OK the original trilogy does not exist. My dad was able to restore the 1980 olimpic games opening cerymony out of a deteriorated VHS tape he recorded back them and did a nice clean transfer into a DVD, probably the only one around besides the network's, which I don't belive to exist anymore. And that is my dad, who has little knowledge of video techniques and computers.

Are you telling me that there are no copies of STAR WARS left? Lucasfilm and Twentieth Century Fox, two multi-billion corporations from the United States of America, who produced and distributed the most popular movie in the world, cannot provide ONE SINGLE COPY of the movie in it's original form? They have to resort to a LD because there is NO other way? And he has used the original films to make the SEs? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see how it's possible to overwrite celluloid. What did he use to make the 1993 and 1995 sets? It obviously didn't come from an inferior form. Did he BURN it afterwards? Maybe they just burned it as an accident and are too embarassed to say, because that is the only reasonable explanation that comes to mind.