Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon: SB or SE? (1 Viewer)

[Kevin Porter]

I was looking into purchasing Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon but which one should I get? Which is better? The Special Edition or the Superbit title? Can someone help me?

~Kevin

 

[Steve Felix]

It depends whether you are a audio/videophile (Superbit) or someone who values extras (SE). I'd pick the Superbit. The movie is most important!

 

[Duncan_N]

True. Movie is the most important thing. However, if you don't have DTS there is not much point, picture wise there is no difference (hardly). The commentary is pretty good.

 

[Josh_Hill]

Thats only if your a slow reader.

 

[Bob Turnbull]

The SE version looks great, so I don't think you'll really enhance it that much with the Superbit (though I admit to not having seen a Superbit yet). Not enough so that it would be worth dropping the commentary and other extras IMO.

As for the subtitles, I think you'll lose a lot of the emotion in the movie if you watch it without the original audio. Both Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi were excellent in the film.

 

[Keith_R]

I'd go for the SE, that way you get a commentary track and you may also pick whether or not you may want to watch the movie in Mandarin with subtitles or in English dubbed. IMHO SB was not that much better picture wise, in fact it even looked worse than my typical DVD on my set-up (my set-up is very low end but it still usually can look better than what my first viewing of a SB pulled off.) To me the SB looked more washed out and not as sharp as a typical DVD looks. On the plus side the DTS track is a nice addition and I'm sure the addition of DTS on CTHD would sound nice.
Do what you want but IMO I'd go for the SE.

 

[Sutjahjo Ngaserin]

This is a difficult question and I'll try to give my personal views on this.
If you own a progressive scan DVD player and a monitor that can take advantage of this (or a line doubler with HDTV monitor), you will see obvious improvements in the better detailed video of the SB version. AND if this is most important to you, buy the SB version.
Then there is the issue of commentary, dubbed version and bonus material etc and only you yourselves can decide.
Personally, I don't like to watch any dubbed movies and the lack of it is not a loss.
If you really love the movie, treasure the bonus materials and think video quality is important, why not buy both?, we are talking about less than US$20 difference here

 

[Bill Crosthwait]

I would go with the Special Edition. I personally have not been impressed with the superbit titles. Just my 2 cents.

 

[John_McKittrick]

SE all the way. SuperBit is highly overrated. If they would've added the extras on a separate disk that would be another story. I have the SE and am proud of it.

John

 

[mctague]

Decide if you want dubbing or not.
I would hate to miss the gorgeous video while reading. Das Boot was okay because there isn't alot of dialog in a sub.

 

[PhilipG]

Get Both
This is a great film, and quality like this doesn't come out very often. The SE is good for all the extras, but the Superbit video/audio improvement is really noticable (to me, anyway).

 

[Rob Gillespie]

I thought the SuperBit edition looked a tad cleaner and DTS tends to sound a bit nicer on my system anyway, so it wasn't hard to choose. I really hate the overly-animated menu system on the SE DVD, something which - thankfully - isn't present on the SB.

 

[Lewis Besze]

The superbit is the one to go with IMO!

I have both!