I don't doubt that Lucas honestly thought people would prefer the Special Editions when he wrote those words back in '95, but for crying out loud, he's had ten years to get over the fact that they don't. Now that Spielberg has shown him up (or whatever) with the new close encounters release, Lucas doesn't really have much of an excuse to not do the same with Star Wars. Granted, he would have to go through more trouble since you can't just seamlessly branch both versions onto the same disc, but how would it not be worth it? I think one of the reasons Spielberg decided to go all out with the blu-ray release is that he realized people wouldn't have much of a reason to buy it if he didn't. The reason we still might not get what we want with the next Star Wars release is, well, it's STAR WARS and not close encounters. People probably will buy it again when it finally hits hi-def just like they did with dvd back in '04, and maybe we OOT fans are more of a minority than we'd like to think and Lucas will just have to decide if it's worth the trouble just to please a few more fans.
In any event, I say three more years at the most until we see the next release. Close Encounters hit dvd in '01 so that gives some idea.