We all know there are colour issues in areas of the 2004 DVDs. But what's your take on the "dark" look?
Here's what I mean:
It would seem to me (after reading the excellent editorial on your site) that the blacks have been crunched to make the image punchier, and in the process detail is lost in the shadows. If I were doing my own restoration, I'd probably alter the brightness and gamma to match the laserdisc captures, thus:
But would it be correct to do this? It could be argued that the original film had a darkened, high contrast look to it, and the 2004 transfer captures the original look more effectively than any previous video release. It is not uncommon for a video transfer to reveal much more detail than was originally intended, depending on the choices made at the time of the transfer from the interpositive.
What did you do with this scene?
Second question: it would appear that the opening starfield on the 2004 DVDs is different from the 1993 laserdiscs. The 2004 starfield has much smaller, less effective stars, and you state that it's a CG starfield created for the DVDs (and went about recreating the original by hand).
How can you be sure that the laserdisc transfer represents the original starfield? Although I see no reason why it would be different, I've recently acquired a photograph, shot off the theatre screen in '77:
From the DVD:
The configuration (constellation?) of stars shown circled seems to match the DVD and not the laserdiscs! What's going on here?