By the Sun's Rays (1914)

Massive picture upgrade as the 4K restoration addresses the massive color fringing that has plagued all previous dated masters. Oddly the titles are a different color now.

4K restoration is a gigantic and essential picture upgrade but only available on the Kino Blu-ray reissue. No UHD has been made or announced by anyone. 

The film only exists in MGM letterbox masters and the HD version upgrades the DVD presentation. Sadly the film still needs a modern restoration and a better audio source. The master holds up very well today regardless and has a very natural appearance. The Eureka BD is far superior to the Kino Lorber in encode and extras making it easily the only version to consider.

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.

Criterion Blu-ray upgrade removes the pictureboxing of their old DVD transfer. New HD discussion extra added to the DVD supplements package and reprints the rare out of print source novel as a paperback.