If your sources are existing DVDs, that is a very different scenario to encoding from an actual master, which might go some way in explaining our differences of opinion.
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Nor do they, as far as I know, low-pass filter their stuff
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They do - at least sometimes. I've seen plenty of Criterion titles with the trademark "wrinkles" and lack of high frequency content.
I found Criterion's output - like most other "studios" - highly variable. A lot of people fall into the trap of thinking that all studios do everything in-house, but it's not the case. I've seen nice discs from Criterion as well as surprisingly bad ones, and they come from different facilities. With that said, I always loved using "The Rock" as a test disc (what an usual title for them to release). Granted it was lowpass filtered but the encoding quality was excellent, at least for the time. I haven't checked it out lately.
I'll do an encode with this Fox matrix and compare to CCE SP3's defaults.