We have the widescreen 2 disc special edition. We watched it recently, and then saw that it was on HBO, so I had it on for background noise.
The cut is different, significantly.
I’ve only studied the Augustus Gloop in the pipe scene, but in the DVD version, Mike Teevee’s line “get away you little freaks” is missing, and a 5 or 6 second bit of the song (the part about boiling and a miracle happening) is missing.
I could understand if the HBO version were the one missing bits, but the DVD?
E.g., David Lynch modified “Mulholland Drive” to fuzz out a certain anatomical area of Laura Harring after the theatrical release. It looks like it was shot thru a screen door on video and on cable.
This is not all that uncommon.
Also, there sometimes isn’t a “canonical” theatrical release. Sometimes different edits end up going out to theaters so of course the video release is going to differ from what some people saw in the theaters.
Thirdly, with the influence of Wal-Mart and Blockbuster, some studios can’t be bothered with distributing original and “fixed” versions of movies to different outlets. So everybody gets stuck with the version the bluenoses want.
The 80’s film Private Lessons was recently released on DVD, though it’s been broadcast on Showtime for years. On the DVD, two fleeting shots of Ms. Mallow’s coochie are quite obviously blurred out. Apparently, the studio was too cheap to bother with the Showtime version, and merely ported the version already available in South Korea, where pubic hair is completely verboten.