The Merchandise GuideBlu-ray: UK
Compiled by Martin Willey
The Merchandise Guide
Anderson Entertainment. Announced 18 April 2025 (originally scheduled for July 2025), pre-order 13 September 2025, released 15 December 2025. £29.99
This is a UHD disc ("ultra high definition", also known as 4k). Some Blu-ray players support both Blu-ray and UHD (eg Playstation 5), but note that you need a 4k screen and an HDMI 2 cable. Older "4k" players and screens may not be able to play a recent disc; common symptoms are a blocky picture and muted colours. Unlike DVD/Blu-ray, there is no region coding for UHD discs.
"Steelbook" is the trademarked name for a metal disc case, similar to a standard DVD keep case, used for collector's editions. According to the pre-order, this includes an "O-card" (we have no idea what that is) which animates the cover art (presumably makes the Eagles move?).
This is a new 4k scan of the film prints. The Blu-ray image is 1920x1080 pixels; UHD is 3840x2160 pixels. The improved resolution may not be obvious even on a 4k screen, but would be visible on a high quality projection system. 1970s film stock had a coarse film grain, which may show up at this resolution. See Space: 1999 film history.
The other advantage of UHD is much higher colour resolution. DVD and Blu-ray have 8-bit colour, while standard UHD uses 10-bit colour (HDR10 and HD10+), or 12-bit (Dolby Vision, which this disc uses). The basic HDR10 has static metadata, which means colours do no not adjust scene by scene; HDR10+ and DolbyVision have dynamic metadata, adjusting for each shot. HDR10+ and Dolby Vision titles and streams include HDR10 data so they can be played on HDR10 monitors, although this is not optimised. This is also display dependent; on high-end systems the colour will be more impressive, but older systems (including the Playstation) the colours can be muted and disappointing.
The sound also has a new 5.1 surround mix, in addition to the original mono track.
The restoration was by Silver Salt Restoration, founded in 2017.
The episode is mastered to be noticeably darker than previous releases, with more saturated colours. The caveats noted for UHD above all apply: on an older or less capable UHD screen, this is unimpressive and arguably worse than the Blu-ray, darker with poorer colour and visible film grain. On a large high-end UHD screen it is a clear improvement, although definitely dark and with film grain. Space scenes look particularly good.
For a collectors edition, the extras are a little thin (no booklet, no photo galleries, no new audio commentaries, no 16:9 version...).
The original Gerry Anderson audio commentary (from the 2005 Network DVD release) is included
There is a featurette about the 4k restoration
The ITVX documentary Space: 1999 50 Years Out of Orbit is included.