George Bruggeman

4K restoration from Original Camera Negative

Indicator Blu-ray minimally better than Kino Lorber Blu-ray http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film10/blu-ray_review_158/mae_west_in_hollywood_1932-1943_blu-ray.htm

Kino Lorber 2024 Reissue Blu-ray has much better encoding than previous Kino Lorber Blu-ray, or MoC or Germany Blu-ray see caps

Arrow's deluxe presentation is a fantastic package with great supplements, art and printed materials. Sadly the master is a heavily processed Paramount affair. It has seemingly been severely grain managed and the mono audio is horribly thin when it shouldn't be. Stereo and 5.1 options are also given but they seem to be more of home video remixes. They do not have the fidelity issue of the compromised mono but also show marked differences as if they were remixed from stem sources. This seems to have suffered lesser degrees of the problems that plagued The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance's 4K master. This is the best version to date but one wishes Paramount could leave scans alone.

Same master, but less bitrate starved.

The encode on the BD is preferable to the UHD. Same master, but less bitrate starved: https://x.com/SadHillDevan/status/1530057783885721607?s=20 and see caps