Dr. No (1962)
Adventure, Action, Thriller • 1h 50m
Director: Terence Young
Cast: Sean Connery, Ursula Andress, Joseph Wiseman, Jack Lord, Anthony Dawson, Zena Marshall, John Kitzmiller, Eunice Gayson, Bernard Lee, Lois Maxwell, Peter Burton, Yvonne Shima, Michel Mok, Marguerite LeWars, William Foster-Davis, Dolores Keator, Reginald Carter, Louis Blaazer, Colonel Burton, John Hatton, Byron Lee, Timothy Napier Moxon, Malou Pantera, Diana Coupland, Nikki Van der Zyl, Adrian Robinson, Bob Simmons, Milton Reid, Peter Evans
Best video release
WB 4K Blu-ray, despite prevalent frozen grain
Additional info
UHD tiers
About the film
Agent 007 battles mysterious Dr. No, a scientific genius bent on destroying the U.S. space program. As the countdown to disaster begins, Bond must go to Jamaica, where he encounters beautiful Honey Ryder, to confront a megalomaniacal villain in his massive island headquarters.
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Director: Guy Hamilton
Director: Terence Young
WB 4K Blu-ray despite frozen grain
Director: Cary Joji Fukunaga
(for original forced subtitles font)
IMAX sequences have not been released on home video to date
Directors: Val Guest & Ken Hughes & John Huston & Joseph McGrath & Robert Parrish
Video format: 4K Streaming
4K Streaming
Sources: 007homemedia.blogspot.com (opens in a new tab)
Warner Bros Blu-ray is the best Blu-ray even though it has color and major contrast issues
4K SDR master on streaming seems to be from the same scan and looks like it has less tinkering than the Blu-ray
Caps of 4K SDR master: 007 on Home Media: On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)
Director: Terence Young
US Arrow 4K Blu-ray > UK StudioCanal 4K Blu-ray, better color grading
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
The 4K discs in both Criterion and Imprint sets are FiM encodes, but low-passed. The compression is better, but some of the grain is lost. Difference is pronounced in screen caps, but not likely to be noticed during playback, without a reference to compare it to. Comparisons
All discs use the same source transfer. It's not of the highest quality, and it includes some slight distortion, looping, clicks, pops, and hum. Criterion cleaned it up for their release, but unfortunately also lost a lot of fidelity in the process.
MGM NTSC DVD doesn't seem to have some of the more prominent distortion and has slightly different EQ but is otherwise the same.
Director: Sidney Lumet
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · slow.pics (opens in a new tab) · Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
1.85:1: Kino Lorber 4K / Capelight 4K
1.66:1: Criterion 4K but low pass filtered
Comparison between the 4Ks, Criterion on the AR choice
Other discs have unnecessary filtering and sound worse, the difference isn't substantial but audible
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Included in the Complete Kubrick box set with FiM encode of the same master from the Universal release without the filtering.
DTS:X mix on Universal 4K Blu-ray most closely approximates original surround mix
Criterion DVD and Universal 4K Blu-ray has additional features not found on the Criterion 4K Blu-ray
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Janus and thus Criterion likely to release 4K Blu-ray in 2027
Director: Hal Ashby
Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
See caps https://slow.pics/c/lVdZaG0W
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
StudioCanal's 4K release is similar in encode quality, but has significant glitches in multiple frames. See comparisons 9-16 here: https://slow.pics/c/YkSVb3Ey
The pitch of the StudioCanal 4K's English audio is too high
Criterion has more extras than StudioCanal.
Director: Jacques Tati
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
StudioCanal 4K Blu-ray (part of Jacques Tati boxset releasing December 2026)
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