It began, as most obsessions do, with a single corrupted pixel.

This was the truth. The raw, unvarnished truth of the performance. No compression had smoothed away the digital sweat on Jon Favreau’s directorial intent.

Inside, the smell was of mildew and ozone. Rows of industrial tape robots sat dormant, their mechanical arms frozen mid-reach. In the back, under a flickering fluorescent tube, was a single LTO-9 tape drive, humming softly. Taped to its side was a sticky note: LION_KING_2019_MULTI_UHD_BLU_FINAL_MOVIE_MKV.