Disciples of Shaolin Blu-ray Screenshots (Patreon)

Video

As presented by 88 Films, the master for this Blu-ray draws some ire. It's too smooth, even with grain still intact to a degree. Disciples of Shaolin isn't an unnatural mess, although periods of overly waxy imagery do appear, especially wider angle shots. Faces turn to mush, whereas in close, textural qualities can break free from the digital smoothing. Luckily, the encode is stout enough as to not add any additional faults.

The rest is all positive. Sensational color saturation provides lift to the flesh tones, then decorating various set designs through bold signage, decor, and other touches. It's gorgeous, plus wholly natural, if with a little boost from modern scanning.

A minimal crush to the black levels looks to be more on the source materials and cinematography than the disc. This means black levels maintain consistent power, bringing dimensionality to the frame, then aided by bright contrast. Boldness is plentiful.

Audio

Provided in both an English dub and Mandarin (both mono, both uncompressed DTS-HD), the original language track is overly loud. Keep the volume down a few points in preparation.

There's nothing memorable to the mastering. Static persists through much of the dialog, an age defect, not mixing. A simple score strains the treble and lacks bass.