You know, what finally swayed me was a friend that came over recently. We were talking about Star Wars (he is only a casual fan) and he said he thought that Episode 2 had the best CONCEPT out of all the three prequels, in terms of the setting and basic plot.
I casually mentioned doing this edit back in high school, and he wanted to see it. I didn't have a DVD on hand, but we watched the dual-layer version on my laptop. And he looked enthralled.
He even had some place that he had to be, but he was not anxious to leave because he was immersed in the movie. Immersed in a Star Wars prequel! A casual fan! I said, "We don't have to watch the whole thing," and he said, "No, I'm really enjoying this."
That was such a thrilling thing to see somebody in real life actually becoming immersed in a Star Wars prequel that it was enough to push me over the edge and give this thing the respect it requires.
EDIT: Plus, it's looking like a good year for "Star Wars". We have coming out
-A 35mm transfer of "Star Wars"
-A 16mm transfer of "Empire Strikes Back" (Puggo)
-The 1978 Baltimore copy of Star Wars
-A new HD version of "Star Wars" (Harmy)
Hopefully I can add a respectable version of "Shroud" to that list.
My motivation for doing this was not necessarily because Episode II was the worst prequel (although it may well be), but because all of the edits up until that point couldn't make it watchable. Episode I was pretty bad too, but MagnoliaFan did such a radical overhaul of that (despite the limitations of using backwards audio) that I thought that fixing Episode II was a more urgent emergency.
Now, with:
-MagnoliaFan's Episode I
-Trooperman Episode II
-Pick your favorite edit of Episode III (which felt more like the OT anyway)
we will hopefully have a watchable prequel trilogy. I also intend to do my own pass at Episode III, but that version may be much closer to a traditional fan edit and not nearly as radical as this one was.