Dayo said:
When they released the 2006 DVD, Lucasfilm said that the laser disc ports were the best available source for the theatrical cuts.
It that is the case, where they did get the footage used in the "Empire of Dreams" documentary (included in the bonus disc of the 2004 DVD)? The footage in that documentary is definitly from the original version, and it looks better than what was relesed with the 2006 DVD.
What gives?
Most of the footage from the Empire of Dreams documentary is from the 1997 special edition. It includes Boba's original voice, Han's jacket in the carbon freezing room and the end of Jedi with Sebastian Shaw as Anakin near the end.
There is some footage of the original version, has anyone compared it side by side with the 2006 video to see if it is the same video source (but in 16x9) or from something else? If it's from something else such as a decent quality film print, that doesn't necessarily mean Lucas is sitting on a decent print of the original ready to go, right? Could it be possible that those were all in separate parts and the makers of the doc had to dig them up? Or that they required extensive restoration just to look decent and Lucas didn't want to do that for the entire reel when he had the 1993 video transfer already color corrected?
Because I understand Lucas' utter lazyness to not restore the original films, what doesn't make sense even for him would be to intentionally use a lower quality source if there was a better one ready to go, which was just sitting on the shelf in one piece.