ADDITION: Madman - Region 4- PAL: The Criterion still tends to look the sharpest but we have that ratio thing. The Madman, like the BFI edition, has a huge black border circumventing the image limiting the horizontal resolution (see Capture #1 - blue border indicating the windowboxing amount). On the positive it is the ONLY release with Perspecta- stereo sound. It has that mesmerizing super widescreen with a nice booklet. I suppose the Region 4 Madman is the definitive at present.

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ADDITION: BFI (March 2005): Well, this is another fine mess - not 'progressively encoded'  and converted directly from an NTSC source (see times). Non-removable English subtitles. But this is only the start - halos, ghosting and combing are rife throughout the presentation. Thick black borders are around the image not fully utilizing the horizontal resolution.

What comparing this image to the others 2 discs does do is show how much appears to have been cropped from both the Criterion and the Mei Ah. The BFI does at least contain some extras, albeit text screens. Only thing we can say about it is it won't look that bad on a regular tube TV. I actually thought it wasn't too bad on my 28 inch tube, but it really shows up when you watch on any LCD, Plasma, TFT, laptops, etc.  In BFI's defense it is anamorphic and this is how they were received from Toho in Japan (BFI were only offered the restored NTSC Digibeta, so had to make do with that.). A small bravo for giving us the full ratio as well.

The Criterion is still flawed, non 16X9 and ridiculously priced in the upper tier of Criterion dollar value with zero extras. We are still waiting for an acceptable DVD release of this masterpiece film.

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The MEI AH disc is single layered scattered over 2 sides. Everything about this spells out that the DVD was made as inexpensively as possible, even the English subtitles are grammatically incorrect most of the time. Funnily enough though it does beat out the Criterion for "Extras" which has none at all. The MEHI AH has Kurosawa Filmography and listing of a few other MEI AH Kurosawa DVDs. The MEI AH is hardly better than a worn VHS copy, and unless you require simplified or traditional Chinese subs then there really is no comparison. In fact, I'll go so far as to state that your time might be better spent learning Japanese than in purchasing this Hong Kong disc.