I definitely do not think we should strive to represent the look of a dupe print that was either seen once on Spanish TV or a few times in a single theater that showed bootleg films.

Whether or not it should be an “ultumate” experience is another matter and you’re right that it’s tricky. But I think we should at least try to get it looking like the Eastman style it was copied from, that thousands of people probably watched. I would argue that other things like reel cues can go too. Especially the hand made scribble/scratch mess they made as a reel3 end marker. But opinions vary.

Edit: but it depends on the purpose. A lot of what you’ve done is for the sake of good color template to convert the BD to, and some of it is for SSE 2.0.

For the former, the ultimate home video experience method makes sense. And the SSE shots used in it should fit as well. Will the SSE contrast issues carry over to BD using your color matching tool?

For SSE 2.0, it’s of course up to the team. I would say fixing the contrast and saturation makes sense for the reasons I mentioned above, but only to the extent that it can be pushed without looking funky. But some of this is simply going to look better once you have poita’s scan anyway, so the point may be moot.