Region 4 Winners and Losers

    There appear to be two versions of The Boxer available to Region 1 buyers. There is the Special Edition and a DTS version. They both appear to have been framed in an aspect ratio of 1.66:1 vs the Region 4's 1.85:1, although there didn't appear to be too much concern in various reviews about any cropping in evidence. They also appear to miss out on the various soundtracks (French Dolby Digital 5.1, and the German/Spanish/Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 optional tracks). Also, subtitles in English and Spanish only are offered.

    Apart from the DTS offering, they appear to all have the same superb video and audio offerings, with the same extras package. Given this, and unless you are attracted strongly to DTS versions, then the Region 4 disc would appear to be the best value given the $27.99 price tag I've seen it for and the superiority of the PAL encoding over NTSC.