Best Blurays IconBest Blurays
Cast
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Jason Ronard

Jason Ronard

6 Films

Jason Ronard

6 Included Films

1080p Blu-ray
Best English-Friendly:

Warner Archive Blu-ray

Best English-Friendly:

Warner Archive Blu-ray

UHD Blu-ray
Best Video:

Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray's source is provided by Paramount has had DNR applied which affects the inherently soft looking film pretty strongly for at least a third of the running time

Best Video:

Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray's source is provided by Paramount has had DNR applied which affects the inherently soft looking film pretty strongly for at least a third of the running time

To Live and Die in L.A. poster
Letterboxd
UHD Blu-ray
Best English-Friendly:

 Arrow UK 4K Blu-ray (damage removed, improved color/HDR, and best audio) or Capelight DE 4K Blu-ray (best compression but no damage removal and LaserDisc audio from Arrow)

Best Video:

Arrow UK 4K Blu-ray >
Capelight DE 4K Blu-ray  Kino Lorber US 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 release has the damage and other issues plus frequent noise due to the lesser encoding.

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

Best Audio:

Original matrixed Dolby Stereo: Arrow  4K Blu-ray or Image Entertainment LaserDisc
(Arrow is a port of the LD 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 BDs 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 LD 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 BD included the original stereo mix, but with excessive noise reduction rendering it much less detailed. Kino 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.

Best English-Friendly:

 Arrow UK 4K Blu-ray (damage removed, improved color/HDR, and best audio) or Capelight DE 4K Blu-ray (best compression but no damage removal and LaserDisc audio from Arrow)

Best Video:

Arrow UK 4K Blu-ray >
Capelight DE 4K Blu-ray  Kino Lorber US 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 release has the damage and other issues plus frequent noise due to the lesser encoding.

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

Best Audio:

Original matrixed Dolby Stereo: Arrow  4K Blu-ray or Image Entertainment LaserDisc
(Arrow is a port of the LD 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 BDs 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 LD 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 BD included the original stereo mix, but with excessive noise reduction rendering it much less detailed. Kino 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.

UHD Blu-ray
Best English-Friendly:

WB 4K Blu-ray

Best Video:

WB 4K Blu-ray see comparison https://slow.pics/c/e4V4RORi

Best Audio:

WB 4K Blu-ray has original stereo and sounds better than US LaserDisc and about the same as earlier Japan LaserDisc.
WB 4K Blu-ray Atmos has worse fidelity than the stereo as expected.

Additional Info:

4K Blu-ray is missing featurettes from the old Blu-ray

Best English-Friendly:

WB 4K Blu-ray

Best Video:

WB 4K Blu-ray see comparison https://slow.pics/c/e4V4RORi

Best Audio:

WB 4K Blu-ray has original stereo and sounds better than US LaserDisc and about the same as earlier Japan LaserDisc.
WB 4K Blu-ray Atmos has worse fidelity than the stereo as expected.

Additional Info:

4K Blu-ray is missing featurettes from the old Blu-ray

UHD Blu-ray
Best Video:

Eagle Pictures Italy > StudioCanal UK, better compression than StudioCanal

Red Heat poster
UHD Blu-ray
Best Video:

Eagle Pictures Italy > StudioCanal UK, better compression than StudioCanal

UHD Blu-ray
Best English-Friendly:

Paramount 4K Blu-ray

Best English-Friendly:

Paramount 4K Blu-ray

6 films