Good point about calibration. Makes me wonder if the person color correcting the 2004 dvd's had too much red in their overbrightened monitor. "Wow, sure had to add a lot of blue just to make the stormtroopers look white.
Another thought.
"Lucas cut apart the original negative to make the special edition." I thought Lucas was a longtime big supporter of digital editing and tried to get Spielberg to edit Last Crusade on a computer.