I write a lot about streaming here on T3, which in turn means that I watch a lot on streaming platforms, but over the last year I've been on a somewhat predictable journey that's led me back to physical media. I'm not anti-streaming, per se, since I can see how access is important, but I'm now very much converted to the church of discs being better.
The big difference comes when you have a properly high-quality TV and, even more so, a good sound system – with these two elements in place, you'll start to see and hear the difference between a stream and a disc, if you pay attention. For a good few months, I've been experimenting with that upgrade on modern movies.
The 4K disc (and the accompanying 1080p Blu-ray for comparison) confirmed that even films from eras ago, with monaural single-channel soundtracks, can be a total treat when you have them on a physical format.
His Girl Friday is a classic of its harem-scarem rom-com genre, set all on one afternoon and evening as Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell dice with each other as a huge journalistic story unfolds around them. It's a classic in the truest sense, and very much the sort of largely indoor movie that might make you wonder if it really shines that much more with a 4K upgrade.
Well, having watched half the movie in 1080p and half in 4K, and compared them pretty closely, the difference was way more noticeable than I thought it would be. Expressiveness was far clearer on faces, costume details were easier to detect, and film grain was still present but less obscuring.
The sound, meanwhile, has also been lovingly treated, lossless despite being monaural, and its clarity was clearly upgraded on the 4K disc. All of this underlines what you can't always get when streaming – total control over the version you watch. Most of us just take the one we can get for free, whichever service it's on, and don't question the details.
Of course, in the case of The Criterion Collection, this goes a step further, in the form of a lovely booklet with an essay placing the movie in its context, as well as a host of extras on the discs (including a whole different movie, The Front Page, adapting the same stage play).
This doesn't stop a 4K disc of this ilk from being a collector's item to a degree (since it's launched at £30), but it really underlines that even movies that wouldn't sell Imax tickets are still worth seeking out in the best quality you can find them in.
Plus, it's confirmed for me just how valuable I find extras like interviews, documentaries and explainers. They're the exact thing missing from almost any streaming experience, outside of occasional featurettes on Apple TV. I never realised this was something I missed from physical releases, but I'm going to be unable to forget it now that the scales have fallen from my eyes.
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