Region 4 Winners and Losers

    This came out on DVD in Region 1 rather earlier than ours. The Region 1 and Region 4 discs have the same content, but very different menus (I prefer the menus on the Region 4). The R1 disc has a cover featuring everyone celebrating Christmas in red outfits with white trim; the inside of the cover is pretty, with a full width picture of the cast wishing us Happy New Year. All pretty and nice. The R4 disc has a more sombre cover, with Naru looking worried, Keitaro looking concerned, and Shinobu looking pensive. In a way, this is more appropriate to the story, even if it isn't happy happy happy.

    The R1 contains three trailers, the R4 contains six — that's not an important difference. The R1 includes the Dolby Rain trailer (but in Dolby Digital 2.0 surround-encoded, rather than Dolby Digital 5.1 — that's an oops). The R1 soundtracks are 192kbps, the R4s are 224kbps.

    The Region 1 transfer shows just as much aliasing (possibly a touch more, even). The one thing I have to grant is that the R1 seems to have slightly redder reds (the difference is small).

    This is pretty close to a draw, but I prefer the R4's cover and menus.