I spend too much money on 4K UHD discs — but it’s worth it

Introducing Essential Expenditures, in which Sherwood asks people about things in their life they overspend on but can't live without.

In the spring of 2020, I felt something I hadn’t felt in 36 years: the feeling of watching “Gremlins” in the theater. There is no way to prove this or to break down the sense memory further. It was an audio-visual wormhole I accessed on my couch while watching the movie in 4K resolution via a UHD Blu-ray disc. I know I felt it because I felt it. The lights are what got me, the way the slick Chinatown alley looks stained with Kool-Aid as a result of the neon above, the fire burning around a recently decapitated Gremlin’s head, the glow from the bank’s overturned Christmas tree illuminating Phoebe Cates from below as she monologues about her Santa-suit-clad father getting caught in a chimney and dying on Christmas Eve. The hit of nostalgia was as strong as when I smell something reminiscent of my late grandfather’s aftershave or hear a song I danced to at my eighth-grade semiformal.

This viewing experience was quite the upgrade from when I first watched “Gremlins” on VHS as a kid (and then, at least the next 20 times, on a copy of the rental  made by connecting two VCRs). I grew up collecting physical media — vinyl, cassettes, CDs, VHSs, DVDs, Blu-rays. Now I have my UHD Blu-rays. 

The Ultra High Definition Blu-ray rolled out in 2016, coinciding with the rise of 4K televisions. These discs were born into a world already hooked on streaming, which likely hindered their growth. According to reports, the nearly 30-year-old DVD continues to outsell the Blu-ray, which outsells the UHD Blu-ray, and sales are slumping across the board. But we love a niche format. The big draw comes from the quality they offer: uncompressed audio and superior picture. Without getting too technical, 4K resolution means more pixels than HD, which allows for more detail. The transferring of film negatives to discs is not always a smooth or satisfying process, but at its best it can transmit a theater-quality image in one’s living room. The jump in technology from the rounded, blurred screens so ubiquitous in the ’80s to today is shocking. Granted, many of the streaming sites offer (some) movies in 4K resolution, but even then discs have a technical leg up. More data is transmitted via disc, and Blu-rays are not at the mercy of one’s Wi-Fi speed. 

I own around 120 of them. I know that’s a big number, but it doesn’t feel hoardy to have but three bookshelves devoted to these discs. What it appears to the outsider’s eye is another matter, I suppose. At any rate, this number gives me ample movies to rewatch. UHD Blu-rays tend to sell in the $30-to-$40 range, even deluxe editions from boutique labels (l snapped up last year’s “Showgirls” set for $40). Maybe a quarter of my collection consists of gifts and promos, which means I’ve spent about $3,150 on 4K discs. I cringe at that number — it’s the price of a shitty car! — but I spent around $1,700 on cable and streaming services last year, and all that stuff is prone to disappearing. Yes, I subscribe to virtually every streaming service available, and still there’s no guarantee I can watch whatever movie I want to. Unfettered access is technically possible, and yet practically elusive. Case in point: last year, for my podcast, my pod partner and I watched and recapped every Madonna movie. The majority were not on streaming channels, meaning I had to fork over even more money to rent them via Amazon Prime or Apple. Some of them (like “Bloodhounds of Broadway” and “Girl 6”) weren’t even available on those services and required bootlegging (don’t tell anyone).

Having and holding things is nice, especially in a world where accessing media is almost as easy as turning on a faucet and said media is devalued commensurately. A stack of unwatched 4K discs is an analog watchlist that stays within eyeshot until you move through it, get sick of looking at it, or your partner tells you to clean up the living room. The availability of movies on streaming services cycles rapidly. When the Criterion Collection-Turner Classic Movies streamer FilmStruck ceased operation, in 2018, after only two years, much of the Criterion Collection became temporarily inaccessible online. Much of what I wanted to revisit from the collection, however, sat on my shelf. No economics, programmer, or algorithm is going to get in the way of me watching what I want to watch when I want to watch it, if I own it physically. 

Not every movie is available on UHD disc. Old ones are regularly rolled out, and the release schedule provides opportunity for reacquaintance. I almost certainly wouldn’t have fallen in love all over again with Sam Raimi’s live-action comic book from 1990, “Dark Man,” if it hadn’t been issued on a 4K disc in February. The aesthetic standards for these film transfers are to replicate the director’s intentions in all their period-specific tones and textures. This can make a grody movie grodier — the original “Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” from 1974, was shot on 16-mm film and has so much grain on the UHD disc that I own that it looks like it’s infested with lice. The eye-gouging of Lucio Fulci’s “Zombie” (1979) is eye-popping. And “Showgirls” in its full tacky glory makes director Paul Verhoeven’s seemingly face-saving comments that he was actually trying to make something ridiculously over the top (“too many lights, too many idiotic things, and too much Vegas”) seem credible. Sometimes, the powers that be do go in to try to clean up images, much to the dismay of 4K enthusiasts. James Cameron’s noise reducing and AI sharpening on recently issued 4K discs for “The Abyss,” “Aliens,” and “True Lies” was highly controversial in the 4K community. But mostly the idea is to transmit a “filmic” experience.

One could argue that it’s still cheaper (and less clutter-causing) to watch stuff in 4K on streaming services, and that even with the data limitations, it’s hard to tell the difference between that and the image afforded on disc. A YouTube channel did just this with a side-to-side comparison and found that sometimes the streaming option was brighter and clearer. Most eyes probably wouldn’t notice the difference (outside of compression artifacts, which are unavoidable in streaming, modern data rates being what they are), but I like to think that mine is refined, with a particular fixation on texture. Is a 4K disc’s picture really that much better? Does vinyl actually sound “warmer”? Does expensive wine taste better? (It does.) Yes, yes, yes. Once again, film teaches us that if we can feel it, we can believe it.

Rich Juzwiak is a writer in New York.