I have to say, and I am not afraid to admit this, Lucas pulled the wool over me for many years with the SE, and it almost worked in his suppression of the O-OT.
I grew up loving the OT from 77-83, as I was hooked with SW in 1977. I watched the OT through the years on HBO, Cable, and Video, but didn't watch them alot in the 90's. When the SE came out in 1997, I enjoyed the movies in the theaters, and did notice some of the obvious changes like Han Shooting first, but it had been so long since I really watched the O-OT versions, I kinda forgot HOW different they are, especially SW from 1977.
As the PT was coming out I was sort of a fan, but that has faded, but I just wanted the OT on DVD, and didn't care about whether it be SE or not. So in 2004 I bought the SE DVD's and I put on ROTJ and noticed Hayden in ROTJ!!!!!! WTF? Just that one change there really pissed me off, and now I started to understand the O-OT fans annoyance of these changes.
So I bought some bootlegs right after the 2004 DVD's came out, and I watched them and was astounded of how much was changed, and how much more gritty the O-OT versions were, and how ridiculous the CG really made these 1970's/80's movies.
All of the sudden I started hating the SE, cause I finally realized how unnecesary all these changes were, and how ridiculous the ones that were so obvious were too. I forgot about, "Bring my shuttle!" I forgot about how much better pacing SW is without Jabba in it, and I forgot about how much better pacing ESB is without Vader arrival after Cloud City.
The reason I signed up here is I was watching the Cinemax HD SW marathon this weekend and realized that I am not really part of the fanbase anymore, and that is really sad. The O-OT movies are still great to me, but if you think about it, the future of SW is the OT/SE with probably more changes and the average PT movies.
Where do I go as fan from here? I guess I really hope Lucas remasters the O-OT in great quality with the rumored boxset next year, I buy it for the O-OT movies sort of like the Superman boxset, and call it a career. Pretty sad that Lucas has excluded me when I never asked for anything to be changed.