Willem Dafoe

Arrow UK /Capelight DE 4K Blu-ray > Kino Lorber US 4K Blu-ray, see caps

Arrow has done additional cleanup work removing nearly all the damage in the transfer. They have massaged the color timing and HDR to try and improve what they could. The Capelight may have better encoding but it does not have these improvements. The Arrow encoding is solid and in motion there are no issues whatsoever. The Kino Lorber release has the damage and other issues plus frequent noise due to the lesser encoding.

Some scenes in the Arrow transfer are better, some are better in the Capelight.

(Arrow is a port of the LaserDisc track, see spectrograms) This track has the best fidelity of any release but does have some channel bleeding baked in. The 2017 2.0 on the Arrow and Shout! Factory Blu-rays was the Dolby Stereo original mix without channel bleeding but that had heavy noise reduction resulting in a very flat and underwhelming presentation. The surround winds up being lessened as well due to the processing. It's a tough choice between the two but the Image LaserDisc audio wins out because it hasn't been messed with and the impact is so unrestrained that no other version hits in the same way.

Capelight and old Arrow Blu-ray included the original stereo mix, but with excessive noise reduction rendering it much less detailed. Kino Lorber only included a painfully defective 2.0 track sourced from somewhere with limited fidelity, volume spikes and screechy high end which frequently ruins the music. The 5.1 remix on most modern release is a processed version that does not sound as good as it once did.

The best and most accurate of the 5.1 mixes is the original version from the 2003 Special Edition DVD in lossy AC3 form.

The best source for the commentaries are from the 2003 Special Edition DVD.

Arrow UK 4K Blu-ray has better encoding and extras, but the A24 US version is still very strong

Streaming has the original theatrical Dolby Atmos mix
Disney/Fox Blu-ray only has a 5.1 downmix

Kaleidescape is lossless (TrueHD 7.1), others are all lossy (E-AC-3 5.1 JOC) at varying bitrates.

Streaming: Kaleidescape > Movies Anywhere > Disney+

Umbrella 4K Blu-ray is reported to have a different, more organic-looking master without the DNR on the Lionsgate 4K Blu-ray. Encoding and possibly further mastering by FiM. Still “just” an upscale.

(Titans of Cult 4K Blu-ray has Dolby Vision)

Criterion 4K Blu-ray with B&W Extended Director's Cut and Theatrical Cut see Chris's review

Disney 4K Blu-ray has a slightly better Atmos track for the Theatrical Cut

Disney Blu-ray has a few exclusive extras not on the Criterion