resonator said:
The THX edge enhancement halos are still noticeable, ranging from barely to terribly. It seems as if no matter what video source you use, there's always SOME thing really wrong with it. So far I've seen Pre-THX LDs which have very little detail, THX-LDs with DNR-smear and the GOUT... no matter how much effort

The GOUT DVDs were unfortunately from the same source as the NTSC THX LDs. Not only is that awful smearing retained, they also added new flaws such as the aliasing and vertical blur.

The pre-THX LDs do not lack that much detail, but the image does exhibit more dirt and a "greenish" colouring.

If we ever want to see the original Star Wars in HD (and with small TV starting at 32" and our viewing habits getting used to more and more HD we'll NEED it in HD soon enough) we'll need something like a cleaned up and color-corrected telecine of a theatrical print.

I'm willing to accept some of the minor changes present in the 2004 version (for which a HD source exists) - e.g. the digital composition, the tractor beam controls, the cell block corridor - just to have something in HD. Of course it all needs colour correcting, but Adywan has done that already.

The new CGI shots and Han/Greedo exchange would have to be replaced with video upscaled from GOUT or LD source (maybe a hybrid of the higher-resolution PAL LDs, using the pre-THX LDs only where necessary to avoid the DVNR smearing).

ONE QUESTION THOUGH - If I intend to upscale to let's say 720p with InstantHD in AfterEffects, should I feed it the anti-aliased NEDI-doubled-in-size video or with the anti-aliasing commented out?

You'll have to compare the two methods to see which works best, but I'm guessing that leaving in the EEDI2/NNEDI line and removing the resizing (downscaling) section that follows it would give the best source to feed into AfterEffects.