Originally posted by: Jonno
There's a further comparison here.

The difference is really quite stunning...

BTW, looks like I was wrong about the audio - they're both DD 5.1. Which raises another issue - how was that achieved? Did they really do a new 5.1 mix from the original music elements?

Ahhh yes, I found that site while researching this but forgot to post it when making this thread. Just looking at the stills, the detail is noticably better on the IRE version, it looks alot more blurred on the MGM DVD. When watching the IRE DVD in motion you will see it has a much more "film grain" look to it, which some may like and some may not, but IMO, I think it gives it a really wonderful film look that alot of DVD's with their remastered sheen lose these days. Obviously it is a pretty straight transfer from the film print without loads of remastering filters etc. I didn't check the bitrate of the rip I have of the IRE DVD (I'm at work atm so can't clarify) but I would expect that it isn't a recompressed version of the DVD Reggio was selling as the film is only 85 mins long so most probably fits quite happily onto a DVD5 at 6.83mb/s bitrate.

.... yep, a quick rough calculation would be ((6.83/8)x60)x86 = 4405.35 MB, therefore it looks to be just a straight rip of the DVD Godfrey Reggio was distributing, no shrinking/recompression applied

Excellent.