Arrow

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.

Original matrixed Dolby Stereo: Arrow  4K Blu-ray or Image Entertainment LaserDisc

(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.

> StudioCanal 4K Blu-ray has solid encode but controversial colors by Hiventy

> Shout! Factory 4K Blu-ray (small caveat to both UHDs: the original song The Damned - "Dead Beat Dance" has been replaced by Straw Dogs - "Young, Fast Iranians" over the end credits in the print made available to Shout! Factory/Arrow) (caveat for Arrow: missing the Zombie subtitles and the workprint found on the Shout! Factory release)

Comparison between Arrow and Shout! Factory: https://slow.pics/c/iOrdhnra

Germany NSM Blu-ray

Germany NSM Blu-ray has the unaltered Mono track with Dead Beat Dance intact.

UK Arrow > US

Arrow Blu-ray has better encode than Criterion

UK Arrow 4K Blu-ray in December

Subtle difference in encoding to the Criterion in encoding, trading blows in different shots, with Plaion taking a slight edge with less highlight blocking

1993 MGM LaserDisc/2000 Region 1 MGM DVD

Criterion's 2.0 sounds muffled due to noise reduction and EQ.
Plaion's 2.0 lacks bass and has a very bright EQ, more resembling the 5.1 remix. Plaion’s 2.0 doesn't have any filtering unlike the Criterion, see https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=23831289&postcount=110

There is a newer 4K restoration by L’Immagine Ritrovata, which should be of better scan quality. The 4K restoration used on all current 4K disc releases stems from a low-quality Cintel scanner. The newer restoration has yet to be released on home video.

UK Toy Robot 4K Blu-ray in October

2026 Arrow 4K Blu-ray (part of a trilogy box set)

Shout! Factory 4K Blu-ray has the original mono

Shout! Factory 4K Blu-ray > Disk Kino/WCL China import

review: Disk Kino