Comment by VerifiedReports

Nothing in there indicates "misunderstanding." You're simply declaring, without evidence, that the difference in quality "is not particularly meaningful." Whether it's meaningful or not to you is irrelevant; the point is that it's unnecessary.

You are ignoring the fact that the scheme described in the article does not retain the pixel data any more than what I'm proposing does; in fact, it probably retains less, even if only slightly. The analysis phase examines grain, comes up with a set of parameters to simulate it, and then removes it. When it's re-added, it's only a generated simulation. The integrity of the "pixel data" you're citing is lost. So you might as well just allow content creators to skip the pointless adding/analyzing/removing of grain and provide the "grain" directly.

Furthermore, you note that the creator may provide the footage as a JPEG2000 (DCP) or ProRes master; both of those use lossy compression that will waste quality on fake grain that's going to be stripped anyway.

Would they deliver this same "clean" master along with grain metadata to services not using AV1 or similar? Nope. In that case they'd bake the grain in and be on their way.

The article describes a stream of grain metadata to accompany each frame or shot, to be used to generate grain on the fly. It was acquired through analysis of the footage. It is totally reasonable to suggest that this analysis step can be eliminated and the metadata provided by the creator expressly.

And yes I'm well aware that West Wing was shot with optical filters; that's the point of my comment. The dated look is baked in. If the creators or owner wanted to rein in or eliminate it to make the show more relatable to modern audiences, they couldn't. Whether they should is a matter of opinion. But if you look at the restoration and updating of the Star Trek original series, you see that it's possible to reduce the visual cheesiness and yet not go so far as to ruin the flavor of the show.