I only discovered this because I was playing with my two LD players, comb filter and Dr. No.
The Criterion CAV and MGM CLV Connery Collection...are from the same print!
They have the exact same damage marks, the exact same reel change markers, the exact same everything which I verified by switching back and forth on exact still frames. The Criterion is cropped on top and right, and the MGM opens these up to a noticeable degree. The Criterion is far darker and features much more heavily saturated color levels. The MGM appears to be slightly more accurate to what is on the negative probably but does appears to have been a bit brightened in terms of contrast, whereas the Criterion would mimic more of an original print. The middle ground would be best because the skin tones appear more accurate on the MGM for example.
This would explain the somewhat contrasty look of the Connery collection titles I've always noticed and why they are gone on the Criterions and even the CAV THX Goldfinger box, which was supposedly mastered from a new print struck off the negative in 1994.
I'm wondering if the transfer was possibly the same. Apparently Criterion could have licensed their work back to MGM or took the rough scan from MGM and did their own disc. In any case the later MGM edition attempts to "correct" the transfer for CRT or be from a better machine. I will do a comparison with Goldfinger, but am still missing the CAV FRWL.
Comparing the Criterion, Connery and SE DVD reveals that probably around the THX reissues all the films may have gotten spruced up. The few Lasers that trickled out predated the SE DVD which were essentially direct ports. Comparing the three reveals Dr. No is the same overall print source but received a slight cleanup as some more obtrusive marks are gone but others remain intact. Aspect ratio breaks down like this:
MGM appears as somewhere around 1.55:1, Criterion crops right and top to closer to 1.60, and the SE DVD crops a bit of the right edge from the Criterion along a significant portion of the bottom and gives back a pixel line from the top for a 1.78 frame.
Tell me I don't study these films enough...