So to answer my own question in the Celebrating Mickey thread on the remasters used of the bonus classic shorts, I located a copy of the US iTunes release through... alternate means.

What follows are pretty anal observations on the transfers from the compressed download. I doubt the upcoming Blu-ray would turn out any different so anyone genuinely curious on the classic shorts restorations can read on.

Winter is a pretty significant upgrade. I'd rate it on par with the bonus Oswalds on the Criterion King of Jazz blu-ray: a quick crop and grading pass on what obviously is a recent scan off a nitrate element (probably the original neg), but virtually no digital clean-up, some light tramlines that come and go and an odd image 'pulsing' in a quite a number of shots especially towards the end (also somewhat noticeable on the Treasures DVD).

https://imgur.com/a/MZw8sQ6 

Once Upon a Wintertime looks like the Blu-ray restorations of Fun and Fancy Free and The Three Caballeros: completely scrubbed of grain, cel dirt and what-not. Inklines occasionally border on looking smeary but YMMV. Is there a 'restored' HD Melody Time sitting on the shelf somewhere?

Polar Trappers, The Hockey Champ and The Art of Skiing are the Have A Laugh remasters and look pretty much as I expected. A nice fine layer of grain present and more importantly inklines and backgrounds don't look smeary at all. A through comparison with the Treasures DVD will reveal some minor tell-tale revisionism (some, but not all, of cel dust specks and other paint imperfections are scrubbed away or smoothed out), but pretty solid transfers overall.

Pluto's Christmas Tree is an oddity: it looks extremely similar to the Treasures DVD from a cropping and color timing standpoint. Except that it's been filtered, cel-dust obliterated and looks a little smeary at times. The slight misregistration/colour fringing noticeable in a few shots, also present on the Treausres DVD, further make me suspect this can't be a new scan.

https://imgur.com/a/dARaUmh 

So to answer my own question in the Celebrating Mickey thread on the remasters used of the bonus classic shorts, I located a copy of the US iTunes release through... alternate means.

What follows are pretty anal observations on the transfers from the compressed download. I doubt the upcoming Blu-ray would turn out any different so anyone genuinely curious on the classic shorts restorations can read on.

Winter is a pretty significant upgrade. I'd rate it on par with the bonus Oswalds on the Criterion King of Jazz blu-ray: a quick crop and grading pass on what obviously is a recent scan off a nitrate element (probably the original neg), but virtually no digital clean-up, some light tramlines that come and go and an odd image 'pulsing' in a quite a number of shots especially towards the end (also somewhat noticeable on the Treasures DVD).

https://imgur.com/a/MZw8sQ6 

Once Upon a Wintertime looks like the Blu-ray restorations of Fun and Fancy Free and The Three Caballeros: completely scrubbed of grain, cel dirt and what-not. Inklines occasionally border on looking smeary but YMMV. Is there a 'restored' HD Melody Time sitting on the shelf somewhere?

Polar Trappers, The Hockey Champ and The Art of Skiing are the Have A Laugh remasters and look pretty much as I expected. A nice fine layer of grain present and more importantly inklines and backgrounds don't look smeary at all. A through comparison with the Treasures DVD will reveal some minor tell-tale revisionism (some, but not all, of cel dust specks and other paint imperfections are scrubbed away or smoothed out), but pretty solid transfers overall.

Pluto's Christmas Tree is an oddity: it looks extremely similar to the Treasures DVD from a cropping and color timing standpoint. Except that it's been filtered, cel-dust obliterated and looks a little smeary at times. The slight misregistration/colour fringing noticeable in a few shots, also present on the Treausres DVD, further make me suspect this can't be a new scan.

https://imgur.com/a/dARaUmh 

The left, top, and bottom parts of the frame on the Treasures transfer (of Winter) are cropped away on the OFA version, I take it? (Checked out your screenshot comparisons just recently; I could indeed notice that part of the frame has been lost on the new transfer)

Off-topic here, but.....

