Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:
When suggesting that the colors in the 97 version were improvements over the original, remember that you're comparing 1997 video against older video versions. There has never been a decent video transfer of the original FILM using today's video technology. To me, the 97 version isn't an improvement on the original, it is just a better quality copy of the original, with some unfortunate changes. In fact, watching the 1997 version in the theater was the closest I ever saw to what I saw in 1977 in the theaters, because everything I saw between 1978 and 1996 had degraded.
The ideal version would be a modern high quality copy of the original film, which in my opinion would look better than every version out there today, including the 1997 SE and every fan version.
Exactly, the reason the 1997 SE looked good in the cinema was because they didn't alter the original color pallette of the films for the most part.
The 1997 SE - video telecine is another thing though, don't know how the sequels fared, but the first film had many technical problems when it got released on video.