Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:
Were previous fan-made telecines taken off of 35mm, 16mm, or 8mm films?

I'm pretty sure the widescreen version that I uploaded was originally from a 35mm print; however, it was from a unknown generation VHS copy duped onto DVD via a standalone recorder, so there had been a lot of quality lost before it reahed me.

I had a little play with your sample in VirtualDub using the levels filter. Lowering the black level does improve the image IMO (I'll post screenshots at some point). Also noticed, interestingly, the image gets marginally brighter towards the right hand side of the image. Could that be a slight misalignment of the camera?

Regarding the camera, is that the optimal focus you can get? It looks a little blurred, just wondered if that could be improved, or if it's a limitation of the workprinter method.

And what are you doing spending money on a swanky new plasma display? You need to be getting a new HDV cam for this project... ;-)