G-Force's script obviously is cleaner looking, but IMO it's too clean. It looks like video from some of the shots I've seen, I don't feel like I am watching a film from the 1970s. I guess it depends on your taste. I like that I can see the shimmer of the film density and grain from the emulsion, personally, the cleanliness is nice but you can only take it so far. The other issue is that g-force's stuff it's so impossibly technical for many people, I have absolutely no clue when it comes to scripting stuff. Not to take away from his work, it is extraordinary. But then the source video has it's own set of problems; this one has more clipping in the hot spots, but it has more detail in the darks and the mid ranges. The only real strike against it IMO is the occassionaly laserdisc jaggies--maybe someone could do a script to solve that. I've also been noticing that a lot of the g-force scripting experiments result in scrubbing out some detail, which is almost inevitable when you start trying to erase grain through automated processes. You can see this with the R2 shot with 3P0's arm, DarkJedi's encode scrubs off that great detail just to get rid of the grain that shouldn't be a huge problem in the first place (again, not to take away from the great work they are doing). The script needs further work, but I'm not sure if it will ever get to the point where it could preserve sharpness, preserve some grain, while also not introducing contrast and artifact issues. I suppose it comes down to preference here. The Lucasfilm pwnage version looks very promising, it preserves detail and seems to have left some grain, but I have yet to see it. I think it's good to have the new ED version as an alternative.
hairy_hen, I am guessing the 2004 mix was used because it is the only way to watch the film in 5.1 without making your own mix from scratch, which would be either impossible or too much work. I look forward to your 70mm mix though, maybe one day someone will re-author this with that mix replacing the current 5.1, I would certainly love that.