SDA™) that includes a DTS-HD MA 5.1 track to which the disc defaults. The UHDs for Season Two have a single English-language track: a Dolby Atmos remix of the original 5.1 soundtrack heard on HBO's broadcasts and the standard Blu-ray. One can perhaps fault the producers for not providing Atmos on the standard Blu-rays, but one cannot accuse them of wasting space on a redundant lossless DTS track. While there appear to be executives at Warner who labor under the delusion that such a track is needed for backward compatibility, the Westworld 4K discs provide an eloquent rebuke to such technical ineptitude.

As for the Atmos remix itself, the track offers advantages similar to those found on the Season One UHDs, with notable improvements in the localization and individuation of specific audio elements in the show's detailed sound mix. Environmental background noises are more distinct from each other, while foreground action is more noticeably separated into individual components, without losing the sense of a coherent soundfield. Once again, some of the most interesting enhancements occur in the rendering of Ramin Djawadi's memorable score, where specific instruments were already being nudged to left or right in the 5.1 mix, but in Atmos, these shifts are accentuated.

With Season One, I noticed a definite increase in volume with the Atmos remix, but Season Two's discs appear to have addressed that imbalance.

Westworld: Season Two 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Disc 3 of the set contains the same extras (in 1080p) discussed in the Blu-ray review. The set also contains the three standard 1080p discs, as well as a digital code.

Westworld: Season Two 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Unlike Westworld's Season One, where there was little to recommend the 4K presentation beyond a more refined sound mix, Season Two's UHDs provide a distinct visual upgrade, which should be observable even at medium screen sizes and will certainly make an appreciable difference on larger video systems. As far as I know, HBO does not stream in 4K (at least not yet), but that hasn't stopped the show's creators from embracing the latest technology for home viewing. As fans continue to scrutinize and unravel Season Two's mysteries, the UHDs offer the best available option both sonically and visually and are highly recommended.