I am looking for advice from the experts here of what is the best version on blu-ray of this movie? I saw again recently and remembered what an awesome movie it was. I have looked through the older threads and saw that there is a Japanese release without English subtitles, a German version and a Spanish one, while others just said that this movie hasnt really gotten a quality release yet, really confused?

This might help:

Rewind @ www.dvdcompare.net - Hero AKA Ying xiong (Blu-ray) (2002)

There really aren't any great Blu-ray releases of this, at least not English-friendly ones. The American Blu-ray from Miramax has middling picture quality and a poor subtitle translation. The audio is also lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 (though still sounds pretty good, just because the movie's sound mix is terrific). The Spanish Blu-ray has the superior subtitle translation, but picture and sound quality are even worse.

I don't know about the German release, but I wouldn't expect much out of it. The movie is in dire need of a new scan of the film negative, but to my knowledge nobody has done that.

That's why I gave up and just got it on digital. PQ is lousy though.

IIRC, HOFD also needs one.
It's ridiculous we don't have these 2 classics available in good AV.

I suspect that a lot of the problems with House of Flying Daggers were baked into the original Digital Intermediate.

House of Flying Artifacts

It looks like from the comparison site that the Korean release might be the best version, it is really unbelievable that such a great film has gotten such a poor shoddy treatment on home release, hasnt anyone figured out that money can be made from a proper version? But then again from what I understand Hero wasnt even thought of as a potential US release until Quentin Tarantino added his name and credibility to the theatre release.

Ever since these 2 great movies were released on BD, fans have been clamoring for decent video releases.
Here we are nearly 20 years later and absolutely nothing has been done.
IMO, this is 2 of the biggest disappointments of the format.
It's inexcusable.

Hard to say. That site seems to only be comparing the listed specs on the releases. It isn't clear whether anyone has actually watched all of them.

Specs can be misleading. The Spanish Blu-ray (which I have), for example, has the Mandarin soundtrack in DTS 5.1, which you might think should be better than (or at least comparable to) the Dolby Digital 5.1 on the American copy. However, the source Sony used is greatly inferior and sounds like an upmix from stereo with almost no bass.

I'll also note that the theatrical cut of the movie is better than the Director's Cut (IMO). All the latter does is add extras shots to pad the length and slow down the pacing of scenes, with virtually no additional dialogue or story content.

Thank you for this input, so the director's cut isnt really worth seeking out since it's just full of padded shots, the big dilemma here is do you just get the version that works for you or still hold out for a great release, although 17 years on it doesnt hold out much hope.

I'm surprised Yimou hasn't applied pressure to get these 2 re-done.
It seems to me if there is anyone with enough political power to get it done it would be him.