The first thing you’ll notice when looking at this new 4K presentation is the abundant amount of newfound detail. You’ll now see even more detail in the new 4K UHD Blu-ray. The picture quality is much brighter and sharper, with a perfectly solid black and more precise white. The color palette is way more vibrant now. This improvement results from using a 35mm color interpositive in this 4K scan. Additionally, it’s important to factor in the addition of HDR (high dynamic range).

Hairs stand out more now in 4K, the fabric on clothing looks more realistic, and it just genuinely looks fantastic. Every minute detail is now there, to behold in 4K, along with a healthy amount of film grain left intact. The result is a 4K visual presentation that feels truly cinematic.

Overall, in its debut to 4K UHD Blu-ray “Tommy” certainly manages to deliver. I would argue it is a perfect video presentation in 4K UHD. This is the best that this 1975 film has ever appeared, in terms of quality, on home video. That said, it should come as little surprise that this earns an exceptional 5 rating for video quality.

“Tommy” on 4K UHD Blu-ray includes lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround, DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Quintaphonic, and DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo sound. This marks the very first time that a 2.0 stereo lossless sound mix has ever been available for the film. 

NOTE: The Quintaphonic sound mix is listed as 5.0 but is delivered via a lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround sound encoding. This means the LFE channel is there. Still, it is not active. Hence, it technically displays as 5.1 surround. Quintaphonic sound originally utilized only 3 channels of stereo sound to convey a 5-channel mix. Here, it’s using an empty LFE track in a discrete 5.0 mix as originally intended. The original 2010 Blu-ray with its 5.0 mix did at least show up as DTS-HD Master Audio 5.0 on my AV receiver. Yet, even that old 5.0 mix (on modern hardware) somehow still ends up decoding it in a 5.1 configuration.

Now, on 4K, this new encode of the 5.0 mix is indeed in a 5.1 container. It’s just not really in that configuration and is “5.0” in reality. There is nothing wrong here with that mix. It’s just that it does contain an LFE channel, for the subwoofer. But that “.1” channel is entirely silent, and that’s by design.

I managed to briefly speak to Shout! Studios about this matter. They had this to say:

“The 5.0 Quintaphonic audio is housed in a 5.1 DTS-HD MA encode with an empty LFE track, so it is playing back as-intended. We just double-checked this on the RSP check disc to confirm. A few years ago, we were able to encode these odd audio configs as-is — 4.1, 3.0, 5.0, etc. However, due to issues with some home set-ups not being able to decode these configs correctly we began housing all of them in 5.1 encodes.”

The 5 channel Quintaphonic mix is a slightly unusual listening experience, but certainly proves to be worth giving a chance. Meanwhile, the lossless 5.1 surround and 2.0 sound mixes prove to be very impressive. I’ll focus primarily on the 5.1 mix here.

The first thing you’ll notice about the 5.1 surround mix is the excellent amount of rear channel usage. The rear channels are mostly used for carrying the music and sound effects. The front (left & right) channel speakers are where the majority of the music and sound effects are delivered. The center channel speakers are used for dialogue and vocals during musical numbers. There’s a very nice amount of LFE to be found at times, which you’ll feel via the subwoofer. This is a surround mix that manages to do a rock opera (musical) like this justice. I have to say I am very impressed by this 5.1 lossless mix.

You get three different lossless listening options here. This is going to leave fans of the movie and The Who extremely pleased with the sound presentation. All of the musical numbers here sound superb, no matter which mix you choose. Overall, “Tommy” on 4K UHD Blu-ray earns itself a very respectable 4.75 rating for audio quality.