Whoa! Nice find!
Could this mean that the first release (VHS only?) was definitely Cameron’s only “original vision” color-correction (as opposed to more, later revised, color-corrections)? It also begs the question … did any of those 1st, wrong VHS’s leak out into the market?
There is another great article from 1996 issue of ‘Widescreen Review’ on the subject of Aliens grain and color correction (JC forcing calibration on his own personal TV set). From all I’ve read on the subject so far it seems to me that we should be pretty happy with Blu-ray version. No one really remembers the quality of 35mm prints at the time of release and I doubt they were all the same. It’s like remembering how good VHS was until the DVD came along.
I saw a 70mm print this year, it did not look anything like the BD at all.