Victor Romito

WB Europe 4K Blu-ray slightly better encoding than Criterion (caveat: missing Criterion extras)

Brand new HD master by Paramount Pictures – from a 6K Scan of the 35mm VistaVision Original Camera Negative

Warner Archive 4K Blu-ray is a remaster from the original VistaVision camera negaitve, FiM encode

The original mono sounds good. The Atmos remix is a mixed bag, music performances are sourced from magnetic stereo recordings and sound great, but mono dialogue/effectshas undergone destructive noise reduction and unnecessary EQ, so the jumps in fidelity are incredibly jarring.

Kino Lorber Blu-ray not only suffers from Quicktime Gamma Bug, but also has slightly worse encoding see caps comparing 0.88 gamma

The Arrow Video Blu-ray is the best iteration so far coming from a new restoration complete with great supplements and package. The original limited edition version included a second disc with the alternate 2.0:1 framed version. The primary disc is 1.85:1. Older releases pre-2008 were all in Academy ratio. 1.85 is the best compromise ratio for the visuals. As good as this release is, the master is showing its age and sadly has a number of frozen grain artifacts.

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

• See what smilebox looks like for its smilebox trailer

• See Damn Fool Idealistic Crusader's review especially why a smilebox version is preferred, for example how a letterboxd version is actually distorted

• Even if you do not prefer the smilebox version, the letterboxd version is still present on disc 1