Region 4 Winners and Losers

You would think in this new high definition era where PAL/NTSC differences are no longer an issue that we would get the same content as the US release. But there are some differences. The major one is that the Region A (I'll refer to it as that although it appears to be all regions) gets an uncompressed PCM 7.1 track. I had read the specs of the Region A disc and had spent some time setting a 7.1 configuration up on my system only to plonk the disc in the player and find out it wasn't there. Although I must say, having listened to the 5.1 track, that there really weren't many occasions where the extra speakers would have added much to the audio.

On the video side the reviews I have read of the Region A transfer don't mention the grain, but at least one mentions what sounds like excessive noise reduction artefacts. I did not notice any such artefacts on the review disc so I wonder whether this is equipment-related or whether we have received a different transfer of the film.

Other than that we appear to have the same extra material (apart from different trailers) and transfer as the Region A. A slight win for the Yanks but not by much.