A box packed with Hitchcock goodies.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

Byline: Terry Lawson

"We're working as fast as we can." That's the answer I receive almost every time I ask someone in the DVD business, usually at the request of a reader, why particular films and TV shows have yet to be released in the format.

It's easy to take a recently released film and rush it to market; these days, they even produce the DVD extras while the film is in production. But in the case of old material, there's restoration to be done, not to mention the search for production footage and the other DVD extras we now expect or the putting together of a historical retrospective on a movie.

But the wait is worth it when it comes to something like Warner's release of eight titles from Alfred Hitchcock, seven of which have never been released on DVD. The one that has, "Strangers on a Train" (4 stars, $26.99), is easily the best of show and is now packaged, as are all the others, in boxes boasting the original poster art.

It is also now a two-disc affair, containing, as did the earlier release, two versions of Hitch's film about a tennis player, played Farley Granger, who meets chatty playboy Robert Walker on train and becomes embroiled in a plot where each man would rid the other of someone who is making his life miserable.

The differences in the two versions are minimal _ but in one case, meaningful _ and they are addressed in a well-put-together commentary pieced together from interviews with director Peter Bogdanovich, biographer Andrew Wilson, screenwriter Joseph Stefano and Patricia ...