I've always worried that people who had only seen the special editions would think the original films lame in comparison for their supposedly outdated effects and so forth (which is what George Lucas believes people think). For people with no attention span that may be true, but you've proved to me that anyone who actually pays attention to the films and what they're about can see the differences, and decide clearly in favour of the real thing. It's a relief to know that we're not just nitpicking for nostalgia's sake, here. lol
You're right about the Jabba scene--it's so superfluous one does not really notice its absence. I think it was a mistake to even have it in the script to begin with, really. Fortune shone on the film when they couldn't get it work back then. lol
Vader doesn't strike me as being a 'pink' kind of guy, either.
That's interesting about the Emperor scene . . . when I first saw the '04 set in college one other guy remarked it was lame to have him say that Anakin was Luke's father right then, because it interfered with the way that plot went in the rest of the story. It didn't bug me so much at first, because I'd seen it with the original dialogue many times already, but when I realised this was supposed to be a complete replacement of how it had been, it became annoying. Lucas confuses himself with his changes, I think, because he's counting people seeing them and saying "oh that's so much better now that they changed it!" but doesn't take into account the way they come across when trying to mesh with the older elements. Over the time the alterations just don't hold up. It's lame, too, the way the name "Anakin Skywalker" is used in ESB, because that name is never heard at all until RJ otherwise. Using McDiarmid in the scene was in theory a good idea for continuity's sake, and it is nice to see him there, but it also spoils his introduction in RJ, again, because you don't see his face clearly until near the end when Luke meets him for the first time. (I think it even says in the script that Luke's viewing of the Emperor is to be the first time the audience gets a good look at his face.) If they'd just kept the original dialogue and shadowed his face, it might have been better . . .