Wasn't the Casablanca BD just the same VC-1 encoding that previously appeared on the HD DVD? We can at least say it had a higher bitrate than any high definition encoding commercially released by Criterion in 2006. It also looks better than The Third Man for reasons having nothing to do with encoding, of course, which underscores the point that every title is its own animal.
Regards,This being said I was kinda feeling when WB's released Casablanca and it featured a startling low average bit rate, and compare it to the the approx same running time of a film like The Third Man released by Criterion. It was astounding how much space they gave the film.