Soon as I posted I finally found what I was looking for:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/LeeThorogoods-PAL-LaserDisc-Preservation-Project-97-SE-Finished-95-THX-Finished-97-SE-Uploaded-95-THX-Uploaded-to-the-newsgroup/topic/11824/

Interesting I was under the impression GOUT == 1993 definitive collection and FACES == 1995 THX

1990osu said:

Wasn't "Faces" just the VHS versions of the 1993 definitive edition master?

If that is true then why would they have made a "faces" version of the LD's?

I guess that pretty much settles it... thanks all for setting me on the right path.

More than likely the person who swears the THX were different than the GOUT we watched is simply remembering some of the SE changes.

He has the Faces P&S VHS tapes so if he isn't convinced he can show me what he was talking about (problem is he doesn't have a vcr anymore and he "remembers" it being different from the 2006 dvd but has no way to prove it w/o coming over to my place)

1990osu said:

The interesting thing though, as I think about it, is that the 1993 DC was never in fullscreen.  Therefore, in order to strike the full-screen VHS tapes in 1995, they must have made use of a HD source from which the 1993 master was struck. 

Not necessarily. They more likely did a separate transfer for the pan-and-scan version.

AFAIK, in the 90s only Sony derived pan-and-scan versions from HD masters. And they looked positively awful. If it ever comes on again, catch the P&S version of Ghostbusters. It's literally headache-inducing, with very mechanical, linear, and soap-opera-like 60i pans over the 24fps image.

Vidiot on stevehoffman.tv said:

"Sony had their own HD facility in the early 1990s and was trying to do all their pan/scan jobs in an edit bay, using their own hand-built gear, and the results looked very "mechanical" and electronic, for lack of a better description. They eventually gave up and shut the facility down, but not before hundreds of titles were done that way."

If HD masters existed for the GOUT, they would have used them on those 2006 DVDs. The fact that the masters they did use were 480i is proof that those are all that ever existed.

The P&S versions were almost certainly different transfers, though they still have very heavy DVNR.

I didn't realize that transfer of Ghostbusters was released on VHS. I had the Family Collection clamshell and while it was P&S, it didn't have those awful strobing pans, at least not that I remember. (FYI, I first discovered that version when Comedy Central used to run the movie in the early 2000s.)

Maybe it was released on VHS around the time of the 15th anniversary DVD?

About 8-10 or so years ago, Sony reissued a bunch of their catalog DVDs (Annie, Last Action Hero, Multiplicity, etc.) in full-frame only. All of them had similar HD-derived P&S jobs. They never reissued them in widescreen, and some of them still aren't available on Blu-ray in the States.

It's easy to forget crap like that was going on so recently. At least non-widescreen DVDs of 1.85:1 films were basically open-matte (unless it was an effects-heavy film like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, where every shot with FX was in VistaVision and had to be cropped). P&S-only discs of scope titles were unforgivable.

I am so grateful that HDTV and Blu-ray basically killed the P&S menace (though a couple rogue 2.35:1 catalog titles surface in budget-priced P&S-only discs from time to time - possibly because they don't *have* a widescreen transfer and are too cheap to make one).

Even I'm amazed at how complete this paradigm shift has been. When the 2004 SE DVDs came out, it was still the P&S versions that were being given the standard gold color scheme to match the packaging of the (widescreen-only) prequels. Someone who wasn't aware that there were two releases, or that the widescreen release was silver, would just pick up the P&S one (and I know people who have absolutely no issue with widescreen who did this). The 2004 SEs in P&S are probably the ultimate butchery of the trilogy, apart from the 2011 mess.

Going back to the "Faces" releases, not sure about any unique color issues. Can you recall examples of what you heard, Antcu?

(I will also say that the PAL P&S transfers had more clearly visible starfields than the NTSC ones, due to PAL's additional vertical resolution.)

Yeah, Those P&S abominations from Sony are God awful. I had the P&S only release of Last Action Hero at one time and although I can sometimes tolerate watching full screen if no other option is available, that version was completely unwatchable with it's horrible electronic panning. I eventually found a used copy of the earlier flipper disc release and tossed the pan & scam copy into the trash where it belongs.

Also, Annie is one of my personal favorite films and I am still irked by the fact that I cannot purchase a decent copy of the film. I didn't even bother with the Anniversary disc after finding out it was P&S only, and even the earlier flipper release had a crappy widescreen transfer from what I've heard.

Ghostbusters was one of my first exposures to different cropping in different transfers. In the establishing shot of Weaver Hall, the old RCA/Columbia transfer cropped everything but the sign, while the 90s release cropped the sign out completely. In the 90s, the elevator shot was cropped through back-and-forth cutting between Ray/Egon and Venkman, but the original transfer actually showed that scene squeezed!

As we've pointed out, in the standard, non-time-compressed pre-THX transfer of ANH, when Luke says "They're sandpeople all right, I can see one of them now," said Tusken Raider is completely out of frame.

As I said in another thread, even though old P&S transfers of the trilogy generally have more resolution/detail than the old widescreen transfers, and even though I think the P&S laserdiscs should be preserved (including the PAL ones), make no mistake: I absolutely loathe P&S. To paraphrase the Joker, I'm glad it's dead (well, almost dead, at least).

Nien Nunb, Annie has aired on HDTV in widescreen in the past, I'm sure there must be an HD rip out there somewhere. If not, you can just import the UK DVD.

With the upcoming Broadway revival, I'm sure the film has a Blu-ray release in its future.