My thought has always been screw all other concerns and go for quality, this is about an optimal version of Star Wars, right?
As it is it's inconceivable Lucas went cheap and only scanned such an important film at only 2k just because two of his precious prequels were limited to 1080p. The original negative elements should have been scanned at 4k just for the sake of posterity as it's the functional resolution of film grain.
It's simply foolish. ALWAYS go for the highest quality and you can transcode to lower if you need to. You can never put back resolution. Oh what I wouldn't give for the HuffyUV and AVSynth files for this project! LOL
VHS, Microsoft Windows, MP3, there are far too many instances of the masses willing to sacrifice on quality in exchange for trivial and fleeting factors like cost, ease of adoption, convenience, etc... all of which quickly end up being meaningless and then you are just left with the compromises.
The reason audio has effectively topped out at CD quality is because the unwashed masses preferred convenience of MP3 to quality of DVD audio or SACD which could have brought things closer to the limits of human hearing but no "the market has spoken" and mp3 was deemed "good enough."
Ben