I have a feeling we MAY see the unaltered original Star Wars films in this set. I think even Lucasfilm MUST realise by now that they've kind of run out of carrots to dangle in front of fans' faces! That they've run out of more bait to tempt the hardcore fans with yet another release. The original trilogy is the last bargaining card they have left to guarantee monster sales of their product!
But.... according to The digital bits we may not get this until October 2011 - why the freaking delay??!? I'm sick to death of Lucasfilm's tactics these days. They could bring out these on Blu-ray tomorrow if they wanted! With HD set-top boxes and home computers going down in price, many can now burn their own versions in HD if they have the know-how. All the information to do this is freely available on the net. I think Lucasfilm would be wise to give the public what they desire NOW or lose out future sales to pirated HD copies of all 6 films floating around the internet.
Lucas used to be a good business man (the days of him being a decent director I think are long gone, if indeed they ever existed...) and he MUST know he'd make a killing on a remastered bare-bones blu-ray release of the Original unaltered trilogy. I think he's just stubburn and secretly probably hates the fact that his original films are held in higher esteem than his CGI cartoons!
Still I think by now just about EVERYone he knows in both the film world and in the higher echelons of Lucasfilm MUST have hinted to him by now that offering the original trilogy would be a wise thing to do.
Such a disappointment that it looks like it'll be a 'all or nothing' box set rather than individual releases of each film. Hopefully they'll follow if the Lucasfilm DVDs were anything to go by. Really though, in 2010 we should have seen individual blu-ray box sets of each film by now ala Blade Runner, or Close Encounters featuring all cuts of each respective film plus a generous helping of supplementary material, and original theatrical poster cover-art, not something photoshopped by someone who clearly has little eye/respect for iconic design... Treat these as PROPER film releases befitting their cult status, and importance in US cinema, rather than 'something for the kids'.
In fact they could take a page out of Harry Potter's book, by releasing a version for the kids with garish cover and silly extra games on disc or something, and a proper version for film buffs (not JUST hardcore Star Wars films) with original cover design, historical press cuttings, press-kits, trailers, making ofs etc etc. The kind of thing we'd probably have by now if a company that really CARED about film history like Criterion or even the BFI released these films. These are some of THE most popular films of all time - I still remain stunned at the lack of imagination showed by Lucasfilm in marketing these films properly for the home DVD/Blu-Ray market. Time was they were at the cutting edge with their LD box set.....