I thought I’d have a slam dunk watching the original 1982 Tron with my son Thomas for the Film at 11 podcast this week. The kid plays frisbee and loves video games, so how could he not like a movie that combines the two things? I probably should have guessed that wouldn’t go over as well as I’d hoped.
Personally, I love Tron. I’ve watched it tons of times. I still own a deluxe Laserdisc box set that Disney released back in 1995. I think the film’s vision is something unique (even compared to its sequels) and special that I cherish. However, I also have to acknowledge that the movie’s mix of live-action, old-fashioned animation, and primitive CGI is a hard ask for an 11-year-old kid in the modern day – even one who gave The Last Starfighter a pass.
Suffice to say, Thomas wasn’t into this one. At all. He found it weird and boring, and didn’t like the story much. I’ll be honest, as a parent, that breaks my heart a little, but the kid’s got to develop his own tastes.
| Title: | Tron |
| Year of Release: | 1982 |
| Director: | Steven Lisberger |
| Watched On: | Fandango at Home |
| Also Available On: | 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Blu-ray Disney+ Various VOD rental and purchase platforms |
Video Streaming
As mentioned, I’ve been collecting copies of Tron since the Laserdisc days. In the high-definition age, Disney restored and remastered the movie for an impressive Blu-ray release in 2011 bundled in a double-feature with the home video debut of sequel Tron: Legacy. I bought both that as well as a fancy SteelBook edition of just the original Tron by itself that I imported from the UK.
Disney upgraded both films to 4K Ultra HD in 2025, promising an all-new and even better restoration of Tron that the studio promoted with misleading before-and-after demo clips that made the “before” copies look like flaming garbage. To be clear, those clips in no way represent what the prior Blu-ray actually looked like.
Nevertheless, despite still feeling pretty satisfied with the quality of the Blu-ray, I reasoned that the movie’s 65mm photography offered room for improved detail beyond the limits of 1080p resolution, and all the colors and lighting effects could make good use of HDR. I pre-ordered a copy of the 4K edition, in its own new SteelBook, and then had to wait several weeks beyond street date for Amazon to actually fulfill its backorders.
By the time my copy finally arrived, widespread reports of disc playback problems with Disney’s recent 4K UHD release of The Sound of Music left me feeling a little wary about this one. I put the disc in my UHD player and… yeah… sure enough, the damn thing glitched and froze up on me within 30 seconds of the movie starting. I couldn’t even get to the opening credits. I skipped around to different chapters and all of them have the same problem. None will play more than a minute without freezing. (Please don’t tell me to clean the disc. Trust me, I tried everything.) This thing is completely unusable.
The accompanying Blu-ray in the case is just a copy of the 2011 disc I already owned. For the purposes of this viewing with my son, we watched the provided 4K Digital Copy, which I streamed from Fandango at Home (formerly VUDU). All of my following remarks refer to that version. I trust (or at least hope) that if I can ever get a working copy of the physical media disc, the higher bit rate video and lossless audio will offer a little further bump in quality.
All of my frustrations, and a little bit of skepticism, set aside, the 4K remaster of Tron is indeed an improvement over the Blu-ray. While the Blu-ray still holds up very well on its own merits, the 2.20:1 4K image is crisper and has a bit more detail, most noticeable during fully live-action scenes set in the “real world.” Detail is harder to gauge in the world of the Grid, due to the many visual effects and composites, and especially the low-res nature of the parts with early CGI, but colors and contrast are decidedly richer and HDR makes highlights pop with more vibrancy. Given the visual design of the film, that’s a really nice benefit. The ridiculous bright orange Master Control Program spinning dreidel thing has a sort of hyper-vividness that actually makes it feel threatening now.
On the other hand, the new Dolby Atmos remix of the soundtrack has less bass than the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track on the old Blu-ray. That’s sadly not much of a surprise, given recent trends in movie audio mixing and remixing, but it’s disappointing all the same. In this particular case, it’s not too problematic. The Atmos does still have some bass, that’s even pretty effective when the Recognizer tanks come flying in, just less so than the Blu-ray. To be honest, Tron was never really a bass powerhouse in the first place. In my opinion, this is much more of an issue with the sequel, Tron: Legacy, which is more famous for its deep and powerful low-end.
Still, the Blu-ray audio for Tron sounds better to my ears than the Atmos remix, at least this streaming version of it. Frankly, the Atmos doesn’t even make much use of the overhead speakers that I could discern. Applying Dolby Surround Upmixer to the 5.1 track is almost as directional and aggressive.
[Note that I experienced some subtle but very weird audio break-up and distortion when streaming the movie from Fandango at Home using my usual Roku streaming device. That problem went away entirely when I switched to an NVIDIA Shield backup device. This may be specific to my particular equipment, but it’s also been repeatable enough that I felt it worth mentioning.]
Related
- David Warner
- Video Game Movies & TV
Note: All screenshots on this page were taken from the standard Blu-ray edition of the film and are used for illustration purposes only.
The Video File Blog 
Hey Josh…what kind of player do you have? Have you thought of replacing it with something newer?
I have a Panasonic UB820, and it has been nothing short of wonderful. I believe the “stepdown” model is the 420, and the biggest difference between the two is a lack of Dolby Vision support in the 420 which isn’t an issue with your setup. With Black Friday coming up, you could probably get a good deal on one.
If I remember correctly, Panasonic players and JVC projectors have some kind of symbiotic settings meant to optimize their respective outputs. I think there was a Sound & Vision review involving those brands that went fairly deep into the set-up and the results of pairing them together.
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I have an OPPO UDP-203, which is usually one of the most stable and reliable disc players ever built. However, occasionally I’ll run into problems on certain 4K discs like this. I’ve watched several movies in full since my failure to play Tron, and the others all worked fine. But Tron still won’t play past the first minute.
I don’t think there’s such a thing as a perfect 4K disc player. For as often as I’ve heard people recommend the Panasonic 820, just as many will complain about it being glitchy on some discs too. I really don’t want to set up a situation where I need to have two players in active use, hoping that at least one of them will work on discs the other can’t play.
What I think this really comes down to is that the 4K UHD format is extremely finnicky and has a very low tolerance for disc manufacturing errors, much more so than Blu-ray or DVD. That’s becoming more and more of an issue now that we’re down to only a few optical disc pressing plants left in the world, and quality control at them has taken a dive.
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Those are valid points…especially about the quality of the discs getting pressed.
Do you have a PS5 or Xbox Series X (I think that’s the most recent version)? The disc drive versions play back 4K discs, and you could justify getting one as it’ll play videogames too.
To be fair though, I’ve seen some pictures of your equipment rack, and you might not have any room left for a new component.
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No, I’ve mostly given up gaming, except for the retro type. The most advanced console in this house is a PS3, which has been claimed by Thomas. Meanwhile, Joseph is almost entirely focused on Roblox and Minecraft.
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Fair enough…I have a PS5 Slim, and I mostly play (good) remakes of older games.
And I just realized this: Do I get extra points (increasing my score if you will?) for recommending using a videogame console as a way to watch a movie that used videogames as combat arenas? That might be the most meta thing on this whole website…I honestly can’t remember if that’s the case or not as I’ve been hit in the head a lot. Wow…I even rhymed that last bit…
On a side note, if you haven’t seen F1 yet, you should really check it out. My wife and I saw it in the shows, and we both loved it. The disc is fixed at the scope aspect ratio so it’s safe for your setup, and because I attended SVS’s demo at Abt, I can attest the Atmos track will blow your doors off if you play it loud enough (they used the opening race scene to show off their equipment). I don’t think you’ll be disappointed, and I think your wife might dig the movie too.
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