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Region 4 Winners and Losers

Region 4 Winners and Losers

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Explanatory Notes
Additions or corrections (Please refer to the Explanatory Notes before emailing an addition or correction to this listing)
Title Best
House of 1000 CorpsesR1
    Here's where it gets interesting! There are several subtle differences between these discs, and some major ones as well.

    The Region 1 disc misses out on:

  • English dts soundtrack (768Kb/s)

    The Region 4 disc misses out on:

  • Original 1.85:1 theatrical aspect ratio
  • English and Spanish subtitle streams
  • An additional Easter Egg - Otis, Baby and Spaulding enjoying a hoedown (0:50)
  • Lion's Gate trailers (Cabin Fever, May, Godsend)

    As I established above in the audio comparison, in my opinion there is little to distinguish between the Dolby Digital 5.1 and dts soundtracks in this case. Believe me, I'm a big fan of dts but there's nothing special about this dts soundtrack that I could hear. As I also noted above, the annoying but short buzz is sourced from the Region 1 disc, so they have it too.

    The Region 4 main menu is identical to the Region 1, but the Lion's Gate logo has been removed from our menu. If you turn up the brightness of your display, the outline of the Lion's Gate logo can be easily seen on the Region 4 main menu. When highlighted in Region 1, this logo links to both the Lion's Gate trailers and the additional Easter Egg (by pressing the right cursor), so it would seem that in removing this logo the disc's authors have also removed access to the Easter Egg in Region 4.

    The Region 1 layer transition is located during the feature at 61:43, and is slightly less obtrusive in comparison to the Region 4 layer change. The feature runtime of the two regions varies by a couple of seconds, but rest assured that the two cuts are identical - I checked them myself. The PAL transfer appears to have several seconds of additional black silence prior to the beginning of the film.

    The Region 1 video transfer is encoded at a constant bitrate, and suffers from considerably less compression artefacting in comparison to the variable Region 4 bitrate.

    Judging by reviews from Region 2, it would appear that we have been given the disc that was authored by Tartan in the UK. This company is renowned for their less than perfect transfers of foreign films. None of the regions are perfect - as a consumer you have a choice of either the local NTSC-PAL conversion with unimpressive dts or alternatively you can import the Region 1 with more consistent picture quality and an additional Easter Egg. Both have the same small audio glitch.

    With both the Region 1 and Region 4 discs on hand, I must admit that my opinion sways toward the Region 1 NTSC due to its superior picture quality - however if you are less fussy you should buy this wherever you can get it cheapest.