DIS Season 4 Blu-ray

Region A cover
Blu-ray Disc release
Series:	Star Trek: Discovery
Season:	Four
No. of episodes:	13
No. of discs:	4
Run time:	666 minutes
Director:	Various
Region A release date:	6 December 2022 (North America)
Region B release date:	5 December 2022 (UK) 7 December 2022 (France, Australasia) 8 December 2022 (Germany) 16 December 2022 (Benelux) 9 January 2023 (Scandinavia)
Rating(s):
Language:	English (DTS-HD MA 5.1)
Subtitles:	English SDH, French, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Spanish, Swedish
Dubbed:	French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish (all Dolby Digital 5.1)
Reference:	ASIN B0BBY9YQSC ASIN B0BG8SWT73 (Region A, SteelBook®) ASIN B0BG6288KP (Region B, UK) ASIN B0BG5ZNYYC (Region B, UK SteelBook®) ASIN B0BGJ24HJN (Region B, France) ASIN B0BCXLQWMG (Region B, Australia) ASIN B0BGN68MDZ (Region B, Germany) EAN 8719372016060 (Region B, Benelux) EAN 7333018025455 {Region B, Scandinavia)
Year:	2022
Region B cover

SteelBook® contents

Star Trek: Discovery – Season Four is a Blu-ray Disc release, featuring the complete fourth season of Star Trek: Discovery in 1080p high-definition. The set was released in North America on 6 December 2022, along with near-concurrent international releases. The release came packaged as the standard four-disc holding plastic snap-case in a cardboard slip-over sleeve.

A limited SteelBook^® edition accompanied the standard release(s).

2022 SteelBook^® edition

Region B UK back cover

Region B Australia cover

While in a very few cases still being marketed as region-restricted, the releases are in actuality region-free as this has by 2022 become standard practice for the Blu-ray format – explaining the unified contents for all regions.

Disc contents[]

Background information[]

• As with the previous three releases, this release features the same amount of special features as its DVD counterpart, constituting something of a break in release policies as the Star Trek franchise had until 2017 favored the Blu-ray format with the inclusion of more special features. Quite conceivably this had been an intentional franchise attempt to avoid the 2014 "second VAM controversy" that had followed in the wake of the home video format releases of the first two alternate reality films.
• Unlike the previous previous season release, this release was again a near simultaneous release for all regions, as the franchise no longer had to take the interests of former first-time series streamer for the rest of the world outside North America, Netflix, into account because the franchise had already pulled the series from that streaming service on the home market earlier that year, with the rest of the world to follow in 2023 before the debut of season four.
• That being said however, by turning Discovery into an exclusive for the conglomerates own Paramount+ streaming service, meant that the fourth season had initially only been available for (legal) watching in those territories around the world where Paramount+ had been operational in the first place, which at that point in time were not that many in actuality. Fan outcry, backed by moral support from Discovery's cast and crew, caused the franchise to make season four available for free on the conglomerate's online service Pluto TV in those foreign territories without Paramount+, but this was essentially an empty gesture as it too was only available in a very small number of countries. To make matters worse for fans, many Paramount+ subsidiaries which were launched on international markets afterwards, opted not to stream Discovery, which most conspicuously included SkyShowtime, launched during the late-2022/early-2023 period in continental Europe. Having been unavailable to the majority of the international fanbase, this home video format became the very first actual opportunity for them to watch the season legally, well over a year after the season had debuted in the home market.
• Even though Discovery's fourth season had become the second television production, after Star Trek: Strange New Worlds's first season, to be wholly produced to 4K HD 2160p resolution standards by using the new 4K+ ultra high resolution ARRI Alexa cameras, [1] a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray release was never contemplated by the franchise, contrary to the May 2023 one for Strange New Worlds. This may have been due to, besides the generic societal trend of dwindling physical home video sales, the continued skepticism of the series by the critical fanbase, which has remained unabated since its debut, again in stark contrast to the much better received Strange New Worlds – and the most likely reason why the latter-day foreign Paramount+ subsidiaries opted not to stream the series at all, yet again in stark contrast to Strange New Worlds which was part of their inaugural catalogs. The Blu-ray and its DVD counterpart releases are therefore in essence to their respective resolution downscaled release variants.
• This particular release is one of the few individual Star Trek releases followed by the professional industry site The Numbers and for which domestic US home video format sales are known; The Numbers has reported that by November 2023 domestic sales had been realized of a mere US$2.8 million for both this and its DVD counterpart releases, with sales virtually coming to a complete standstill thereafter. [2] The for a Star Trek production seemingly disappointing sales could be explained by the sharply divided fan reception the series had originally engendered and continued to do so as touched upon in the preceding point. However, there were by this time also generic societal trend issues at play, which had nothing to do with the fan's perception of Discovery, additionally explaining the continuing diminishing trend of physical home video format sales (see: main article), which for this particular release was actually only less than half of what the previous series season home video format sales had achieved and about a sixth of the series season one debut release.

External links[]

• Review at TrekMovie.com
• Review at TrekCore