djsmokingjam said:
... the film was usually cropped to 1:85:1 in cinemas...

Is this true? In See No Evil's DVD release notes, he says that ED was shown cropped to 1.66:1 for its premiere; and after that cinemas usually showed it full frame at 1.37:1.

As much as some might balk at the idea of another ED re-release, I'd wholly welcome a DVD or at least a Blu Ray with a new HD transfer that had the best of all worlds: as sharp and clear as the Elite, with a colour scheme closer to the Japanese LD (but not quite as dark and blue-tinted), none of Raimi's mid-90s changes to the film, and an anamorphic 1:66:1 aspect ratio (which was what Raimi composed the film for during shooting anyway).

Although there's a BD release of ED2, there hasn't been an official release of ED yet as far as I know. (There is a pirate 720p version from an HDTV source around, but it's been cropped to 1.78:1 as you would expect).

So my 'ideal' version would be a Custom DVD as follows:

Video from Elite DVD (plus Anchor Bay DVD to restore the lightning/Cheryl shots) - for the best image quality and no burned-in Japanese subtitles - colour-matched to the HV laserdisc, then cropped and scaled to anamorphic 1.66:1 (a reasonable compromise for watching on a 16:9 TV without over-cropping to 1.78:1)
Audio options to include the original theatrical mono mix (has this ever appeared on a DVD release? If not, use the audio from the laserdisc) and remixed multi-channel Dolby Digital and/or DTS tracks.