The more I dig into this and the more transfers I revisit, I think MGM simply used one master per film from 1989 onwards through the SE DVD.

The damage marks on each film I've seen are identical on every version. With each new release things got clearer and more detailed, but when the SEs were rolled out, they unfortunately were riddled with edge enhancement, some were cropped incorrectly (Dr. No, FRWL, Goldfinger, LALD, TMWTGG all cropped to 1.78:1) and then some of these issues had video/audio errors. (OHMSS, LALD, TLD, LTK and some others I think.) LALD even has the audio dropouts that were present on the first defective LD pressing.

But the colors were still spot on. I've played around with some of the UEs and both the color and detail are just gone. There's a definite softness that has crept in especially on the 70's era films. I don't really think that these can be improved all that much, especially since the Blu-ray 1080p images reveal much more and highlight definite differences from their SD counterparts. But although stronger, the Blus don't look the way they should.

Only some of the films were scanned at 4K. Dr. No-LALD and Moonraker. everything else came from a video master provded from MGM save for Goldeneye which was print sourced. This was likely a version prepared for a pan and scan due to the excessive cropping on the reissue.

The inherent softness in these really get me. Aside from losing the original color timing, Lowry just scrubbed out too much grain and detail.

And the Technicolor is completely gone. Gone!

And don't even get me started on the audio! The 5.1 remixes (both Dolby and DTS) are horrendous. Tinny audio, replaced music with remastered score, and full of unnecessary new elements and foleys. The uncompressed PCM on the Laserdiscs aside from being original has an unbelievable amount of extended dynamic range compared to everything else.