I’m a big fan of physical media, and I have multiple shelves in my house dedicated to my Blu-ray collection. In fact, I don’t have enough shelves for everything, so there are quite a few areas where I just have movies stacked on top of each other. What doesn’t help this growing problem is having to rebuy discs just to get some features that weren’t on older ones.
In case you’re not familiar, I’m a huge fan of Dolby Vision, and it’s one of the things I get most excited about with my 4K discs. Dolby Vision isn’t available on regular Blu-ray, or any HDR at all, so it’s a sizable jump from Blu-ray to 4K Blu-ray. The problem is that there are often reprints of discs that add Dolby Vision to a movie that didn’t have it before. Jurassic Park is an example of this, and that means there are two different 4K Blu-ray discs to pick from.
The 2026 release comes with a Dolby Vision scan, and it’s included with the 4K steelbook set of the original trilogy. The good news there is that you’re guaranteed to get it if you’re picking up the steelbook, but there’s also a standalone release if you just want Jurassic Park. That means you’re essentially gambling and hoping you’re buying the right version. If you go on Amazon, you’ll see both variations for sale. I fear that people won’t pay a lot of attention and just end up buying what’s cheaper. In this case, the Dolby Vision version is cheaper, at least at the time of this writing, so that’s good.
It’s just confusing to the average person
No need to be like this
I’m somebody who likes to read Blu-ray reviews, but not in the way you’d think. I’m not particularly interested in what somebody thinks of the movie itself, but I’m instead much more interested in how a movie looks. I’m interested in the color grading, the way HDR is implemented, and if there’s too much (or too little) film grain. It’s because of reviews that cover things like this that I’m even aware of different versions of the same movie.
In some cases, it’s easy to tell the difference between the versions, but not necessarily the differences between the discs themselves. For example, there’s a 4K release of Halloween that was released back in 2018 and was then followed up by a 2021 4K release. These two releases are from Lionsgate and Shout Factory, respectively. The Shout Factory release has a special edition box, while the Lionsgate version is more akin to what you’d typically see from a Blu-ray. Both of them have a Dolby Vision scan, but as the Blu-ray.com review points out, the latter version gets the film looking more like its theatrical release instead of straying away from it as previous releases did.
In the same way as Jurassic Park before it, these distinctions are important to know, and the fact that these discs can differ like this is an annoyance that doesn’t have to exist. In some of these cases, it’s especially frustrating because later releases might be missing features. When The Last Jedi hit 4K Blu-ray, it came with a Dolby Vision version. The later release included in the Skywalker Saga collection doesn’t have Dolby Vision anywhere in sight. You’d think a definitive collection like that would include the best version of a film, but that’s not the case here.
Maybe it’s personal preference
A necessary evil
If we go back to that Halloween example, there might be a lot of people out there happy with the movie looking less like the theatrical version. While I might not be one of those people, I don’t necessarily see the problem with offering a choice. I have the Lionsgate version, and I haven’t really felt like I’m missing out by not having the Shout Factory version, even if I have other films in the franchise from Shout Factory. I don’t like to rebuy movies, so I try to avoid that when I can. I suppose that’s why I’m sticking with this version of Halloween even if I might like the newer one better.
It’s also important to keep options open when a new scan is dreadful. The Terminator 2 4K Blu-ray is a notorious example of having too much digital noise reduction (DNR), and it makes the film look very unappealing. Then again, there are people who absolutely hate seeing film grain in any form, so that probably looks great to them. This has been a common complaint among James Cameron 4K releases, as it happened to Titanic and Aliens, although neither of those is quite as notorious as Terminator 2. In this case, many people prefer the basic Blu-ray over the 4K, so it’s not like I want to see a newer version completely replace an older one. With that in mind, I guess it’s a difficult spot to find yourself in, and I’m not sure what the actual answer to my problem is.
