The guy's right. It's a newer print that looks sharp for all the live action sequences, but is pretty grainy for the SFX sequences. Not sure why that is. And there're no special features. You hit play and there you go.
The live action scenes really are sharp beyond belief. It's much much clearer than the DVD. I just wonder why the footage of the fortress is grainy.
The effects shots are grainy due to how visual effects had to be accomplished prior to digital effects. Basically, the effects needed to be shot, have other layers of effects layered on top of them and then re-photographed on an optical printer. This re-photographing of multiple elements effectively worsened the resolution with each copy as detail was lost and grain increased.
To counteract this, one method that was used for effects work was to shoot on VistaVision which
had a negative frame area twice that of
35mm, with the negative running horizontally rather than virtically. This meant that the starting point for the effects work had less grain, increased resolution and and more detail before it went through the degrading process of optical printer.
That process was unlikely to have been used on Krull due to budgetary restrains though.