Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 4K 2007 REMUX Ultra HD 2160p

Harry Potter movie 4K blu-ray and the Order of the Phoenix 4K Blu-ray delivers stunning video and reference-quality audio in this excellent Blu-ray release. Lord Voldemort has returned, but few want to believe it. In fact, the Ministry of Magic is doing everything it can to keep the wizarding world from knowing the truth - including appointing Ministry official Dolores Umbridge as the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts. When Professor Umbridge refuses to train her students in practical defensive magic, a select group of students decides to learn on their own. With Harry Potter as their leader, these students (who call themselves "Dumbledore's Army") meet secretly in a hidden room at Hogwarts to hone their wizarding skills in preparation for battle with the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters.

For more about Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 4K and the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 4K Blu-ray release, see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 4K Blu-ray Review published by Michael Reuben on April 11, 2017 where this Blu-ray release scored 4.0 out of 5.

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 SpectracCal 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, Audio Quality 5.0 of 5
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 poter part 4 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire 2005 REMUX 4K HDR 2160P