The system that gave me choppy video was:

Mac OS X (10.4.11)

1.83 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo

1 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

Actually, after running the video through Quicktime Pro a few times, it seemed to get smoother (buffering?).

ESB has always naturally had a lot of blue in it. All three films get more "blue" as they age (blacks become blue). But I'm all for not throwing in tons of gray into these edits (witness the "it looks like a black and white film with color pasted in a couple of places" comments on some of the ANH:R scenes).

The Executor is a unique ship, it's not just supposed to be a star destroyer blown up to incredible size. Forget what you've seen in the video games and comics... so it's fine for it to be darker and more blue than the other ships. If people think the Executor looks garish... think about it for a moment... this thing is supposed to be a badass ship. It is for COMMAND. It's the kind of ship that scares the living daylights out of the enemy, and it has the weapons to back itself up. With its complement of blue TIE fighters, it's one of the coolest things since the Death Star in the Empire's arsenal (long before all that wanked out garbage that the EU threw at us). It can afford to be as garish as it wants to be, dang it! Changing the Executor to gray isn't fixing one of Lucas' screwups, it's altering the original film for no good reason, to be frank... and it just leads to more blandness. Are we saying it's a good thing if the Empire is visually as bland as possible (moreso than even in the theatrical versions)?

Actually, can anyone confirm... are the TIEs all blue in ESB (1980) or only the ones associated with the Executor?