Originally posted by: Karyudo
Thanks, boris. The specs for R4 releases don't have any omissions or other annoying features (like higher compression or something stupid), do they? I've read in the past that often the R4 release of some films is compromised in some way, when compared to the R1 -- or even the R2? -- release (which is one of the reasons that antipodean consumers have a high rate of region-free DVD player adoption, presumably).

There's an excellent website for this and it's http://dvdcompare.net. With releases like this the only difference will be the technical specifications between PAL or NTSC. The PAL version may be resized from the NTSC... but it doesn't appear to be. I have an italian copy of Ken Park since they haven't even released that in the USA! The Italian version is very good (and it's PAL). I remember with the Alien Quadrilogy... don't ask me where I read it (I think it was a review where people could post online responses to it) - but before it even came out people were claiming the US version was better because you could listen to the commentary watching either version of the film, and someone else said that "well if it's a real commentary they were watching only one version of the film when making it - it's better that you watch the version they watched" or something, which I thought was true. Someone tried to claim that 30 minutes of commentary would be "missing" from the PAL versions of Alien3 because you could only listen to it on the theatrical version... which is kind of silly because if that was the case then you'd only be able to listen to it watching the special edition. Nevertheless dvdcompare.net thinks that this is a valid reason to make R1 the winner:

http://dvdcompare.net/comparisons/film.php?fid=4361

I think it is better to watch with the commentary on the intended version. So only little things like that can sometime be different on such global releases. For movies released by different publishers around the world, then you get more glaring differences. The only thing they'll change is the copyright notices - though they may even be the same too.