4K Blu-ray

Imprint Australia 4K Blu-ray has slightly better compression than Criterion 4K Blu-ray.

The master in DV looks all but identical to the Criterion’s HDR grade. Detail-wise, FiM’s encode looks like it uncovered a tiny bit of extra high-frequency information that got filtered on the Criterion. See nicolas review

1990 Criterion LaserDisc/1993 MGM LaserDisc/2002 R2 MGM DVD are the best. See blah-ray https://blah-ray.blogspot.com/2018/01/raging-bull-1980.html

Imprint Australia 4K Blu-ray has better audio than Criterion 4K Blu-ray, from nicolas:

I believe that what’s on Imprint’s 4K is one of the good mixes MGM and Criterion released during the LaserDisc days. Music is powerful and detailed, dialogues have excellent fidelity and ambient sounds have perceptible depth. I compared the "new" 2.0 with the anemic 5.1 as well as the Criterion 4K mix and could clearly hear the improvements.

OOP Arrow LE has a bonus disc

Popeye was mixed for a failed Vistasonic system with 4 discrete tracks (L/C/R/S). That mix has never been released on home video in its original form.

The older 5.1 track appearing on older DVD/BD releases sounds excellent. It appears to be a slight upmix of the original mix, only splitting the surrounds and adding LFE. It sounds close to the old analog LaserDisc, which is likely the original mix in a matrixed form.

The 5.1 included on the UHD is a new remix which significantly differs from previous tracks. There are new foley effects all over the place. Music is jarringly spliced in from different sources. Unlike the old 5.1 which had clearly discrete surrounds, the channels surrounds overlap somewhat with the fronts here.

Details on the new mix from Paramount's former head of restoration: https://youtu.be/P-AmjqViJyE?t=788

The 2.0 tracks on all DVDs/BDs are just downmixes of their respective 5.1 mixes.

Samples

> StudioCanal UK for the inclusion of original mono, more extras

Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray maybe better than StudioCanal 4K Blu-ray?

Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray maybe better than StudioCanal 4K Blu-ray?

StudioCanal 4K Blu-ray from nicolas:
The restoration is excellent and looks magnificent in 4K HDR. It’s a tasteful grade that comes across very naturally film-like. Couldn’t be much happier about that aspect of the release.Have to be the bearer of bad news though as the encode is bad. We’re almost back in the early 4K era with those terrible, bit-starved StudioCanal encodes that came out of France and brought us Total Recall, Basic Instinct etc. While they’ve done worse, this definitely isn’t FiM or VDMS. Highlights are terrible and essentially devoid of any detail, mushy grain also creeps into normal shots here and there, particularly walls or clothing. Essentially areas that are slightly larger and have similar colors and textures.

Though note its different color grading from the IP-sourced but poorly compressed Fun City Editions US Blu-ray (caps)

Judging from spectrograms at https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=23933756&postcount=57, Fun City Editions US Blu-ray appears to have marginally less filtering than Radiance 4K Blu-ray (whose padded 16-bit depth is a non-issue). There are also loudness differences, though it's unclear whether dynamic range also differs. Caveat: need to A/B both tracks to confirm, but no one has posted actual A/B impressions.

Arrow 4K Blu-ray is encoded by FiM and is better than Criterion, see caps https://slow.pics/c/Z2RRQAAT

Criterion 4K Blu-ray vs Blu-ray: caps colors are more different and nuanced than anticipated even in the SDR-converted caps and the usual gain in highlight detail is also apparent. Encode looks excellent except for the brightest areas as usual.

Arrow and Criterion 4K Blu-rays have differing extras 

Criterion has FEL Dolby Vision, Arrow has MEL

Arrow Limited Edition includes the Theatrical Cut Blu-ray from an older HD master, most likely from a 2K scan of an interpositive.

(Arrow 4K Blu-ray's mono seems to be out of sync, suggested by comparisons. Issue is TBC officially)

Arrow LE will have an exclusive 3rd disc which will not be on the standard edition

Identical. Arrow 4K Blu-ray is lossy transcode.

Paramount 4K Blu-ray captures more grain in image 6&24, but Shout! Factory Blu-ray is very good see caps