Cast
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Thomas F. Duffy

Thomas F. Duffy

8 films on Best Blurays7 in 4K1 in HD

Thomas F. Duffy photo

Thomas Francis Duffy (born November 9, 1955) is a versatile American character actor, writer, musician, and athlete. He is best known for playing hippie Paleontologist Dr. Robert Burke in The Lost World: Jurassic Park and as Sam Moxon, the football loving dad in Varsity Blues. Description above from the Wikipedia article Thomas F. Duffy, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Biography from Wikipedia via TMDB

7 in 4K

UHD Blu-ray or 4K streaming

Small role · Director: Steven Spielberg

4K · Solid
Best English-Friendly & Video:

Universal 4K Blu-ray Trilogy Steelbook 2025

Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)

Video Notes:

But has more DNR than old 4K

But has more DNR than old 4K

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=23286334&postcount=7340

Small role · Director: Brian Robbins

Best English-Friendly & Video:

Paramount 4K Blu-ray

Small role · Director: Michael Winner

Video format: UHD Blu-ray

4K · Disappointing
Video Notes:

Vinegar Syndrome 4K Blu-ray has poor encoding

Small role · Director: James Cameron

Video format: UHD Blu-ray

4K · Disappointing
Best Video:

Disney 4K Blu-ray

Video Notes:

Disney 4K Blu-ray's artificial smoothening of facial textures making actors look unnatural, grain reduction and other changes to make the film look less like a product of its time

Old WEB-DL or HDTV rip for non AI version

Best Audio:

LaserDisc

Small role · Director: William Friedkin

4K · Excellent
Best English-Friendly:

Arrow UK 4K Blu-ray (damage removed, improved color/HDR, and best audio) or Capelight DE 4K Blu-ray (best compression but no damage removal and LaserDisc audio from Arrow)

Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab) · Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)

Best Video:

Arrow UK /Capelight DE 4K Blu-ray

Video Notes:

Arrow UK /Capelight DE 4K Blu-ray > Kino Lorber US 4K Blu-ray, see caps

Arrow has done additional cleanup work removing nearly all the damage in the transfer. They have massaged the color timing and HDR to try and improve what they could. The Capelight may have better encoding but it does not have these improvements. The Arrow encoding is solid and in motion there are no issues whatsoever. The Kino Lorber release has the damage and other issues plus frequent noise due to the lesser encoding.

Some scenes in the Arrow transfer are better, some are better in the Capelight.

Best Audio:

Original matrixed Dolby Stereo: Arrow  4K Blu-ray or Image Entertainment LaserDisc

Audio Notes:

(Arrow is a port of the LaserDisc track, see spectrograms) This track has the best fidelity of any release but does have some channel bleeding baked in. The 2017 2.0 on the Arrow and Shout! Factory Blu-rays was the Dolby Stereo original mix without channel bleeding but that had heavy noise reduction resulting in a very flat and underwhelming presentation. The surround winds up being lessened as well due to the processing. It's a tough choice between the two but the Image LaserDisc audio wins out because it hasn't been messed with and the impact is so unrestrained that no other version hits in the same way.

Capelight and old Arrow Blu-ray included the original stereo mix, but with excessive noise reduction rendering it much less detailed. Kino Lorber only included a painfully defective 2.0 track sourced from somewhere with limited fidelity, volume spikes and screechy high end which frequently ruins the music. The 5.1 remix on most modern release is a processed version that does not sound as good as it once did.

The best and most accurate of the 5.1 mixes is the original version from the 2003 Special Edition DVD in lossy AC3 form.

The best source for the commentaries are from the 2003 Special Edition DVD.

Small role · Director: Oliver Stone

Best English-Friendly & Video:

2025 Shout! Factory 4K Blu-ray

Best Audio:

Atmos remix: 2025 Shout! Factory 4K Blu-ray
Original 5.1 surround mix: 2007 Paramount Blu-ray (lossy AC-3 640k)

Audio Notes:

The original mix has better dynamics range. The 5.1 tracks on the SF release are downmixes.

Additional Info:

Target exclusive 3 disc DVD have extras omitted from the Shout! Factory release

Small role · Director: Roland Emmerich

4K · Solid
Best English-Friendly & Audio:

Fox 4K Blu-ray

Audio Notes:

Fox 4K Blu-ray reference sound

Best Video:

Fox 4K Blu-ray, merely okay with compression issues

1 in HD

Blu-ray or HD streaming

Small role · Director: Phil Joanou

4K · Disappointing
Best English-Friendly & Video:

UK Second Sight Blu-ray?

Video Notes:

UK Second Sight Blu-ray maybe better than all the other Blu-rays?

Australia Imprint 4K Blu-ray is disappointing with DNR and poor compression

Additional Info:

US Twilight Time and Germany NSM Blu-rays have exclusive extras

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