Front, disc and inside of the Australian DVD Xaandu release - click to enlarge. Thanks to Daniel Grant.
Review by Daniel Grant, NSW, Australia
The layout of the disc menu is nice with background music playing. There is a "Photo Gallery" with 10 promo photographs, a few of which were new to me (and I thought I'd seen EVERYTHING possible from Xanadu). The theatrical trailer is a shortened version to the US DVD and not near as good in my opinion.
The picture quality is slightly better than the US version, however the sound (which of course, is MOST important to this film) I think is not as good as the US version. The Australian disc has 4.0 sound as does the US version, however, the US version has Left, Centre, Right & Matrixed Rear compared to the Australian version having Left, Right & Separate Rears (NO CENTRE!!!).... both versions divert the bass to the subwoofer. To my ears, the Centre Speaker (US) version wins though there is more obvious separation in the Rear Surrounds on the Australian version.
There are two versions available in Australia, both a 21st Anniversary Limited Edition (which includes an "exclusive" bonus CD soundtrack) and a single movie-only version. Shame in my opinion, that they didn't put more effort into including some extras on the Limited Edition instead of taking the easy way out and throwing in an "Exclusive" CD. The CD is the same old Australian Xanadu soundtrack.
I don't want to sound ungrateful for the version we have and it is packaged very nicely (and it DID actually come out on the date it was supposed to!!!) When I purchased this today the store assistant exclaimed "Oh Xanadu... FABULOUS!!!" I thought that was funny...
another review of the Aussie DVD
Other Details:
Released: Feb 2002
Country: Australia
Label: Universal
catalog# 9023469
Region: 4
The Xanadu DVD was released in France and Germany in 2004 and on blu-ray in 2016.