Carl M. Leviness

A new 4K restoration from a 35mm nitrate print from and a 35mm composite duplicate negative.

Spain Universal Blu-ray is from a very soft DVD-era transfer; caps

Criterion 4K Blu-ray is a new transfer by UCLA, with a bit more high end detail

The earlier transfer used on the Spain Universal Blu-ray and MoC DVD is a bit boomy with boosted bass. The 1999 Criterion DVD uses an even earlier transfer with noticable artifacting and less detail.

Spain Universal Blu-ray has older MoC extra "Kent Jones and Dan Sallitt on Trouble in Paradise" with MoC watermark, and no other extras

The 4K discs in both Criterion and Imprint sets are FiM encodes, but low-passed. The compression is better, but some of the grain is lost. Difference is pronounced in screen caps, but not likely to be noticed during playback, without a reference to compare it to. Comparisons

All discs use the same source transfer. It's not of the highest quality, and it includes some slight distortion, looping, clicks, pops, and hum. Criterion cleaned it up for their release, but unfortunately also lost a lot of fidelity in the process.

MGM NTSC DVD doesn't seem to have some of the more prominent distortion and has slightly different EQ but is otherwise the same.

The Criterion Complete Kubrick and Imprint 1953-1957 sets include remastered BDs. All standalone releases are from an earlier master.
Arrow UK Blu-ray has an exclusive isolated score & effects track. Kino Lorber and Imprint have an exclusive commentary each.

An undeniably significant improvement from the BD yet still severely flawed. See DFIC's review.

Criterion 4K Blu-ray > Capelight/Kino Lorber which has heavy noise reduction and opening snare hit is missing, Capelight is slightly better encoded than Kino Lorber

But still a bit overly noise-managed.

1984 CBS/Fox Hi-Fi VHS maybe better?

For the most part, the mono track available on the BD and UHD is fine, but there's an 8 minutes long segment which sounds terrible with artificially expanded frequency range causing very audible artifacting. The 5.1 remix doesn't have that issue. Sample