The thought of the original crawl being spliced in crossed my mind, but I'm still just not sure why they would do that and not restore the rest of the film somewhat. I remember seeing "Empire of Dreams" in edited form on television (I never bought the 2004 set), and both the opening crawl and other OT footage (like Sebastion Shaw as Anakin at the end of ROTJ) looked like it had actually been restored somewhat, though I'm not %100 sure. And the ewok song from ROTJ also looked restored on the "Rebel Strike" video game that came out in 2003. Clearly they can at least give the footage some upgrading so I'm not sure why they would put the laserdisc versions on this release.
But again, thanks. That does make some sense at least.