Russ and I have been corresponding about the 1991 PAL widescreen VHS, and I've viewed some video clips of it. It does seem to be transferred to PAL from NTSC, and it has the exact same "shrinking ratio" problem as the U.S. SWE LD - and I mean "exact", I can see the black bars get bigger at the reel changes, and the before/after difference seems *identical*. HOWEVER...it doesn't have the weird blobs or the splice glue marks from the JSC/SWE!

And here's the 1991 PAL LBX VHS (excuse the quality):

Same shrunken ratio, no glue marks. What is going on here? Is it a different film source that happens to have the same variations as the JSC/SWE one (no Tantive burn marks, cloudy X-wing takeoff composite), but none of the weird blobs or glue marks? Is it the same source but with something like Filmguard applied?

If it was a new transfer, why was it sourced from NTSC instead of being native PAL? If was an existing transfer, why was it never used on any NTSC release? In either case, why does it have the shrinking ratio problem? I thought that was due to a problem covering up the JSC's Japanese subtitles and repositioning the up-shifted image to the center. If this is a different master, it means that the same framing mistake was repeated.

Why do two different video masters have the same issue, and why do the film sources look identical except for the presence or lack of certain damage?

What is this, I don't even...