_,,,^..^,,,_ said:

Even if I love MPEG2 - and I'm sure you know it - AFAIK this one is ridden by many compression artifacts, while the UHE is DNR'ed a lot... neither is perfect, and probably I'll end to choose the MPEG2 even if has those artifacts; but, as the UHE has more details and no compression problems, and *IF* a grain plate overlay could make it more watchable, ***MAYBE*** the final result could be preferable by some... that's it!

The UHE doesn't have more details, they've been mostly scrubbed away by the DNR to the extent that there is little to no fine detail at all. It looks like it has had some sharpening too, so some edges appear more defined, but its mostly horrid and artificial. The original Blu-Ray may well have some compression artifacts, but it looks much more like the film it should.

I don't plan to do a restoration now, but maybe some users who watched the test clips could think if it will be an interesting thing to do, or simply a waste of time...

Using grain plates might be useful for adding short, upscaled or heavily DNR'ed individual shots into a preservation that has an overall higher quality source as a basis, but I don't think its good as a means of pretending to restore detail for an entire film to 'trick' the viewers' mind. To my eyes it just appears to be the same DNR-afflicted mess that it always was with loads of grain applied. Skin tones and clothing are still lacking the texture they should. I don't think its the way to go, at least, not in this case.

At the end, is just an "excercise of style" to understand if the grain plate technique could improve a bit a DNR'ed video... I thought also to test it with the MPEG2 version, to see if it could mask a bit the compression artifacts... what do you think?

I don't think adding more grain to a source that already has its own inherent grain would be a wise idea. I haven't seen either Blu-Ray in ages, but I don't remember the MPEG-II compression really being that bad?