I'd like to add my vote for a NON noise-reduced approach - take a look at the opening snowspeeder shots on TR47's version of ESB to see an extreme case of unsuccessful noise-reduction. The filtering artefacts are FAR more distressing than the MPEG encoding, even at the low data rate. I'd far rather have a little film grain and noise than the whole "behind a veil" feel. Even when it's done well ( Aliens Special Edition, say ) - noise-reduction is almost always noticeable and iritating. I work in audio and follow the same approach there - "hiss is our friend"

BTW, for those looking to lift audio levels, the Waves Ultra-Maximiser DX plugin is great...

I'm also interested to know whether you guys are seeing frame-by-frame shifts in colour temp ? Especially noticeable on the opening scenes of SW, all the walls gently shift hue WITHIN the scenes... is that a limitation of TR47's transfer, or the discs themselves ?

Finally, PLEASE go with the best MPEG encoder you can use ( TMPGEnc is great, for the money, but Procoder and CCE are better ) I haven't used Premiere's encoder, but I've never yet seen a "bundled" package that comes close.