[Almost all of these] have showed up via the "Get a Laugh" cutdowns that have been airing on Disney Channel or are up on YouTube. They're all HD so they'll obviously be the same transfers used [here], so viewing those will give you an idea of the garbage de-grained and diarrhea color quality of this release.

I'm legitimately confused. You're saying the modern restorations (particularly the ones that turned up on iTunes) have a "fine layer of grain" and are void of any smears, while somewhere else, they're being criticized for - supposedly - grain removal, color alterations, and digital noise reduction. Maybe the transfers used on Netflix are further cleaned up and the transfers used elsewhere (Have a Laugh!, for example) are the actual (unmodified) restorations?

Yes, Winter is indeed cropped on all 4 sides on the new master. It's likely closer to how it would have looked when projected in a theater (i.e. cropped by the projector aperture plate). It's more apparent in motion that the Treasures DVD exposes too much of the image so you see the "ends" of the snow overlay in many shots at the top and bottom and some odd vignetting that sometimes appear on the sides.

http://disney.wikia.com/...ion:_Classic_Short_Films  . After sampling several on the UK DisneyLife streaming service, I certainly have to agree with him.

I have no problem with Disney's restorations of the shorts. I don't want to believe they use DNR (but I sometimes have to), but if they are, they're using the right amounts where it doesn't affect the image. Though there have been times like in Pluto's Christmas Tree (at least to my eye) and let's not forget about The Sword in The Stone and Mickey's Christmas Carol *shrugs*.

http://disney.wikia.com/...ion:_Classic_Short_Films  . After sampling several on the UK DisneyLife streaming service, I certainly have to agree with him.

Still don't get it. Either.....
-They did two transfers of the new scans: one with the film grain intact and minimal smears/DVNR and another without the grain and with even more smoothing/scrubbing/noise-reducing applied, or
-They properly remastered most of the shorts, but overdid their restoration process on some others

What seems to be the most likely case?

Additionally, I see that Paul Bunyan and The Saga of Windwagon Smith - both of which aren't part of the era that numerous shorts in Disney's 4K scan project are from - are among the numerous shorts part of the "butchered" Netflix short packages (and presumably on DisneyLife). Are they new transfers, or are they simply upscales of older transfers?

Additionally, I see that Paul Bunyan and The Saga of Windwagon Smith - both of which aren't part of the era that numerous shorts in Disney's 4K scan project are from - are among the numerous shorts part of the "butchered" Netflix short packages (and presumably on DisneyLife). Are they new transfers, or are they simply upscales of older transfers?

Both are restored, but pretty badly DVNR'd with boiling lines, Windwagon Smith even more so due to the Xerox process.

Though there is another restored version of Paul Bunyan floating on YouTube  that looks pretty good (note, this has a French-language track).

Still don't get it. Either.....
-They did two transfers of the new scans: one with the film grain intact and minimal smears/DVNR and another without the grain and with even more smoothing/scrubbing/noise-reducing applied, or
-They properly remastered most of the shorts, but overdid their restoration process on some others

What seems to be the most likely case?

The 2nd explanation, the new shorts restorations off the archival 4K scans are proving to be as wildly inconsistent as the restorations of their "lesser" features.

DisneyLife has a random assortment of shorts that are either the Have A Laugh restorations, restorations done for the Netflix packages or the Treasures masters. Not all the shorts which I know there is an existing new restoration floating around are on the service at present.

Thank you for the detailed report and screen shots. Winter certainly looks A LOT better than I've seen it before. I've only seen it looking far, far, too dark, but those screen shots of the Frozen release bring back details which were completely lost.

With the new official restoration, 'Winter' actually looks like an early Disney title. Has the sound quality improved?

I recently bought this Blu-ray for my niece (age 5), who's a Frozen fan and discovered that it has 6 "winter-themed" classic Disney shorts as bonus features. But I wonder why they didn't include "On Ice", "Donald's Snow Fight" and "Corn Chips"? Not enough room?