Laurel & Hardy: The Definitive Restorations  is (are?) presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Kit Parker Films and MVD Visual with AVC encoded 1080p transfers in a variety of aspect ratios hovering around Academy Ratio. Assessment of the video quality of three titles linked to above can be found in those reviews. All of the screenshots in this review come from some of the various shorts included in this release, and as should probably be expected, there's at least some variances on display. Not all of these seem to have been curated by the UCLA Film & Television Archive or by the Library of Congress, at least insofar as I could glean from some text introductions and closing credits. That said, while there's definitely still age related wear and tear on display in many of these shorts, including knicks, scratches, the occasional jump, or even an unstable frame or two, these are easily the best I've personally seen any of these Laurel and Hardy pieces look. Clarity is improved across the board from previous releases that have been in my collection at one point or another, and for the most part contrast is solid (a couple of shorts can look slightly blanched, with some milky blacks). I will say that some of the shorts not bearing the imprimatur of UCLA in particular can have a softer, more filtered, look, and things can look a bit "scrubbed" at times, as can probably be gleaned from some of the screenshots accompanying this review. The score above is for the set as a whole, but some of the shorts probably reside more down toward the 3.5 or even 3.0 level, though that said, I can't imagine Laurel and Hardy fans not being over the moon with the general appearance of everything included here.

As should again probably be expected, the LPCM 2.0 Mono tracks haven't been able to be brought up to contemporary muster due to the recording technologies that were employed at the dawn of the "talkie" era, if for no other reason. The couple of vintage VitaPhone tracks again expectedly sound the worst, with pretty rampant hiss, waves of white noise passing through the track, and quite a bit of damage in the form of pops and cracks. The non-VitaPhone tracks sound surprisingly spry a lot of the time, with music sounding bright and maybe even occasionally a bit brash, and with dialogue and effects resonating with reasonable authority. The non-VitaPhone tracks show little to none of the same kind of damage those tracks do, but they still can't escape the thin, boxy sound of the era.