Oh man, a friend of mine works at blockbuster and brought over the official DVD release of Star Wars. OMG the transfer is incredible, I hate to say it but this is truly a reference transfer... Why oh why can't he release an unmodified version.
There is no way to get the laserdisc to look anywhere near this good, even running the LD through a terranex doesn't get close.
I am still going to attempt my despecialising project, matching the colour grade will be easy enough, but I really wasn't expecting them to make the old films look this incredibly good. The only option may be to slightly degrade the new releases and do my best to improve the LD originals and meet halfway.
Dammit, how hard would it have been for him to put the original scenes in the (endless) extras. Bizzarely the qulaity of this transfer makes me even angrier to think what could've been.

*sigh*