Looking at the images above - yes the old release is grainy and washed out, but it does seem to contain more detail than the new release (look at the branches agasint the sky).

I don't know whether that's because the new release has an increased contrast which has "blown out" the sky, or whether it's been smoothed to reduce grain. (Or if it's something to do with resizing the screenshots.)

If the screenshots are representative, then best results might be obtained by running the old video through an AviSynth script with degrain filter and colour saturation boost.