Just in case there are any fans of this title here...

So this little project started out as a search & acquire for my older brother whom had been seeking a decent copy for years, and a few weeks ago asked me to look into what other options existed on any format.  Anyway, the crux of the problem was that AFAICT all the US DVD releases are 1.33 P&S and made from terribly degraded prints, with nothing better available even on LD or VHS.  After a bit of digging, enter two widescreen versions released in 2005...
in the UK: EAN 5060000043433 (all-region,PAL), 16.99 GBP,special box edition (there's also a more recent disc-only version, but it's not currently profiled & I haven't looked further into it)
in Japan: UPC 4510840301671 (all-region,NTSC), 3990 JPY

Both are very different beasts with totally different transfers and features. 
First, the on-disc extras: very thin.  Both have basic scene access, but only the JP disc goes any further - a Jukebox of sorts. A collection of 10 songs is set aside for separate play from it's own menu.  About 17 minutes worth. (the JP disc's menus are all English) One final point is that the JP disc has soft subtitles available in Japanese and English, the UK has none.

Packaged extras: here the UK set easily comes out ahead.  The JP set only has basic filmographies listed on the inner sleeve (the trapsheet is double sided and in a clear keepcase.) The UK set comes in a slipcase with the original book, and a 20 page booklet in the keepcase with production & historical notes, biographies, and a reprint of the original theatrical program pamphlet.

The transfers: oh boy.
Just can't win this one.
First we have the UK release - about the only thing that can be said for this is that at least it's OAR. Clouding this is that it's non-anamorphic, very poor color - bleeding, muddy and blue, and converted from an elderly analog NTSC source so creating uncorrectable interlacing artifacts (since the combing is now encoded into whole progressive PAL frames) with abundant chroma noise. On this latter item, using NTSC source does seem to have the side-effect of skipping the usual %4 speedup typical of many PAL transfers.

On the other side of the globe there's the JP disc, a new transfer which has very nice color and is anamorphic (tho the print still has a fair amount of dirt & scratch) - BUT, its a P&S job.    Granted, at 1.78 it's not nearly as severe, but coming down from 2.35 often the composition is off, and often cramped... much worse still if you're doing the A/B comparison.



Screencaps:
The main title: here you can see immediately the initial difference in cropping and color.
(note: the different vertical sizes are due to the different video formats - PAL=576/NTSC=480. Also all are captured as PNG format which should preserve the image quality close to what exists on disc. Screencaps done with VLC.)


Note the JP disc is letterboxed here to ~1.85 for the credits, but will zoom to P&S 1.78 immediately after.



In the interest of saving bandwidth & load time, I'll set the remaining images as links.


Here's Alice, having just woken up to begin the journey. Note the color differences and final cropping of the JP disc.
Flowers UK
Flowers JP

This shot especially well demonstrates the, IMO, most irritating flaw in the UK version - the interlacing artifacts with motion.
Drink UK
Drink JP

Here you can see the JP version is actually P&S, being now full left on the original frame.
Caterpillar UK
Caterpillar JP

Here, kitty! 
Cheshire UK
Cheshire JP

This one shows another irritating trait of the UK's analog roots: color noise around detail edges.
Tea UK
Tea JP

Of with her head!  Much of the JP composition is painfully cramped even at 1.78, but as seen here the alternative is the especially pronounced blue shift. The final reel of the UK is especially bad in this respect, with much of the highlight details being washed out.
Trial UK
Trial JP


The big slipcase UK edition is OOP, but looks commonly available used for fairly cheap. There's also a in-print reissue that's disc only (though probably also excludes the booklet within the keepcase.)
The JP version appears to be in-print, possibly reissued just this past April, and can be had from cdjapan and others for a comparatively princely sum.

Dunno if this helps any fans of this oddball classic, perhaps at least a few found this rambling amusing.

This has always been a tricky one, The version that has been shown on TV here seems to come from a a better source than the DVD, in fact it's even been a freebie given out on a newspaper.

The R2-UK is still available from HMV

http://hmv.com/hmvweb/displayProductDetails.do?ctx=280;-1;-1;-1;-1&sku=372487

At the Bargain price of £1.99 including the book