Thanks very much. I was beginning to wonder if I was just babbling on a bit too much. ;) I've only noticed the lines in Thunderball on LD due to my new DVD recorder and by minute comparisons. I'll check through YOLT.
To be honest, I'm thinking that because nine films were held up for so long, and most of them were ones with transfers that caused the most concern (Goldeneye) or were merely DVD-era redos (TSWLM for example) that perhaps somebody at MGM/Fox did some extra work before releasing to Blu-ray.
Goldeneye seems to use the old 1995-era master on BD.
I'm convinced that some are not even the UEs. Thunderball looks nothing like the Lowry UE. YOLT, OHMSS and DAF are restored to pre-UE DVD tinkering like LALD was in terms of color and contrast. That said, those three have overblown contrast levels which to me indicate that they may have just been released as-is. TSWLM of course got a brand new transfer, done in-house at MGM/Fox, which has deep color like the above mentioned three and the same enhanced high contrast level which again leads me to believe that Spy's BD is in fact a straight as-is transfer.
My hypothesis: The better presentation, color level and detail in the newer discs/transfers in addition to differences from the Lowry UE DVDs indicate that perhaps these newer transfers may have been sourced from some of the negative scans but were handled by someone at Fox, since these seem more like some of their recent catalog classic reissues on BD.
And keep in mind all, it appears the SEs were new transfers of the same elements done for the scrapped THX LD reissue series. All those I've looked at so far seem to vary from their older LD counterparts in terms of color and contrast.
What does become quickly apparent is just how long MGM re-used the same elements and even the same transfer of the same element over and over again. So far the other big surprises were the opened up 1.55:1 framings and the fact that the MGM and Criterion Dr. No are the same.
If anyone has the Criterion CAV FRWL, let me know.
I never received any response from Criterion. I've also written to the former head of MGM's video department, so we will see what comes about.