Well I gotta say that I'm very unimpressed with this release from what I know of it so far. I can't see myself spending the cash to get this. First off, I would need to hear a lot of positive feedback on here about the image quality of the OT before I would want to spend the money. And honestly, I am very doubtful that they will have done anything to improve the color balancing, and it's still the special edition, which I pretty much hate anyways. I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in the prequels.
The only discs I am interested in of course is discs 8 and 9. And Lucas knows it, too. The fact that he's not releasing these discs with the OT set really shows you what he thinks of the Star Wars fans today. The only way to get the bonus discs is to buy all 6 films, and that's not gonna happen. So no extras if you just buy the OT box? No deal.
Also, the box art is pretty awful. The only half-way descent one is the OT box, and that's only because it reminds me of that John Berkey art that was posted here several pages ago. Why couldn't he just have used that? That's an awesome piece of art that I'm sure many of us here would have appreciated. Whatever happened to the great poster art?
I am glad to hear about the original Making of Star Wars/SPFX, etc. but very sad to hear no From Star Wars to Jedi. Another kick in the head. And of course we have no idea how these old docs will look until we see them ourselves - they might not look any better than what's already on the fan discs that many of us have had for years. The rest of the documentaries are ridiculous and a complete waste of space.
Am I surprised? No. But I am disappointed. I was hoping for once they might actually meet us half way and deliver some great extras with the OT. Instead, we get NO extras with the OT - we have to buy all 6 films! I already knew that we wouldn't get the original releases. There might be some neat deleted scenes perhaps, but 2 bonus discs are not worth $100.
Take a look at the Blu-Ray box set of Aliens that came out last year. Wow, what a set! I'm not even a fan of the last 2 films but it was such an incredible set with so many amazing extras that I ended up with the full collector's edition egg! And I don't even like 2 of the 4 films! But 2 versions of each film and endless hours of extras made this a must-buy set. Another example - the Blu-Ray set of Space:1999. An old half-forgotten sci-fi tv show from the 70's, yet restored to an amazing level of quality, with some very impressive extras. Yet Star Wars makes it's debut on Blu-Ray and most of the extras already sound utterly forgettable.
I'm more excited to see Empire:Revisited.