Maybe the Clones Wars thing isn't personal and is strictly business, but I think Gaffer was pretty close to the mark with the "fine, I'll let you have it, but only this copy I found that my dog took a leak on..." There is really no reason for the original to not have been restored and released on DVD long ago. If Star Wars was made by any other film maker, any other company, you know the original unaltered trilogy would have been released years ago and would be flooding the bargain bins right now, just like Terminator 2, Alien, and other films that have been really popular, probaby would have even had a two disc sets loaded with extra features. Because that is the kind of treatment such popular movies get in the real world. That is marketing, if it will sell, get it out there! George knows marketing very well, so well, that he has reached a point where he can bend the rules as he likes. If he doesn't want the release the originals, he doesn't have to, even if it would be a hot seller and make a lot of money, he can afford to hang onto it and let it rot. The GOUT really feels like a "Fine! Take it and shut up!" sort of thing. I can't help but feel that George resentfully released the GOUT, and released it in the quality he did out of resent. "If you want to watch these shitty versions of incomplete films, then fine, but your gonna have to watch em in shitty quality too. Ha!" There is really no other logical explaination for it. Even some pretty crappy movies get multiple versions of them released on DVD. None of us here are naive enough to believe that the 1993 LD masters are the single best quality copies of the films left lying around, the very idea is laughable, yet this is the official reason why we were given copies saturated in dog piss. If you're gonna be a liar, you need to be a better liar than that.
If I were George, I wouldn't lie about it, I'd just be honest. In fact, I would have sold the GOUT without the 2004 SEs, maybe even with no disc at all, and instead designed it like on of those old pop-up books, and when you open the DVD case, a hand with the middle finger sticking up would pop-up. Oh, that would awesome. Whoa... just imagining myself with such power as George has me thinking evil diabolical thoughts, no wonder the guy is an asshole. In that position it would be kind of a waste not to be an asshole.