Films

Better than 2022 Shout! Factory 4K Blu-ray due to poor encode and heavy DNR (review)

Old Disney Blu-ray is better than new 4K Blu-ray due to excessive DNR

Old Universal Blu-ray is better than new 4K Blu-ray which has excessive DNR

Old Paramount Blu-ray better than new 4K Blu-ray: smeary grain/detail, poor contrast

4K Blu-ray and New Blu-ray has lossless TrueHD, Old Blu-ray just has lossy Dolby Digital

Old Universal Blu-ray is better than 2019 4K Blu-ray: black crush, color is off, DNR has been applied whereas on Shaun and World's End it has not

(see video/audio notes)

The original master is of poor quality, blurry with some damage and bad levels, which the 4K remaster improves upon, with better detail in compression. Unfortunately, the 4K master has significant issues with color posterization, making it look like poor quality digital video rather than 16mm film. Comparison between masters, Carlotta/Tokyo Shock clip

Well Go does not include the dub.

The 2.0 on the 4K Blu-ray is a downmix.

Includes original quintaphonic (5.0) mix as well as a modernized 5.1 remix.

Includes the original matrixed Dolby Stereo mix and an alternate 5.1 mix. The original mix is a lot more balanced overall, but the 5.1 greatly expands the soundstage and makes the live music much more immersive. Review

French 4K only inclues the original stereo.

French 4K doesn't include English subtitles for the French lines spoken in the film.

The audio track on the new 4K restoration sounds flat and lifeless, both its low and high frequencies were significantly attentuated.

Caps by BR user Donald McDonald. The encode looks absolutely spotless even in the highlights and without Dolby Vision filling anything in.

Criterion is entirely unfiltered and sounds significantly more detailed than previous tracks, see Blah-ray.

2025 BFI Blu-ray > Criterion Blu-ray, much better encoding (caps)
Criterion seems to have done additional adjustment to the original grading

Both France Capricci and Japan Blu-ray are worse than Criterion and BFI.

Criterion Blu-ray largely sounds better, but attentuates away some low-frequency ambient noises.
BFI Blu-ray has hum, dropouts, pops, noticable patching and beeping, but has extra low-end detail in a few spots.

Here are some screenshots that include the Cohen Blu-ray and the poor Germany 4K with terrible fake HDR. David’s DV grade is way more subtle and doesn’t blow out the highlights

The original mix has better dynamics range. The 5.1 tracks on the SF release are downmixes.

Target exclusive 3 disc DVD have extras omitted from the Shout! Factory release

Radiance UK Blu-ray (caps)

Twilight Time Blu-ray or MGM NTSC DVD for the original mono mix

• Shout! Factory 4K only has a stereo downmix (which sounds muffled, as do the surround tracks)

• Twilight Time Blu-ray has the mono track with seemingly the best fidelity, but its dynamic range has been heavily compressed

• MoC UK Blu-ray has a proper dynamics and good fidelity, but bizzarely, everything is repeated after a few miliseconds, rendering echoey and metallic

• MGM NTSC DVD has been denoised and has had a strong EQ applied and sounds muffled as a result, but it retains proper dynamics

• Koch Media DE BD had poor dynamics and wrong pitch

• Analog 1986 US LaserDisc sounds poor
  

Perhaps the digital JP LD would be better.

Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray is a fine release with no glaring encode issues, the new master is also fine but graded to look quite dim in HDR/DV. Unsure whether that's really respectful to the source

Old Warner Bros US release is inferior.

Sony 2022 boxset or 2024 VHS packaging has Dolby Vision, 2019 Sony 4K Blu-ray is HDR10 only.

But compression is not very good. The two cuts are (by mistake?) separate videos on one disc.

Also see review