So I just went through a couple of those France 4 rips to compare the Old Indy segments to the US airings. These being the most important parts as there are 8 episodes that have never had any official release in any region with the old indy segments. So if one were trying to make “original airing” preservations these are required.
Welp, bad news. In ‘Benares January 1919’ (which is one of the aforementioned episodes with no official release in any region) specifically they’ve edited off seconds here and there making them incomplete. Assume this was to make the dub easier and not have to sync mouths as much. A few sections that previously had someone talking on camera is now swapped to off camera with a different person silently reacting to the words.
I haven’t had a chance to go through the entire episodes to compare but just going off of the old indy segments it doesn’t look good.
There are also advertisement pop ups with modern shows. That is annoying.
Additionally there is the usual frame blending done on 23.97fps sources converted to PAL. Another mess to untangle.
Oh yeah, and cropping. This is typical of 4:3 content modernized for 16:9 tv’s. They ever so slightly crop the image to something more like 14:9 and then letterbox the rest of it.
In these example pics look at her shoes, the cigarette machine, that arrow up top…
In summary, I wouldn’t use them for preservations. Nice to have I suppose. Maybe the episodes themselves are more intact but I have my doubts. Not to mention the cropping and frame rate issues will still be there regardless.