CRT projectors areinherently 4:3 devices, so that is where my bias comes in. Also on a screen that size you do see the quality drop in the conversion to 16:9, small as it is.
So you are saying that most widescreen sets don't correctly handle letterboxed material? I wasn't aware of that, the only widescreen sets we have at work are all hidef broadcast units, and they don't have a problem.
In that case, I will do a letterbox and a 16:9 version for all you widescreeners out there.
I know the new trilogy is 16:9, so option 1. 'Original as possible' will be letterbox - retaining the LD ratio, and option 2 will be 16:9 for the 'corrected version'
To the guys that are using there digicams to digitise the footage, it is a nice and easy method, but they are not the best quality wise, and you are also throwing away a lot of chroma resolution by downsampling to 4:1:1 before then re-transcoding it AGAIN to DVD.
Ideally You really want to come in to an uncompressed stream, that retains full chroma resolution. (4:4:4)
In practice for most of you, Digital Betacam or DVCPRO 50 are probably the most accessible ways to do this. They at least leave you with 4:2:2 (For a bit of an explanation of Chroma sampling check out http://www.cs.sfu.ca/CourseCentral/365/li/material/notes/Chap3/Chap3.4/Chap3.4.html )
As for the soundtrack, from my reading, the SE versions have had a full remix done from the original multitude of mono and stereo tracks, but I will wait and see what the sound is like. From memory at the cinema, it was very good.
For my 'original' version, I will probably be keeping the stereo track from the laserdisc, it is very good.