Region 4 Winners and Losers

    The Region 1 version of this has just been released.

    You will be able to buy this 2-disc edition either separately, or as part of the Alien Quadrilogy, and you'll get the same thing — the only difference is that the Quadrilogy includes an exclusive ninth disc.

    The Region 1 version gets a few features that ours does not, and unfortunately some of the additional features are rather nice to have. These are:

• optional changed footage marker for the Director's Cut
• separate access to deleted and extended scenes
• commentary on both versions

    The other interesting comparison is between the 2 disc Alien Quadrilogy version and the 1-disc Alien Legacy version of this film:

    The 2-disc Region 4 edition is missing:

• audio commentary by Ridley Scott (alone)
• isolated music score and alternate music score
• theatrical trailers
• cast and crew bios
• Alien lifecycle Easter egg

    The 1-disc Region 4 edition is missing:

• audio commentary by cast and crew
• three hours of high quality featurettes
• first-draft screenplay
• storyboards
• multi-angle sequence
• dts soundtrack

    I don't have the Region 4 version of the Alien Legacy set, so I can't tell you which of the two has the greater number of photos and artwork, but I rather suspect that the 2-disc version wins on this count; certainly the 2-disc version is much better organised, with the stills grouped into (lots of) related galleries.

    All in all, I'd say this new version has the better extras (although I'm hanging onto my R1 Legacy disc for the commentary...), and it does offer the two versions, both with very good transfers (slightly better, in my opinion, than the Legacy version).