Death Trance: R1 vs R2J

[HungFist]

Top: R1 Media Blasters
Bottom: R2J Media Suits





























Video
Depends on your preference and settings. The R2J is disappoingly soft. The R1 is much sharper but interlaced while the R2J is progressive. Edge enhancement is minimal on both discs.

Audio
With no surround system there’s only two this I can say:
1) The R1 is missing DTS
2) The R2J audio has notably more punch
The R1 comes with 2.0 and 5.1 tracks in both english and japanese. There’s two subtitle tracks, one for signs only and one for the dialogue. The subtitle colour is yellow. The R2J comes with japanese 2.0, 5.1 and DTS 5.1 tracks and no subtitles.

Extras
Media Blasters has included a Making of documentary (8 min, of which several minutes is wasted for film clips), a good Tak Sakaguchi interview with some nice behind the scenes footage (14 min) and trailers for Death Trance and other MB releases. The R2J is a two disc set with plenty of nice bonus features but no subtitles of course, except the 8 min making which is the same as R1 and comes with burnt in english subs. The Sakaguchi interview from the R1 is not included, but the additional documentaries are very nice and show lots of great behind the scenes footage. My favourite is the action demontration featurette which shows the cast and crew practicing for the fight scenes. Here’s a complete list of the R2J extras:

Audio Commentary
Trailers
TV Spots
Cast & Crew Biographies
Artwork Galleries
Behind the Scenes (10 min)
Making Of 1 (30 min)
Making Of 2 (8 min)
Interviews (9 min)
Action Demontration (15 min)
Premiere (10 min)
Movie Festival Footage (10 min)
+ Steel Case (first pressing only)

Summary
I was hoping the R1 would be an improvement over the R2J but unfortunately that’s not the case. The R1 offers sharper image, but is interlaced, features weaker audio and comes with notably lesser extras.

Random R2J documentaries










R2J Action featurette










R1


R2J

[thelostdragon]

I wonder how the German disc competes. Maybe I can get some screenshots.

[Markgway]

The R1 is better despite the interlacing.

[HungFist]

I wonder how the German disc competes. Maybe I can get some screenshots.

That would be nice, although I recall it being a conversion.

There's R4 release too, but it apparently suffers from copression and subtitle problems. The caps, which may not be accurate, in the dvdbits review also look like boosted to hell: http://www.dvdbits.com/reviews.asp?id=3410

Ah, all the releases seem so disappointing. One is soft as hell, the other is interlaced and sounds weak, the third is a conversion, the fourth suffers from bad encoding and subs...

oh, right. There's a french release too. But it's a studio canal release so chaces are it's loaded with edge enhancement...

[romerojpg]

The films a corker, stunning in fact with some of the best action for ages (shame about no gore!"!!).

I have the Region 1, its good and I didnt have any problems with it, but hell I didnt notice it was interlaced mind you, saying that since I last watched Death Trance I have a new TV and DVD player's, so hopefully I still will not notice its interlaced as the player does a perfect job of getting round it.

If they do a second film, make it bloody I wont upgraded from the humble Region 1 unless a really special version comes along (extended with gore would be nice)