DVD details for
Cruel Intentions (1999) More at IMDbPro »

Michel Hafner (21 October 1999):
This collector's edition by Columbia/Tristar of Cruel Intentions (1999) is of pretty good quality, but can't keep up with the best from that label.
The film master used is very clean, image steadiness is good. Contrast and color rendition are very good, too. Not quite up there with the best is image sharpness. It suffers a bit from grain and noise processing. It's still very good most of the time, tough. The noise and grain level is generally low, but some sky shots and many of the darker interior scenes have more noise than we like it. The film master used is too grainy for top results. The video master has been noise processed, more or less carefully, but some artifacts remain. Some examples: chapter 12: 2:23.. (watch the edges of Annette's dark sweater), chapter 17: 1:25 (some frames are severly messed up), chapter 24: 0:08 (the stripes of Annette's pink sweater are gone during its short movement). In addition some shots have slightly overenhanced edges and ringing is visible around high contrast contours (example: Kathryn's outline in chapter 10: 0:22..). Compression is pretty good. I have seen no distracting glitches.
This is a good quality DVD that will look fine on all kinds of displays. Better displays reveal some problems not present on state of the art discs. There are some supplements including a featurette and six deleted scenes. The deleted scenes have pathetic image quality (and one has an instable sound level) so one can not really enjoy them, only take note of them. The featurette looks ok, but I keep wondering why we can't get at least the same image quality in the supplements as everybody can get these days by using a DV camera available for less than 1000 dollars. What's this silly composite format doing on a medium that offers component video? It seems the studios are not very quality aware when it comes to the choice of masters for the supplements.