In all honesty since it was a limited release, so we would have to know how many screens it showed on and I would estimate 3-5 so there may have only been that many copies of each film. I have a suspicion that for the DVD’s they may have used the Lucasfilm archives 35mm’s for the DVD transfers.
So I wonder if the VHS and laserdiscs are sourced from the broadcast tapes? Damn I can’t really remember them that well so I’ll have to watch them in the next few days. I’ll transfer the MPG’s to my TiVo and find the differences based on the interwebs information as I do not have the official DVD’s.
I have the official DVD release of these two movies and the picture was pretty good. I do not know what the source was, but it was fitting for DVD standard definition.
As mentioned above, I also have copies of these two movies which my dad recorded directly on VHS tape on the nights they aired and since ripped to dvd format. They are mostly uncut. They have the original title card and many, but not all, of the commercials intact. Both movies are complete, but missing the end credits, which ran after the last commercials. The quality of my recordings is obviously lesser because they were recorded onto VHS tape (on the 6 hour setting as I recall) before being ripped). I don’t know how to upload to “the organ,” but I’d happily make them available for anyone who’d want to upload them to share.
If you are interested in watching the best quality though, the official dvd release is the way to go and it sounds as if yours is probably also going to be superior to my recordings.