4K Blu-ray

> US Kino Lorber/Germany Capelight - caps and audio comparison on this page. Discussion is still ongoing about the 2.0 but as none of the three 4Ks seem to have the true original mix, I think it's fair to leave them all in the blue tier for now and only note that Kino Lorber has the worst PQ.

The initial release of the Capelight 4K mediabook had some playback issues with Dolby Vision on Panasonic devices due to an encoding error, the HDR10 apparently works fine, see Capelight’s official response here. 

The 4K master has a shot at the very end of the movie (on James Caan's face) that looks incredibly soft and not good at all. This was visible on the DCP as well so it might just be a source issue rather than being the fault of Kino, Capelight or Arrow.

The compression is poor, but it still beats the previous Blu-ray. (Luminance plot)

?

The 4K Blu-ray only has Atmos which is possibly the original mix, but the previous Blu-ray’s 4.0 sounds good too.

More Chroma artifacts

> US Kino Lorber see comparison and caps

Kino Lorber has an exceedingly poor encode, only slightly improved by the DV layer.

Universal's BD uses the same transfer as the old LaserDisc and sounds a bit better than Plaion's, which has worse dynamics.

Plaion's Atmos remix is tastefully done and preserves the original mix's characteristics, the 5.1 track on Kino's release is overly aggressive and unbalanced.

The Paramount 4K "restoration" is a desecration. It has completely revisionist color timing, harsh HDR, treatment of stock footage, bad encoding, selective DNR and grain management so bad that the entire screen frequently freezes up with only characters moving around in grain soup. It is so bad that the film's restorer Robert Harris publicly washed his hands of it saying essentially the 2007 restoration (with Willis and Coppola supervising) is how the film was intended and made. This is Paramount's modern version done their way. The new 1080p SDR Blu-rays in print are the crap 4K desecration master with the same problems still there just harder to spot and with crap encodes. Part III fares best of the three and these issues are at their most minimal-but they're still there. The new Coda version is given prominence with lesser encodes for the other two versions. The original mix was remixed into 5.1 decades ago and we have yet another version of this instead of the original Dolby Stereo SR as heard on the LaserDisc release.
The 2008 Blu-ray of the 2007 restoration, while an imperfect outdated disc, is LIGHT YEARS better than this 4K desecration. The only truly major issue is that it is very slightly redder than the 2007 finished master as seen on DCPs.
DFIC review of the hideous crap 4K Blu-rays: https://youtu.be/0uw6-Kcy_UA?si=ob1nDg0wTCvemjH0

Despite being restored alongside the Coppola Restorations of The Godfather: Parts I and II, the Part III restoration is not officially labelled a Coppola Restoration.

> Germany Nameless Media 4K Blu-ray

> Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray

Criterion Blu-ray has exclusive extras

The older Studio Canal disc has incorrect pitch - 0.7 semitones lower than it should be. As their PAL DVD release was pitched correctly despite running at 25 FPS, it's likely they just took that master and slowed it down without accounting for that.

Dolby Stereo: Arrow 4K Blu-ray or New Line LaserDisc for line absent on VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray releases

Info: Arrow 4K Blu-ray is scanned from interpositive film, thus having a softer than the first title.

Capelight 4K Blu-ray has better encode than Criterion 4K Blu-ray