Frank Mills

Kino Lorber Blu-ray > MoC. Kino Lorber is made from a 4K scan of negative, the older MoC have crushed black levels.

UK Signal One, France ESC or Germany Plaion Blu-ray no comparison available online

4K restoration from Original Camera Negative

The mono on the Criterion is severely filtered resulting in it sounding incredibly muffled. It is nearly as filtered as the 2003 original Universal DVD which had extreme filtering and sounds horribly thin. The 2008 DVD remaster and original Laserdisc analog mastering are mostly left alone. The original LD master is from a worn element but otherwise sounds very natural. The 2008 DVD is the highest quality version we have without the heavy filtering and the defects of the LD master. It isn't perfect but easily the best of the main four sources by a dramatic margin. 

The existing 4K SDR restoration looks excellent, but the Criterion extras are limited and disappointing. The classic Stewart interview commentary from the LD is ported over but given a new mastering. Compared to past releases it has been very slightly noise reduced.

Imprint Blu-ray not only has the best encoding, but also has the "correct" aspect ratio compared to ClassicFlix which is horizontally stretched or Eagle Pictures which is squished see DVDBeaver caps

MoC Blu-ray > Kino Lorber > Twilight Time. Kino Lorber has slightly worse encoding than MoC, see caps, and Twilight Time is over-exposed

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.