I'd say that DVD production quality has gone down over past few years, and that exceptional transfers are still as rare as they used to be, and that average transfers are the standard.
More than likely, the Chroma Upsampling Bug. Blame your DVD player. Geez people. This transfer is OK. Not the best in the world. Not even close to the worst. EE is NOT that bad on this disc. There is quite of posterization on people's faces - lots of color information has been removed...