Quote Originally Posted by musicman1999
According to thedigitalbits.com this release is all new,no carry over from previous editions.It is a 50gig dual layer,with uncompressed pcm and mpeg4. Two disc,also regular dvd gets new treatment.

bill
Well, he wouldn't lie to me about it. Excerpt from his review:

The prized collector’s item continues to be the 12” Criterion Collection LaserDisc that still has extras even these new versions do not. Previously, the best DVD was the Superbit edition with more room for picture and sound. Unfortunately, both did not capture the film well and the Superbit version even had an HD master. The 1080p digital 1.85 X 1 High Definition image on the Blu-ray (and to a lesser extent, the anamorphically enhanced DVD picture, where shadow detail is weak(er)) was expected to be a correction of years of inadequate telecine work. The film was shot by the great Michael Ballhaus, with amazing work on his resume, including with Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Martin Scorsese. His work here is sometimes complex and is the one thing that appreciates after years of awful digital work. Unfortunately, it looks like the Superbit’s HD master is being used here and that is bad. It is even worse on the DVD set, where the picture is a tad weaker than the Superbit release.

Why anyone thought this was a good idea is beyond me, but it is not good and the Blu-ray by default is the slimmest bit better than the Superbit. That master must have been 1080i, but could it have been 720p? So what does that mean for the sound? More bad news.

Before the fall of Cinema Digital Sound and rise of three new digital sound formats that all survived (DTS, Dolby and SDDS), Sony issued the film in Dolby Digital theatrical and that was a 5.1 mix that won the Sound Effects editing Academy Award. The DTS on the Superbit Edition was even better than the Dolby on previous version, that version or this new DVD set, but the Dolby here is especially compressed in English. If that was not bad enough, the French Dolby Digital 5.1 track has more detail than the English mix!

What’s worse, you would think the PCM 16/48 5.1 mix sounds compressed too and the Superbit DTS could easily rival it. What happened? Down to Wojciech Kilar’s score, nothing sounds as good as it should or look as good as my Dolby Digital 35mm screening when the film opened. Compare to the Superbit DTS, French Dolby on both of these new versions or even the PCM 16/44.1 2.0 Stereo with Pro Logic surrounds on the Criterion LaserDisc and you’ll hear what is missing.