It's been remastered and is airing in HDTV in the us on HDNet. I was only able to see the first hour of the film, but it looks excellent. Don't be surprised of a DVD is on its way by December '05.
shareYou're right, it is way overdue. This is a wonderful movie.
I banged out my own DVD on a DVD recorder from the Comcast cable On Demand screening, but the video quality is pretty poor because I had to set it to 4 hour mode, and On Demand video isn't all that impressive to begin with. I daresay the two-tape VHS set is better video quality than the DVD I made, but at least now I can't snap a tape watching the movie.
It was released in region 2 (Europe) on October 11, 2004, however. The release is on DVD9 in anamorphic 2.35:1 aspect ratio. The main soundtrack is in English. If you go to amazon.co.uk you can order it and they will ship to the US. I found that if you have an account on amazon.com, it seems you have an account on amazon.com.uk with the same login and password as well; credit card info and all.
A couple of points to be wary of.
1) The region 2 movie is only listed at 138 minutes, not the 148 minutes the movie is listed here and in VHS on amazon.com. It has a British rating of 12, so it may be toned down; I don't know for sure.
2) Region 2 DVDs have a problem for US users because of the region code and because they are encoded in PAL, not NTSC. Normal US players will NOT play them, and normal TV sets will not accept PAL video either. You can get players that will play any DVD region, and you can get players that will do this and also will convert PAL video to NTSC. I have one of these, so I ordered the region 2 DVD.
The 10 min between USA and UK editions is for the faster speed of PAL system. I dont think it is censored or cut.
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