DVD details for
Michael Collins (1996) More at IMDbPro »

Michel Hafner (17 April 1999):
Unfortunately one of the best films of 1996 has not become one of the best DVDs of 1997. The underlying transfer should be redone. The good: The relatively high bit rate provides for good compression with few problems, the worst is probably at the start of chapter 34 (watch the sunlit table). Color reproduction is accurate and the film master is pretty clean. The bad: There is noticeable ringing around contours and there's also some noise, especially in bright image parts. In addition the images are rather fuzzy for a new transfer even given it's not 16:9 enhanced. The ugly: There is an annoying contrast problem. While blacks are solid, shadow detail is often sorely missing and high contrast shots are too harsh. It's evident that this transfer has not been optimized for the reduced contrast range of 8 bit video. Given there are many dark scenes in this film and given this is a rather new transfer after all we can definitely expect better from Warner Brothers than that. This is not even close to state of the art and it's deplorable that a great film like "Michael Collins" is treated like that. The missing 16:9 enhancement sure does not help either. On the other hand this is one of the early Warner DVDs and we have seen much better examples from them since. In case you think about buying the 16:9 enhanced PAL version, don't. It's no real 16:9, just interpolated and vastly inferior to this NTSC version.
(Addendum April 2003: The HD version that has played on HBO is a lot better than the DVD. It has also some problems (some edge enhancement and DNR artifacts are evident and it's often soft) but is overall quite enjoyable.)