Imo it makes it look worse.
It just makes everything soft and then cranks up the contrast and sharpening filter crushing blacks and drawing halos all over the place.
If you look at the first side by side from Tomb Raider, it makes all the small highlights three times bigger blobs destroying all detail in the process.
The same soft blobbiness is preset in the whole image, not only the highlights.
Also notice the the halo from the sharpening in the bottom right corner.
In the next side by side, Lara's jacket almost black (on my screen) with severe loss in detail where as the original looks completely fine.
This contrast boost can be seen in every example, but here you can see the downside well.
I'm not sure if this is the cables fault though, it could definitely be fuckup from LTT and how it was captured.
Here you can see what the overly done sharpening filter does. Look at the edges of the character. There is noticeable halo all around the character.
The pillar on the left is another good example. The original is perfectly fine, the edges are sharp and you can see some texture in it.
The filtered has horrible edges and all the global softening takes away from the texture in the pillar.
The whole image is just soft. The grass has little detail to left anymore. And look at the leaves and flowers, they are just blurry mess.
Some of the 1080p videos didn't show too many negative effects, but it wasn't better either. The contrast boost can fool you thinking it looks better... well, I mean, if you like it, then just crank that shit up on your tv.
You can find this type of conversations about bluray transfers from the day first blurays were released.
Some people like digital noise reduction that removes film grain, sharpened and contrasty image.
Others hate how digital noise reduction makes the actors look like wax sculptures, the halo around edges from over harpening and crushed blacks/blown out whites.
(I'm one of the latter ones)
I guess it boils down to - as it often does - personal preference.
