Darth Editious: You misunderstand me--the technical description with bold titles in the first post is taken from the DVD itself. It is onscreen text when you go to "extras". This describes capturing from an LD. I can't confirm any of this, I'm just reporting what the DVD says. This is my only source of information, aside from what my friend told me.
Also: "The vertical cropping, at least on the first couple of screenshots, is wider than the GOUT - or the PAL GOUT, at least." So are you saying this release has more picture area than the GOUT? The PAL GOUT is cropped compared to the NTSC keep in mind. Also, as for the screenshots, yes they are taken from the DVD but the characteristics always change for scrutinizing the shots when you capture--in actuality, the black levels are not quite so dark, there is a bit better mid-range detail (for example, the second star destroyer shot has the stars much more visible compared to the cap), and the caps seem a hair softer as well. I captured using VirtualDub and pasted them into photoshop where I created a JPEG, so its not 100% exact what the images look like, but its close enough.
However, back on topic, even if this is from the GOUT, it has clearly been re-worked in some manner. The coloring is slightly different, first off, the gate weave is more or less gone, and the grain has been reduced a bit. In addition, the contrast and black levels are a bit different, with more burned out highlights but more mid-range detail. And Editdroid burned in the subs using a recreated font. So it's clearly been heavily tweaked in post if this is the case. Moth3R is right about the framing, but I'm not sure this is the case in every shot--the rebel trooper shot, for instance, looks the same as the Cowclops framing. But the Leia shot clearly matches the GOUT with its extra space on the right where you see most of the stormtrooper's eye. Is it possible that some shots are GOUT? The opening shot/crawl clearly is. Could this be why Editdroid was only working with 120,000(+) frames, insetad of 200,000+ or whatever the proper amount would be? I'm hesitant to believe its 100% the GOUT simply because the DVD explicitly details using the LD as a base because it was felt to be the best available version, and has all sorts of details about using photoshop to upscale, extract detail, etc. Again, the technical description of the transfer's creation is not mine, it is taken from the DVD itself.