Lucas's personality. He just wanted to release his own LD transfer of the O-OT, to make more money. The facts in this matter are the history and character of Lucas. He wanted to slip into the bootleg market, and make something that was just good enough to not be worth watching on my HDTV (unless I really wanted to showcase it to the kiddies and play disc 1, with version 3 on it! woot!), but comparable quality to the LD Transfers already out there.

My grandfather is really into Charlie Chaplin, and tons of other silent films. After some remastering and hard work, they can get the most horrible tape back in shape. He watched the originals when they first came out, and he has told me most of them have been remastered to way better quality than when they were first released.

And, just FYI, there are temperature/humidity/everything controlled film vaults out there where these original prints are stored. For some reason I doubt that Lucas would just toss the original film it in his closet under a bunch of props, and let them get moldy and used up. Something tells me that he wouldn't burn the original film after remastering it for 'version 3' of star wars though. He just wants "his vision" to survive, which wasn't the original he made.

Oh well. The comic book guy on the simpsons isn't getting any sleep tonight.