I didn't notice a decrease in sharpness. But if you're referring to Moth3r's transfer didn't he "make" Jedi softer on purpose? Is that the definite drop in sharpness you're talking about? The LD is not more blurry as I didn't denoise/sharpen. It's as it is on the LD. I actually think Empire and Jedi look better then Hope.
In tested so many filters and settings to improve the image, but if a filter made one scene look better another scene would look worse so I decided not to filter. I'm not an avisynth expert, I just know the basic stuff. In the end I decided to just backup the LDs and not change anything. (although I did increase the brightness because my capture was darker then the LD and I cut 2 ugly frames). The rest on the DVD is as it was on the LD.
So now we come to pros and cons.
+ It's PAL
+ I think if you play the dvd it looks as if you play the LD (some will think this is - )
+ high bitrate, no compression artifacts (read: no extra artifacts introduced by MPEG-2 encoding)
+ LPCM audio, although not as good as the DC LPCM audio
+/- all original fox/cbs intros + all original LD chapter points (although I don't like intros I felt I had to put them on the dvd for preservation purposes)
- dotcrawl
- missing wipe (but Ben's house looks good). personally I don't care about the wipe.
- laserrot dots
- noise
- soft image
(- layerbreak, although it will be nothing compared to flipping/changing discs)
What I really hated about doing this transfer is that you see every scene so many times the movie is less fun to watch. MeBeJedi must be going thru hell... and back.