Originally posted by: Karyudo
Uhh... the master tapes are digital. So what? Not all digital master tapes are equal.

Originally posted by: Laserman
Boris, if you can't extrapolate that because the PAL THX laserdiscs have a ton more detail (and raw lines of resolution) than the NTSC laserdiscs,(and that even a *capture and re-encode* of the PAL laserdisc outperforms the NTSC gout in some scenes) then that the PAL master would have more detail than the NTSC master, then nothing else I can say will change your mind.

There was obviously a reason they didn't use the PAL tapes. The reason could simply be that they couldn't be bothered to use them... but then the difference in cost and effort would be minimal at best if this was the situation. Remember, they both have to be encoded anyway... I would be surprised if the PAL master tape looked as good as the NTSC one. It may well have had more detail - but I'll bet a dollar it had more flaws. They didn't care about PAL in 1993, and if they went to the effort in 1993 to make a PAL master tape rather then do a PAL-to-NTSC conversion like every other video release, then I have a hard time getting my head around the idea that they wouldn't do this in 2006 if it would have been better.

You can believe that the PAL master tape is much better quality if you like. Either way is speculation, we don't know for certain. Just because it has a tad more detail doesn't prove your argument, and there's certainly not enough evidence to prove otherwise. I don't believe that the PAL tape was inferior. I don't know, I don't pretend to know and I am happy to believe that it's possible the PAL tape was inferior... and it's possible it wasn't.Originally posted by: Moth3r
However, if you apply a low-pass filter to the DVD image to "soften" it and make it equivalent to the laserdisc (cut off at 5.5 MHz?) then there still seems to be more grain on the DVDs.

I really don't think you can compare that blur. The Laserdisc blur would be true "un-focus", and technically not a blur.