You_Too said:

Could it be some color-noise reduction applied on the films that caused this?

It certainly looks like it but if some kind of color-noise reduction was used, wouldn't other colored objects in the picture have been affected by it as well? that's what's weird, the lasers are affected but the rest of the opticals are always fine. Here's three shots in the Technidisc transfer which shows the exact same kind of artifacts:

And it's not just a case where you can tweak the hue and get the right colors back, the original colors are simply gone.

OmegaMattman said:

You read my mind, msycamore. I'd been planning on fixing the Tie lasers in Empire, but wasn't aware of all that stuff in Jedi. Nor had I seen those lights in SW behind Threepio.

Great thing that I mentioned it then. ;) Looking forward to see if you're able to fix those with your MO, keep up the good work!

OmegaMattman said:

Unfortunately, I don't have the TBs of Empire or Jedi, just the Flunk edition of SW. I was planning to use the '04 discs, since I'd just be borrowing from the chroma channels while leaving the luma untouched. But, I'll have to see about hunting down the TBs. The more sources, the merrier ;)

You can find it on MySpleen, sure it have compression artifacts and DVNR-smear and a red tint but the reason I mentioned the TB Empire is that the original color timing and cinematography is present for the most part compared to the DVD/Blu-ray versions. The most ridiculous thing is that it even has more detail than those versions in some shots, especially on Hoth. It's also the best source available to us for any fx-shots that were later altered, like the Emperor-holo. Some shots actually looks incredibly good on it, recommended.