It has been alleged on a forum that Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has dumped its substandard initial Blu-ray encode of The Fifth Element on the Australian market. I find this highly unlikely, but have been unable to get ahold of a copy of the disc to check for myself. I have a pressing, but it’s a pre-release version sent by Sony. I cannot guarantee that this is the same as that sold in the shops.
Are there any Australian readers who purchased this movie on Blu-ray from a regular Australian retailer who would be prepared to lend me a copy for a couple of days? I would like to extract technical information from it to see whether it is as claimed on that forum or, as seems to me more likely, the Australian disc offers the same glorious picture quality as the remastered US version. I don’t want to buy one myself because I already have four copies of the movie in different formats!