ADDITION: BFI (part of Tokyo Story Blu-ray package) - July 2010: Ozu's The Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family comes on a separate DVD shared with Tokyo Story in the BFI's Dual-format package that also has the latter film on a Blu-ray 1080P transfer compared HERE.

Since it has 2 films on one SD-DVD disc it could be considered a single-layered transfer. Film elements look the same as the Panorama DVD - and it is probably from the same 'the best surviving elements'. Image quality looks the same - duplicate damage - but the subtitle translation, obviously, is superior.

Audio sounds the same to my ear and the superior rendered subtitles are optional. The package comes with the aforementioned Tokyo Story in both BD and DVD formats and and a liner notes booklet with an essay by Professor Joan Mellen and Ozu biographer Tony Rayns.

The subtitle improvement makes it the best way to see The Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family - another Ozu classic.

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ON THE PANORAMA: This is labeled on the spine #17 which may related to being their seventeenth Ozu film brought to DVD.  It is quite a worn print with the scratches, dirt and damage, fairly consistent, but of less drastic detriment (see last large capture). It is there, but not as severe as we have seen on some of the other old Ozu releases. Subtitles, although somewhat lacking in an even translation flow (possibly too literal?), appeared to be slightly better than many of the earlier Panorama Ozu's with less frequent mistakes in grammar and spelling. 

We would all love to see this beautiful film put out by Criterion on DVD one day, but it looks doubtful as the cleaning process would be quite expensive and it probably wouldn't be cost-effective. Hopefully our screen captures will soften any high expectations that you might have and you will enjoy this DVD for the films intrinsic beauty.

Gary W. Tooze