Cypher (2002)
Thriller, Science Fiction • 1h 36m
Overview
An unsuspecting, disenchanted man finds himself working as a spy in the dangerous, high-stakes world of corporate espionage. Quickly getting way over-his-head, he teams up with a mysterious femme fatale.
Director: Vincenzo Natali
Cast: Jeremy Northam, Kristina Nicoll, Nigel Bennett, Kari Matchett, Lucy Liu, Timothy Webber, David Hewlett, Joseph Scoren, Stephen Brown, Arnold Pinnock, Jocelyn Snowdon, Boyd Banks, Dan Duran, Valerie Buhagiar, Roberta Angelica, George Santino, Nelson Tynes, Denis Akiyama, Vickie Papavs, Murray Furrow, Scott McLaren, David Bolt, Len Carlson, Les Porter, Bruce McFee, Judy Sinclair, Shanly Trinidad, Anne Marie Scheffler, Mike O'Shea, Andrew Moodie, Malcolm Xerxes, Matthew Sharp, Peter Mensah, David Bryant, Alec Stockwell, Matt Cooke, Marcus Hutchings, Sevaan Franks, Steve Jackson
Director: Andrzej Żuławski
Second Sight 4K Blu-ray > Le Chat Qui Fume 4K Blu-ray > Umbrella 4K Blu-ray see caps
Second Sight uses the same Le Chat Qui Fume master, but encoded by FiM and applied Dolby Vision. Umbrella's encoding is visibly worse than Le Chat Qui Fume.
Mondo Vision Blu-ray and Anchor Bay DVD have an alternate audio track with an unauthorized soundtrack.
Director: Andrzej Żuławski
Second Sight 4K Blu-ray > Le Chat Qui Fume 4K Blu-ray > Umbrella 4K Blu-ray see caps
Second Sight uses the same Le Chat Qui Fume master, but encoded by FiM and applied Dolby Vision. Umbrella's encoding is visibly worse than Le Chat Qui Fume.
Mondo Vision Blu-ray and Anchor Bay DVD have an alternate audio track with an unauthorized soundtrack.
Director: Alejandro Jodorowsky
Umbrella 4K Blu-ray, part of Alejandro Jodorowsky Collector’s Edition, scheduled for November 2026 release
Severin 4K Blu-ray has bad encode
Director: Alejandro Jodorowsky
Umbrella 4K Blu-ray, part of Alejandro Jodorowsky Collector’s Edition, scheduled for November 2026 release
Severin 4K Blu-ray has bad encode
Maybe Umbrella Australia 4K Blu-ray (FiM encode), Plaion Germany 4K Blu-ray, or Pony Canyon Japan 4K Blu-ray. All other existing 4K Blu-rays have terrible compression: https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=21423337&postcount=173
The master is heavily DNR'd.
Maybe Umbrella Australia 4K Blu-ray (FiM encode), Plaion Germany 4K Blu-ray, or Pony Canyon Japan 4K Blu-ray. All other existing 4K Blu-rays have terrible compression: https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=21423337&postcount=173
The master is heavily DNR'd.
Director: Richard Stanley
Umbrella AU 4K Blu-ray, encoded by Fidelity in Motion
Director: Richard Stanley
Umbrella AU 4K Blu-ray, encoded by Fidelity in Motion
Director: Michael Haneke
2025 Curzon UK Blu-ray or 2013 TF1 FR Blu-ray (caps)
Curzon has a slightly better encode and preserves all the noise of the digital source, but ends up obscuring actual detail in some shots. Both are quite good, only caveat being that the TF1 disc is slightly cropped and has a black bar on top.
2025 Curzon UK Blu-ray
2008 Artificial Eye UK and 2025 Umbrella AU discs have incorrect pitch. TF1 FR disc is missing 7 minutes of audio in the left channel. See spectrograms.
Director: Michael Haneke
2025 Curzon UK Blu-ray or 2013 TF1 FR Blu-ray (caps)
Curzon has a slightly better encode and preserves all the noise of the digital source, but ends up obscuring actual detail in some shots. Both are quite good, only caveat being that the TF1 disc is slightly cropped and has a black bar on top.
2025 Curzon UK Blu-ray
2008 Artificial Eye UK and 2025 Umbrella AU discs have incorrect pitch. TF1 FR disc is missing 7 minutes of audio in the left channel. See spectrograms.
Director: Mamoru Oshii
Umbrella 4K Blu-ray see caps
4K restoration includes a high-fidelity remix sourced from new transfers of original magnetic elements, with inconsequential content differences from the original mono mix. Umbrella 4K Blu-ray only includes a 5.1 mixdown of the remix, other discs have it in Dolby Atmos.
