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Region 4 Winners and Losers

Region 4 Winners and Losers

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Explanatory Notes
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Stargate: 2 Disc Ultimate Edition (1994)R1

    Oh boy! Where do we start?

    I suppose that the most logical comparison for this Region 4 release is the original two disc Region 1 Ultimate Edition put out by Artisan. You should note that this is no longer available and the Ultimate Edition currently available is a single disc release. The original two disc Ultimate Edition (which was available for an RRP of USD20) contains, aside from both versions of the film:

  • English dts 6.1 ES soundtrack
  • English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack
  • Audio Commentary - Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin (Director's Cut only)
  • Featurette - Is There A Stargate?
  • Featurette - The Making Of Stargate: Creating A Whole New World (23 minutes, widescreen presentation)
  • Theatrical Trailers (2, 16x9 enhanced)
  • Still Gallery
  • Filmographies
  • Production notes
  • Booklet
  • Spanish subtitles

    The currently available single disc Region 1 Ultimate Edition (which was available for an RRP of USD15) contains just the Director's Cut of the film plus:

  • English dts 6.1 ES soundtrack
  • English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack
  • Audio Commentary - Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin
  • Featurette - Is There A Stargate?
  • Theatrical Trailers (2, 16x9 enhanced)
  • Still Gallery
  • Filmographies
  • Production notes
  • Booklet

    The latter is the version that I have. The obvious differences to the Region 4 release are the two 16x9 enhanced trailers as opposed to our single not-16x9 enhanced effort and the featurette "Is There A Stargate?", which features an interview with Erich Von Daniken, author of the controversial book Chariots Of The Gods, plus not forgetting that dts 6.1 soundtrack instead of our 5.1 and (in the case of the original release) that second featurette, which is different to those contained on the Region 4 release. Sure we gain two other featurettes, but on the whole the original Region 1 Ultimate Edition is the preference, with the single disc version only for those who like the Director's Cut (which counts me out even though this is the one I ended up with...). From a technical point of view, there is not much between the Region 4 and Region 1 release.

    If you own either of the original Region 1 releases - the first was a flipper and had just the Theatrical Cut of the film (this is the version I have), whilst the second was a Special Edition and had both versions of the film and the audio commentary - then they are well and truly superseded by the Region 4 version. For starters, those Region 1 release were not 16x9 enhanced and looked rather poor (aliasing and shimmering were constant problems) and did not have dts soundtracks. So if you have either of those two versions, you need to replace them with this Region 4 release.

    Turning to the Region 2 (United Kingdom) releases, the original effort from Pioneer was at least 16x9 enhanced even though it was very pricey at GBP20. It was supplanted by another version, equally pricey, from Artisan that retained the 16x9 enhancement but lost the pointless MPEG 5.1 soundtrack. I have this version and it is no better than the original Region 1 release in many ways, and worse in others as it lacked any extras. This version was itself supplanted by a Director's Cut version from Momentum which brought the additional dts 5.1 soundtrack and some extras along with some subtitle options. Much better looking and pretty much on a par with the new Region 4 release (I have seen this although don't own it), except for the fact that it only has the Director's Cut of the film (and of course the extras were a little underwhelming). Initial pressings came in a rather nifty limited edition digipak.

    If you want to look at other Region 2 releases, they all seem to be fairly similar to the Momentum release. If we turn to other regions, there is a Special Edition version available from Region 2 (Japan) which requires a modest mortgage to acquire. From the descriptions found it may contain a Dolby Digital 5.1 EX soundtrack but is otherwise reasonably similar to the original Region 1 two disc Ultimate Edition (including the dts 6.1 soundtrack). There is a much cheaper Deluxe Edition available which sounds like a single disc release of the theatrical version of the film with the two seven channel soundtracks, but no extras. For completeness sake, there was an earlier release from Pioneer that featured six channel soundtracks in Dolby Digital and dts, but this is now hard to get (and even then is way more expensive than the Special Edition).

    Region 3 tossed up a Special Edition of the film from Korea that offers little different to, or more importantly anything better than, what was available in Regions 1 and 2.

    So basically everything boils down to two releases. The best release yet appears to be the original Region 1 Ultimate Edition on the strength of a dts 6.1 soundtrack and better extras, although still perhaps not of a quality and quantity to really make it an Ultimate Edition. If you have this release, consider yourself lucky and there is no reason to be tossing it away quite yet. However, since that release is now out of print it would seem that this new Region 4 release will go to the top of the pile of available discs - although the RPI is a serious deterrent to purchasing, given that we have awaited this release for five long years... If you own any of the original Region 1 and Region 2 releases, then you really need to consider upgrading to this Region 4 release however.