Region 4 Winners and Losers

    Rarely have I seen two versions of a disc that are so similarly featured - even the artwork is close to identical. The differences are few: 

    The Region 4 disc is missing:

• French soundtrack
• subtitles in French
• layer change

    The Region 1 disc is missing:

• subtitles for the audio commentary
• subtitles in Danish, Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch

    The audio and video quality of the two discs are pretty much identical - equally good. The black artefact I mention above is present on the R1, too, so it is either on the source material, or both discs were done from a common high def transfer.

    The only difference I consider important are the subtitles for the commentary - they are important to our hearing impaired friends, and you can have them on while watching the film with the regular soundtrack. The layer change on the R1 is near the end of the film, and almost invisible, but it is rather cool not to have a layer change at all, as we do on the R4.

    I'm recommending the R4 disc unless you want a French soundtrack.