Each year many of us write up our own ‘must-watch’ list of the hottest movies of the year, based on which films win best picture, which ones have the best actors in them, or which ones are said to have the best director. This season, don’t just make your list based on the TV show award winners, choose some other great 4K movies too.
Which best picture 4K movies are available?
If you’re looking to add to your movie collection with some of the candidates for best picture 2019, you’re in luck. BestBuy.ca has titles like Black Panther,
Bohemian Rhapsody (star Rami Malek is also nominated for a best actor award), A Star is Born (Bradley Cooper get a nod here too), and The Green Book.
Other top movies that are award contenders are coming soon in 4K, like The Favourite.
But there’s a legion of other 4K movies available too, including superhero flicks (Captain American: The First Avenger and Aquaman), fantasy films (like Fantastic Beasts) and kids’ films like Ralph Breaks the Internet. Chances are, if you want to find it, Best Buy has it.
What is 4K?
If the last TV you bought had a frame or bezel as wide as your hand, you need to know there’s been some major improvements to TV! And more and more Hollywood directors are choosing to shoot their movies in 4K because it makes for a much more hyper-real video picture. So here’s what you need to know about 4K…
4K is all about the pixels. Millions of pixels. Millions more than the next best TV which is 1080p HD. If you think of a TV screen as a giant grid made up of teeny tiny, mostly invisible squares, a 4K image has about 4,000 horizontal pixels (that’s where the name “4K” comes from). In total, it has about 8 million pixels on the screen, or about 4 times as many as HD TV.
The difference between the two resolutions is similar to the jump in resolution quality and sharpness from SD (480 lines high) to HD (1080 lines high) back in the day. Or from black and white to colour. It’s that significant.
As an aside, you may also come across the term Ultra HD, or UHD when shopping for a 4K TV. Those three terms are interchangeable when talking about this technology. While a group of industry insiders officially dubbed the format ‘Ultra HD’ or UHD a few years back, the term 4K has been in use far too long for people to give it up. And it’s an easy shorthand in our 180 character world.
What do I need to watch 4K movies at home?
In order to watch 4K content you need three things:
- Content made in 4K
- A 4K TV set
- A 4K streaming device, DVD/Blu-ray player or other peripheral (if your 4KTV doesn’t have this function built in)
- *also worth looking at is making sure you have a good solid Wi-fi signal, if you’re going to stream, and upgrading your router if you need to
If you don’t have one of these things, you won’t be able to view 4K video properly.
By the way, if you’re wondering why you’d want to own the physical media (the Blu-ray Disc or DVD) when you can stream, check out the case for that in our blog, Why a DVD player is still essential for every home theatre.
Coming Soon: what movies are coming out in 4K?
There are also some blockbuster films coming out in theatres in 2019, and of course it won’t be long after that they’ll be available for you to add to your collection. I’m thinking of Avengers: Endgame, Captain Marvel, and the new Lion King.
Now’s the time to get your home theatre ready! Upgrade that old TV, score yourself a 4K Blu-ray or DVD player, collect the winning films from the past year, and you’ll be ready for action!
