Journey to Space 4K (2015) Ultra HD 2160p REMUX

Discover how NASA's shuttle program has led to its exciting new era of space exploration. Learn about the important role of the International Space Station. Uncover what NASA and the space community are working on, and the challenges they face to carry out bold missions such as capturing asteroids and landing astronauts on Mars. Narrated by Sir Patrick Stewart.

Journey to Space 4K (2015) Ultra HD 2160p REMUX Review
This two disc version of Journey to Space contains a 4K UHD Blu-ray disc offering Journey to Space with an HEVC / H.265 encoded 2160p transfer in 1.78:1, and another standard Blu-ray disc offering AVC (2D) and MVC (3D) encoded 1080p transfers in 1.78:1. With such a glut of choices, there's quite a bit to discuss in this assessment of the release's video quality in its various versions.
The 4K UHD version offers superior levels of detail and some almost awe inspiring gradations of celestial hues in elements like its reproductions of images from the Hubble Telescope. (The 4K UHD disc offers an option to view the documentary with either HDR or SDR, again the first time I've personally encountered this in my admittedly brief time reviewing 4K UHD discs.) As is discussed in the really well done if way too brief Behind the Scenes featurette, Journey to Space was cobbled together from an almost insane number of different formats, including everything from 65mm to newer digital capture to archival video from days of yore, and was scanned at up to 11K (and, no, that's not a typo). With the wide array of source elements in mind, clarity, sharpness and grain structure (when existent) are all highly variable, leading to a fairly heterogeneous look. The increased resolution tends to point out some of the flaws of the older footage especially, notably some brief black and white elements from some astronaut adventures on the moon. The documentary "cheats" in a way by having a lot of the archival footage play out in what amounts to a "picture in picture" window within the frame (see some of the screenshots accompanying this review for an example), something that aids in masking the disparity in clarity in various source elements. Colors are often bold and vivid, and the CGI, while pretty rudimentary at times, is precise and sharp looking, albeit minimally detailed. There was only one slight moment of quasi-judder or image instability that I noticed, during a brief tracking shot back from a NASA crane, where the manufacturer's name shook very slightly. There was another very brief moment of shimmer on the solar panels of the International Space Station, something that was more apparent in the 3D viewing experience than the 4K UHD.

The footage of the space shuttles in transport to museums was nice.

The footage of the space station was mostly the same footage from Space Station 3D in IMAX from 2002. Too much recycled footage. I don't understand why they don't have much ISS IMAX footage from the 13 years since.

Animations of a projected future mission and footage of testing newer equipment to be used on future missions were interesting.

Overall, I recommend it as a good inspirational film, especially if you haven't seen Space Station 3D. It's a more complete story of the current value of NASA, commercial space program, and the short term future of space exploration for the next couple of decades.