FWIW, I’ve always treated DeEd as “what a respectful Blu-ray transfer would have looked like”, and the various film transfers as “what it actually looked like in theatres” – although obviously a just-struck print would look much cleaner than the prints we’ve been able to find and use. For whatever reason, I still prefer DeEd in the end.
Yeah, I’m not really keen on having a DE that features tons of gate weave, even if the original, release-day theatrical prints had it.
Personally I don’t want the extra grain and/or gate weave from release prints (unless it’s something like 4K77, in which I don’t expect Bluray quality), just something that is the highest quality version of how the original negative was in 1977.
Congrats Harmy for your dream job!