Never Boring HD video remake differences

After some encouragement in another thread, it seems there are at least a few people who'd enjoy reading a list of differences in the film-based videos which were re-created in HD for the Never Boring Blu-ray. It was also a fun enough way to pass some time on lockdown.

This preamble has turned into more of a pre-hike, so follow these links if you want to skip to the change lists. They're in order of original single release.
I Was Born To Love You
Made in Heaven
Living on My Own
(I've skipped Time, as Time Waits for No-One is essentially a new video made from the original raw footage, to go with the new version of the song. The original Time song and video are not on Never Boring at all.)
The Great Pretender
The Great Pretender (extended)
Barcelona
(I've also skipped the filmed Barcelona "Ku Club" Ibiza mimed performance, as it's a completely new edit in cropped widescreen. Chief Mouse has created a remastered HD version of the original 4:3 edit, which is available along with mrbadguy46's Tidal rips.

I haven't covered the videotaped mimed performances of various songs from Barcelona.

First, a disclaimer. I say all of the below in my capacity as some guy who has spent too much time going through the different versions of the videos side-by-side. I don't have any special insights or behind-the-scenes info about how the originals or remakes were done. I'm just making what I feel are reasonable assumptions based on the end products, and having read a lot about how TV was made back in the day on the Doctor Who Restoration Team's website. I've listened to the directors' commentaries on the LOLSOS DVD, but didn't find any information relevant to my analysis. These commentaries are not on NB.
If you have better info about the making of the originals or remakes, please share. I'd imagine anyone reading this thread would love to hear it I also welcome corrections if there're any significant changes I've missed, I've used any film-making terminology wrongly, etc..

General Observations
The original videos were generally shot on film at 25fps progressive, and seem to have been edited on 50Hz interlaced video.

As each progressive frame is made of two interlaced fields, cuts sometimes have a frame which is a mix of fields from the two shots. This might at first seem like sloppy editing, but these videos were only ever designed to be viewed on interlaced CRT TVs, where this wouldn't be an issue.

I believe the above is pretty standard for film-based TV/video productions from the 80s in countries like the UK which use PAL/50Hz video.

I haven't noted where cuts happen a frame or so earlier or later in the remade videos for two reasons: I don't believe it's visible in motion, and the above interlacing issue makes it debatable how long some of the shots originally were. I also haven't noted slightly different timing of fades, as I don't tend to notice these when viewing normally.

I have no information on the versions of the videos which were shown in countries with NTSC/60Hz TV like the USA, but I presume they'd have just been standards conversions from the PAL master tapes. If anyone has a digitised vintage NTSC recording of any of these videos easily to hand, particularly one which hasn't been de-interlaced, I'd love to see that.

I'd also be very interested in any captures of the remade videos from broadcast TV, especially HD interlaced 50Hz broadcasts.

Some changes are common to all of the re-made videos. I'll split these into good, bad, and indifferent. This is of course just my own personal, subjective opinion of how much I like them.

Good

• The editors have clearly gone back to the original film rushes and re-scanned them in HD, creating a much clearer image. Mostly.
  
  
• They've been respectful of the videos' original aspect ratios. Full-frame 4:3 is now pillarboxed 4:3, letterboxed widescreen is now full-frame widescreen. Mostly.
  
  • You may notice when watching the originals that the letterboxed sections are more like 14:9, and therefore think that a 16:9 transfer would be noticeably cropped. However, the new transfers of these parts tend to show more of the original film frame, so we're actually getting more picture. Where we do lose some picture off the top and bottom, it doesn't make the framing feel uncomfortably tight. Mostly)
    
  
  
• Everything is progressive, with no interlacing.
  
  
• Nice high bitrate, which seems to keep the original film grain intact.
  
  
• All of the above makes them much more suitable for viewing on modern TVs and devices.
  

Bad

• There are some editing changes with no obvious motivation. I kind of hope these were just mistakes and/or deliberate, pointless changes. The alternative is that some of the film footage has been damaged or lost since it was originally shot, so we can never see it in HD. That's a sad prospect.
  
