Echo3 said:
The first two editions were dark, but reasonably accurate representations of the aged film. The audio was nice, but there were errors and ommissions. The “remastered” '06 edition corrected the missing audio elements, (edit: i was wrong, the 06 version is missing dracula’s death groans) but the overall sound quality reverted to being a muffled mess. The image was overly brightened and cleaned, and lost its dark, creepy feel.
Apologies that I’m reply to a 9 year old comment (especially considering the BD kinda rectifies this threads original purpose) but actually the 2006 DVD does have Dracula’s death groans. Only the 2004 DVD lacked them (and Renfield’s death screams). I do agree about the audio being a muffled mess. Fortunately the BD fixes this. Another thing to note is the 1999 DVD lacks the musical cue at the end of the Opera scene.
It may be the same video transfer but I believe the Legacy disc allowed a higher bitrate because it have the movie more space than the comparatively cramped '99 disc.
Actually the 1999 disc despite being single sided and ‘cramped’ with extras (and technically an extra movie) still looked slightly better than the 2004.