Archived from groups: alt.video.laserdisc (
More info?)
"jayembee" <jayembeeNoSpam@snurcher.com> wrote in message
news:d3aeee5b.0406090832.54fb6cb0@posting.google.com...
> > There is only one "Director's Cut" of Blade Runner. It was
> > avaliable as a LD and is the only version avaliable on DVD.
>
> Not quite. There's also the option of the Japanese issue.
> Joshua Zyber is the resident expert on BLADE RUNNER releases,
> so I leave it to him to say whether the American or Japanese
> release is better (I've never seen the Japanese release).
In terms of content, the American and Japanese "Director's Cut"
laserdiscs are the same cut of the film and neither has any supplements.
The Japanese disc is in CLV, which is a slight improvement as the CAV
American copy has a horrible side change. But the Japanese disc also has
subtitles in the lower letterbox bar and as I recall is noticeably
softer than the American disc.
> > I reccomend the DVD version as the LD contains no extra
> > supplements and the DVD will have a superior picture.
>
> I don't know about that. As I have the LD, I never picked
> up the DVD, and I've seen enough negative comments about
> the DVD to not be in any hurry to do so. It's one of the
> earliest releases on DVD, and it supposedly shows.
It's funny. I used to defend the DVD as the best-looking release of the
film back when I was watching on a smaller television. Since moving up
to a huge front projection screen, I discovered that this is one of
those rare cases where the larger your screen the worse the DVD looks in
comparison to the laserdisc. The compression quality of the DVD is very
poor, and just looks terrible on a big screen. On the other hand, the
laserdisc looks pretty solid on both size screens.
When watching now, I generally prefer the Criterion CAV as my disc of
choice, but I have to stop it when the elevators close!