ADDITION: Arrow - Region 'B' - Blu-ray March 2015: Unfortunately, I can't speak to how this film looked in the theater almost 40-years ago. But I can tell you some differences between the two Blu-ray presentations. Arrow's transfer is significantly more robust - practically double the bitrate. The UK disc's skin tones are cooler and colors do some shifting (occasionally whites become off-whites, similarly light grays and light blues contrast - as do blacks and dark greens). I presume the Arrow is more accurate due to the more robust transfer. This may be a false assumption. The Arrow appears to be a shade lighter/brighter. Grain on the Arrow seems to be more consistent. You may toggle between the matched large captures to see any other differences.

Despite Arrow's audio shifting from a DTS-HD Master mono as found on the Warner - to a linear PCM monaural transfer, I couldn't say my ears noted much difference between the two uncompressed renderings. The Arrow has optional English (SDH) subtitles and that Blu-ray disc is region 'B'-locked.

We lose the Lumet commentary and the 6-Part 1.5 hour making-of documentary but Arrow add some other relevant supplements. We get the hour-long 1999 'The Directors: Sidney Lumet' documentary on the director, containing interviews with Jack Lemmon, Rod Steiger, Christopher Walken and others and a new 'Tune in Next Tuesday' visual essay by Dave Itzkoff, the author of Mad as Hell: The Making of Network and the Fateful Vision of the Angriest Man in Movies filled with keen observations for almost 50-minutes. There is a theatrical trailer and the package contains a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Chris Walker and a collector's booklet featuring new writing on the film by Mike Sutton and an American Cinematographer article by director of photography Owen Roizman, illustrated with original stills and artwork.

 - Gary Tooze

The new edition seems to be much improved. The major flaw with the first one is it had lots of grain (which was not film grain), as well as dust and things on the negative.

The white balance is much better in the new one. The original looks like it was shot on sepia filmstock, whereas they corrected the white balance for the SE, making skin tones much more natural looking. It seems like some shots were far worse in the original, as not all the shots have a huge improvement.

SE is less cropped on the top, but a hair more on the bottom. For the noise, the best example is the blue screen in the 3rd(?) shot. The original has so much digital noise and compression artifacts in there. (Thanks Eric!)

1) Warner - Region 0 - NTSC  TOP

2) Warner (2-disc Special Edition) - Region 1,2,3,4 - NTSC - SECOND

4) Arrow - Region 'B' - Blu-ray - BOTTOM