Now Streaming: Seven Samurai’s 4K Restoration
Back in June, I posted about the 4K restoration of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai coming out in theaters; here’s the trailer:
I just checked and the 4K version appears to be out on streaming and 4K Blu-ray. The 4K Blu-ray is available from the Criterion Collection and includes a bunch of extra goodies: two audio commentaries, a making-of documentary, “a two-hour conversation between director Akira Kurosawa and filmmaker Nagisa Oshima”, and a documentary looking at the samurai traditions and films that helped shape Kurosawa’s masterpiece.
As for streaming, here’s the situation:
- There’s a version on Max that might or might not be the recently restored 4K version. I’ve played the beginning and the titles are nice & crisp and there’s no dust & scratches. But the description doesn’t say anything about 4K and you need to subscribe to their top-tier service to get 4K streaming anyway, so who knows. It might just be a 1080p restoration — which still looks really good, to be clear. (Note: Max’s support team confirms that their version isn’t 4K. Boo. Thx @nabil-boutaleb.bsky.social.)
- Apple TV appears to have Criterion’s 4K restoration — the listing shows the “4K” icon and Criterion links directly to it from their page. And the trailer is for the 4K restoration.
- Amazon may also have the 4K version, but there’s no “4K” icon on their listing. But Criterion does link directly to it from their page.
Streaming services should be better about telling viewers exactly what they are getting. I know most people don’t care and the streamers just want to push content to eyeballs, but this is Seven Samurai we’re talking about here!
Anyway, if there are any big film/streaming nerds out there who can help me sort this out, let me know! I’d love to be as accurate as possible even if Max & Amazon don’t care. (Tbh, this kinda makes me want to buy a 4K Blu-ray player and go back to physical media…)
Comments 4
As I noted above, the Max version isn't 4K. Thanks to @nabil-boutaleb.bsky.social for the confirmation (he asked Max support).
Back when Back when Planet Earth II came out we were about to finish remodeling our living room, and I wanted to make sure I could watch that in 4k. It was important to me that the player be something I could wall mount behind the TV so it was hidden. The most affordable option I could find at the time that ticked all the checkboxes was the Xbox One S. It's a little finicky with the sound bar on the HCDP-front but it does work (the handshaking between the Xbox, the sound bar and the TV can fail if I don't turn everything on in the ideal order).
Jared powering up his Xbox + soundbar... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmHtBI5pmeQ
To be fair it almost feels that stressful when folks are sitting there watching you change the sound bar input source over and over in an attempt to force it to finish the handshaking correctly. "Just need a minute, it'll work soon I promise. Hmmm.... Is this streaming anywhere?"
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