Umbrella 4K Blu-ray's 2.0 track is a stereo downmix. Older BDs and LDs have the original mono mix in varying quality, but are all inferior in fidelity to the new 5.1 remix. The digital track on the Bandai/Emotion Japan LaserDisc BELL-942 is the best of the bunch.
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=23714400&postcount=159
Director: Mamoru Oshii
Umbrella 4K Blu-ray see caps
4K restoration includes a high-fidelity remix sourced from new transfers of original magnetic elements, with inconsequential content differences from the original mono mix. Umbrella 4K Blu-ray only includes a 5.1 mixdown of the remix, other discs have it in Dolby Atmos.
Umbrella 4K Blu-ray's 2.0 track is a stereo downmix. Older BDs and LDs have the original mono mix in varying quality, but are all inferior in fidelity to the new 5.1 remix. The digital track on the Bandai/Emotion Japan LaserDisc BELL-942 is the best of the bunch.
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=23714400&postcount=159
Director: Christopher Nolan
Spain Selecta Vision 4K Blu-ray
Collector's edition of a new restoration from Umbrella
Spain Selecta Vision 4K Blu-ray > other releases and old 2006 release - impressions of Selecta Vision release
Comparison of extras between different releases:
https://dvdcompare.net/comparisons/film.php?fid=999
https://dvdcompare.net/comparisons/film.php?fid=9670
Director: Christopher Nolan
Spain Selecta Vision 4K Blu-ray
Collector's edition of a new restoration from Umbrella
Spain Selecta Vision 4K Blu-ray > other releases and old 2006 release - impressions of Selecta Vision release
Comparison of extras between different releases:
https://dvdcompare.net/comparisons/film.php?fid=999
https://dvdcompare.net/comparisons/film.php?fid=9670
Director: Ted Kotcheff
Umbrella/Arrow 4K Blu-ray (FiM encode but the mastering shows signs of DNR albeit only momentarily); all other BDs pretty bad.
Umbrella/Arrow 4K Blu-ray, but whether in the correct speed/pitch is TBC.
Director: Ted Kotcheff
Umbrella/Arrow 4K Blu-ray (FiM encode but the mastering shows signs of DNR albeit only momentarily); all other BDs pretty bad.
Umbrella/Arrow 4K Blu-ray, but whether in the correct speed/pitch is TBC.
Director: Rolf de Heer
Director: Rolf de Heer
More Thriller on Blu-ray
Director: Danny Boyle
Sony 4K Blu-ray see caps
Recovers quite a bit of highlight detail, looks less harsh and clipped in the video footage than the old BD.
Dolby Atmos Remix: Sony 4K Blu-ray
Original 5.1 mix: old OOP Fox Blu-ray
5.1 on the 4K is a downmix of the Atmos remix.
Director: Danny Boyle
Sony 4K Blu-ray see caps
Recovers quite a bit of highlight detail, looks less harsh and clipped in the video footage than the old BD.
Dolby Atmos Remix: Sony 4K Blu-ray
Original 5.1 mix: old OOP Fox Blu-ray
5.1 on the 4K is a downmix of the Atmos remix.
Director: Mervyn LeRoy
Warner Bros 2011 Blu-ray
The older track sounds significantly more natural. The WAC BD uses a new mastering which sounds much worse. A lot of the dialogue sounds off, sort of echoey, garbled or even artifacted. Its overzealous click removal also erased some sounds. Its only positive is a new EQ that brings out the bass more making some of the score more effective.
It seems that the new mastering likely uses AI "enhancement" or some other form of aggressive filtering, resulting in extended peaks despite losing real high end detail (most pronounced on sample 3).
Samples (WAC is mislabeled as UHD)
Commentary is mono on the Blu-rays and panned stereo on NTSC DVD (different channels for each speaker).
Director: Mervyn LeRoy
Warner Bros 2011 Blu-ray
The older track sounds significantly more natural. The WAC BD uses a new mastering which sounds much worse. A lot of the dialogue sounds off, sort of echoey, garbled or even artifacted. Its overzealous click removal also erased some sounds. Its only positive is a new EQ that brings out the bass more making some of the score more effective.
It seems that the new mastering likely uses AI "enhancement" or some other form of aggressive filtering, resulting in extended peaks despite losing real high end detail (most pronounced on sample 3).
Samples (WAC is mislabeled as UHD)
Commentary is mono on the Blu-rays and panned stereo on NTSC DVD (different channels for each speaker).
Director: Phillip Noyce
Director: Phillip Noyce
Director: Robert Towne
Arrow includes the original Dolby Stereo mix in a matrixed stereo form, as well as a discrete 4.0 track.
Director: Robert Towne
Arrow includes the original Dolby Stereo mix in a matrixed stereo form, as well as a discrete 4.0 track.
Director: Danny Boyle
Director: Danny Boyle
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
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