Remind me. Did you use the Def Col or the Faces set? I know the Def. Col. transfer, while from the same source, was "touched up" in some ways (ovedone, in fact.)
"(Also keep in mind many of the defects you may notice are actually a result of the transfer from film to laserdisc). "
Agreed. Having gone through ANH frame-by-frame myself, I can tell you - you'd all be AMAZED at the amount of dirt, noise and other such defects in the actual transfer. When Laserman saw my transfer, he mentioned something about all the visual glitches, but when we ran the LD through the XO, the glitches actually got worse, because the player displayed them much more prominently (which, of course, meant I had a better player than originally thought.
)"- Variations in colour saturation seem to occur occasionally. I've got no idea what caused this."
Again, it's the LD.
"- No menus or extras whatsoever. Personally I like to put a disc in and have it play from the start without a menu appearing, I feel it stays more true to the laserdisc this way. However, in a future version I'd certainly like to put in alternative audio tracks (mono, original dolby surround); it would then make sense to have a simple audio selection menu."
You can have menus and still make the DVD autoplay. Early Universal releases did this, such as Waterworld.