HEVC H.265, as technology People & Technology

HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding), also known as H.265, is the video compression standard used on all UHD Blu-ray discs. It succeeds the AVC/H.264 codec used on standard Blu-ray, offering roughly double the compression efficiency — meaning it can deliver 4K resolution (2160p) at bitrates that fit on a disc, where AVC could not.

On UHD Blu-ray, HEVC encodes are typically 10-bit color depth with either HDR10 or Dolby Vision metadata. The codec supports both SDR and HDR content, but in practice all UHD Blu-ray releases use it for HDR presentation.

For catalog film transfers scanned at 4K from original camera negatives, HEVC is the delivery codec — the quality ceiling is determined by the scan and grading, not the codec. Reviewers sometimes note the average bitrate of an HEVC encode as a proxy for quality, though bitrate alone is not a reliable predictor of visual fidelity.

In the wiki

Film	Page	Summary
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)	Kino Lorber 4K UHD (Invasion of the Body Snatchers)	HEVC H.265 at 2160p/24hz; High Def Digest called it "stunning, near-reference"
Blow Out (1981)	Physical Media Releases (Blow Out)	HEVC H.265 on BD-66 dual-layer disc; rated among the best 4K renderings of a 1980s film