1990osu said:
The interesting thing though, as I think about it, is that the 1993 DC was never in fullscreen. Therefore, in order to strike the full-screen VHS tapes in 1995, they must have made use of a HD source from which the 1993 master was struck.
Not necessarily. They more likely did a separate transfer for the pan-and-scan version.
AFAIK, in the 90s only Sony derived pan-and-scan versions from HD masters. And they looked positively awful. If it ever comes on again, catch the P&S version of Ghostbusters. It's literally headache-inducing, with very mechanical, linear, and soap-opera-like 60i pans over the 24fps image.
Vidiot on stevehoffman.tv said:
"Sony had their own HD facility in the early 1990s and was trying to do all their pan/scan jobs in an edit bay, using their own hand-built gear, and the results looked very "mechanical" and electronic, for lack of a better description. They eventually gave up and shut the facility down, but not before hundreds of titles were done that way."
If HD masters existed for the GOUT, they would have used them on those 2006 DVDs. The fact that the masters they did use were 480i is proof that those are all that ever existed.
The P&S versions were almost certainly different transfers, though they still have very heavy DVNR.