Yeah, it definitely switches to a different print at the final shot. I'm guessing that the Greedo scene comes from the same print.

Also, I was wrong about a 1989 German letterbox LD. It was actually *France* that got an LBX release in '89; Germany didn't get one until 1993, and it appears to be the same transfer, or at least the same film source - including the same faded Greedo scene from this French print. The only difference is that it had the German crawl and end credits instead of the French.

I wonder why Fox's French division didn't think to ask for the clean, unsubbed source that was used for the Japanese and U.S. widescreen releases. In fact, in the German OT thread, you can see a screenshot from an 80s German TV airing which has video generated subs, and the color doesn't look as bad as the French LBX transfer:

So either that transfer was done in the U.S. or U.K., or there was a good-looking subtitle-free print of the scene at Fox's German office or somewhere in continental Europe. (Though who knows, maybe this WAS that print as it looked in 1982 or thereabouts, and it had faded by 1989.)

Curiouser and curiouser...