  
• Everything on the Blu-ray has been converted to 24fps, whether it was shot at 25fps progressive or 50Hz interlaced. It's been done well enough that I don't tend to notice in motion. It's not immediately obvious to me if they did this by dropping frames, blending frames and/or retiming them using optical flow; perhaps a combination of the 3 techniques? There are double-images on some frames with fast movement, but I've also seen some of these in the 25fps HD versions, and in the SD original versions (even after bob-deinterlacing). I assume this could be caused by shooting at 25fps with lights powered by 50hz mains power? They have changed the frame rate in a way which avoids blending over cuts, so it's less bad than it could be. The reasons were presumably:
  
  1. Modern TVs and players in PAL/50Hz regions can display NTSC/60Hz material, but the reverse is not true. Modern TVs and players worldwide can display 24fps content, either natively or by internally applying a pull-down to 60Hz.
     
  2. Physical media sales volumes are lower now that they used to be, so they're economising by making one version they can sell worldwide.
  I understand why they've done it, and they've done it pretty well, but I still don't like it on principle.
  However, most of these videos are also available at 25fps on YouTube and iTunes. These are of course at a lower bitrate than the Blu-ray, and it is noticeable. The iTunes versions look better than the YT ones. These online versions are slightly cropped compared to the Blu-ray, presumably due to overscan considerations.
  
  
• There are a few errors on the Blu-ray which have been fixed for the online versions. I guess the masters for the discs needed to be ready earlier, so they had a little more time to make final tweaks to before uploading to iTunes, YouTube, etc.. That reasoning falls apart for the couple of errors which exist in the online versions but not on the disc.
  
  
• Time is only present in its new version Time Waits for No-One, and Barcelona only has the 2012 orchestral mix of the song. Granted, this set wasn't marketed as an exhaustive collection but as a "specially-curated selection". However, the list of videos is complete enough that those two feel like ommissions. The fact they've been "replaced" by deliberately altered versions is a move which would make George Lucas proud.
  
  
• Original 80s video effects and transitions ran at 50Hz. Re-created versions run at 25/24fps, so look a bit jerky by comparison.
  

Indifferent

• There are some editing changes which are arguably technical improvements. I have mixed feelings about these, especially as the unaltered versions are not included as an option or bonus feature. The content on the Blu-ray disc takes up less than 15GB, leaving 40% empty space where they could've at least thrown on the old versions un-remastered.
  
  
• Where the originals were fully or partly letterboxed widescreen, they had white lines at the top and bottom of the actual image. As a side-effect, it was more obvious when the position of the image shifted slightly between shots. These white lines and subtly-shifting images are gone in the new versions.
  
  
• A lot of shots are framed a bit wider or tighter in the new transfers. I haven't recorded all of these as this is pretty much inevitable, and it would be a much longer and duller list.
  
  
• Colour grading is often different in the new transfers. I'll generally say nothing further on this, as I don't tend to notice it. I also don't have any kind of calibrated display, so couldn't say which was more technically "correct".
  

Notes on my comparisons
I haven't made any attempt to correct my screenshots for the difference between video and PC levels, PAL's non-square pixels, nor SD vs HD colour space.

I haven't compared the audio mixes at all, though I note that the old LOLSOS DVD lists surround mixes, where the new NB DVD and Blu don't. I don't have a surround system, and the stereo mixes sound basically the same to me. I don't have a particularly refined ear, and that's the way I like it. What little I already know about video is enough to spoil a bad film transfer for me. I don't want to train my ear until I'm, say, suddenly unable to enjoy Live Killers.

All timings below are based on the original videos, in the format MM:SS:FF. Some of them start with a fade-in, so it's difficult to say where exactly the first frame is. I'm therefore giving timings relative to the chapter points on the LOLSOS DVD, as that's how I ripped them for this comparison.

Some of the times are the first/last frame of a shot, some are the frame which best illustrates the change. Ditto for the screenshots.