PAL

Older Restoration: Lobster Films DVD > Flicker Alley Blu-ray (Flicker Alley Blu-ray/DVD has every 25th PAL frame deleted)

Preferences will vary, the restored track sounds good, but not necessarily faithful to the original elements.

Both DVD and BD use the same transfer. Blu-ray is more cleaned up (hiss, clicks, pops) but loses detail in quiet moments due to noise gating and sounds less natural throughout.

(caveat: it's missing a minute of footage, plus usual PAL speed-up)

All Blu-ray tracks originate from the same transfer, but with strong noise gating and terrible EQ, adding a compensatory bass and treble boost, sounding boomy and accentuating the hiss despite less detail.

The DV/HDR grade is tasteful and not overdone. SC has better compression, though not flawless; encoded by FiM, but Criterion also holds up quite well. Both releases claim to be approved by Lynch.

SC has a missing fade that Criterion reinstated.

The film was originally mixed in Dolby Stereo (matrixed LCRS). For the 4K restoration, this mix has been transferred from the original magnetic elements and remastered with Lynch's supervision. Unfortunately, the fidelity suffered in the process, with many sections ending up significantly less detailed due to a noise reduction pass. This track has been altered compared to the original, with reverb added to some dialogue, different ambient sound effects, changed panning, and extended bass.

For the unrestored mix, there are two major options, each with its own merits and flaws. The 2001 Paramount DVD, which I would say is the best well-rounded mastering, and the 1999 Japanese LaserDisc, which has noticeably better clarity and high-end detail, as well as better dynamics, but suffers from occasional distortion and has less bass than the DVD.

The LD also has some ambiance buried too low in the mix, and some dialogue panned more to the centre than the DVD. There are no content changes I was able to find. Unfortunately, I don't know what accounts for those differences.

The other available tracks all have more significant flaws. The Italian and Japanese BDs use the same base mastering as the DVD, but with some patching in a few shots. HD-DVD is sourced from an inferior transfer, the same as the Momentum DVD.

The 5.1 remix, originally introduced on the 2002 DVD, and carried over without changes to the 2009 BD is a light and mostly faithful remix, with fairly minimal LFE and surround use, but still potentially worthwhile as the only discrete track.

Universal Region 2 PAL DVD (original Dolby Stereo), Region 1 NTSC is minimally worse

The DTS:X remix is very revisionist with a lot of sound effect changes

Arrow has a different grade and a better encode than the Shout! Factory, though the difference in either is not major. Imprint release, which leaves Shout! Factory's master and subtitles as is, is encoded by FiM. https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=24473097&postcount=56

Original mix: Shout! Factory 4K Blu-ray (similar to Criterion LaserDisc, but less distorted)

Alternate mix: Scanbox Nordic PAL DVD

Surround remix: HK Video France 4K Blu-ray (5.0)

Arrow used the alternate mix, but with extra filtering and lowered dynamic range. The alternate mix has much better fidelity.

Imprint presumably used the Shout! Factory original mix and left it as is, though no official confirmation.

Arrow has a much better translation.

Arrow LE has the Taiwan Extended Cut which will not be present on the standard edition. However, Imprint is FiM and has its own archival extras not present on the Arrow.

The surround mix is fully discrete, not a mere decode or upmix of the Dolby Stereo LCRS track. This mix has never appeared on any other releases.

Mainframe Entertainment, one of the co-producers of this movie, while based in Canada, made their content for 25 FPS/the PAL standard, making the 2002 Australian PAL Universal DVD release the one closest to the original intent (and it also has a higher resolution of 576i compared to the 480i of the NTSC offerings).

Note, for the NTSC DVD offers, not all have the correct aspect ratio. The 2015 US and Canadian Universal releases have the intended 1.78:1, while the 2010 Universal and 2001 Lionsgate are both shown in 1.85:1.

PAL DVD is sourced from the least bad digital/video sources. PAL is the original framerate for the film.

Blu-ray is sourced from a filmout, but has no visible resolution increase from the DVD

5.1 mix is a mediocre upmix, and the Blu-ray has more limited mixes than the DVD