I remember the Faces advertising campaign including a lot of brou-ha-ha about the restoration of the film. At least one of the tapes has a featurette comparing the Faces video with a previous release, and it does look punchier and maybe a little sharper. They made such a big deal about it being a THX-approved release that I called it the THX version for years.
When Faces was billed as "one last time," I--rather naively--thought that meant this was the final, canonical version of the O-OT. No more fancy THX restorations. I didn't consider what would happen if it went out of print. I thought they'd just manufacture a few more. That way, the O-OT would always be available, but it would always be "the last time," since all future releases would just be continuations of the Faces release. One last edition, unlimited print runs.
And as others have said, Disney's patented vault had inured many of us to overblown "get it now before it's gone forever!!!1" pitches.
The pre-2004 release of the SE was a bad telecine. It was very pink looking for the desert scenes, and the skin tones were off; it just wasn't the greatest. The theatrical prints more or less looked like the 1977 prints in terms of color--they even used Lucas' personal dye-transfer 1977 35mm master as a color reference.