I suppose settops have fixed brightness and contrast levels?
drf seemed to like his videos dark, can't imagine why (he's prolly never seen them any other way - he was too young to catch any of the movies in the theater.). He actually thought the DVD of Aladdin was way too bright merely because it didn't look as dark and dull as his VHS.
I'm uploading untouched sample clips from his VHS and my LD.
EDIT: Here they are 263 MB contains comparable samples from both rips (2:21 each)