It's the middle of the night where I am, and I have no business typing out a reply at this point, but I'll throw in my two cents. I discovered this site, when, as a pretty young kid, I wanted the original Star Wars trilogy on DVD. Call that 2002-ish, maybe even 2001. I started getting good at the internet, and researched pretty heavily the bootleg options available, but for a 12 year old kid buying things online was pretty hard, particularly bootleg things. During the course of this research, I came across the site, and the rest is history. I don't think I registered until a few years later, I think 04-ish, bu I'd been lurking quite a while before that. To be honest, I originally thought all you guys were nutjob's, caring so much about getting the original versions. This is probably due in large part to the fact that all I ever grew up with was the 97 versions. That was all I knew. To be even more brutally honest, I did not see the original versions until the GOUT was released. Despite all this, I still hung around the forum, checking in regularly. There was one specific turning point I do remember - when I was reading a family friend's original Star Wars picture book, with all pictures and such pre-SE. I saw a picture in there of the Death Star, and it just hit me then, movie audiences had never seen something like that before. Star Wars really was a game changer, and right then I decided it damn well better be preserved. And I have stuck around ever since. I visit a little less frequently now, and haven't posted in a while, but if I can help I normally try to. I used to be pretty good at capturing online streams, but that talent has long since been lost. I also was working a long time on my own preservation project (the 97 VCDs), and couldn't wait to share it here, but sadly real life took over and I never completed it.

Anyways, the bottom line is that the people here are f***ing champs. They flat out know their shit. The knowledge pool is incredible here. I can follow most of the technical discussions decently, but some of the members here take it to a new level. There are also enough ongoing projects to keep my interest as well - namely Adywan's Revisited works, the 97 Superset (sadly RIP and dead I believe), and DarkJedi's GOUT cleanup efforts / 97 release (hopefully he releases it soon). I just rewatched his GOUT converted to Blu Ray sample again, and HOT DAMN that looks good. I am speechless, and cannot wait for that set. It'll truly be a treat. All said and done, this forum is awesome.

PS: for what it's worth, I like Star Wars better than ESB. By a pretty sizable margin as well