Yeah pretty much all home video telecines from the 1990s and especially the 1980s were deliberately brightened artificially. This was done because it was felt that you could not see the image properly if you watched it during the daytime, due to reflection and glare. They usually are not reliable for colour and level referencing. It was only in the last ten years or so with DVD and finally now Blu Ray that proper black levels started appearing. That's not to say that no LDs had properly levels, and because some of them were coloured in collaboration with directors and DPs while some DVDs were not sometimes these older transfers have more accurate colouring, but usually as far as levels and midrange go they aren't quite as true, simply because LDs could not possibly display true levels even if they wanted to.