All I'm trying to say is that this release has nothing to do with either the ultimate edition or the original version. Lucas was always clear about when he planned to focus his attention on DVDs and that was whent he PT was done.
All this really proves is that LFL does not completely ignore audience demand (which should give us hope) it doesn't hurt us in anyway to have this release, and has brought a lot of traffic/attention our way. It sucks that it is not the version we desired, but we wouldn't be getting that in 2004 anyways. It will take a long time to clean up and digitize the OV, and there was never any intention to do it at this time anyways. What i'm getting at is to look at this release as an "at all" not an "instead of". This was not INSTEAD of the classics. Lucas is not screwing us by releasing these SE dvds, if your going to be frustrated be frustrated that he is NOT releasing the OVs. Its what he's not doing, not what he is doing that is the problem.
and from what I've heard this release was more of a Jim Ward Lucas Market idea then a George Lucas idea. GL will do the dvds his way in a couple of years, whether they include the version we want as well remains to be seen.