Bingowings and timidggerm, hello and thank you. :)
Fang Zei, thank you!
I truly appreciate your sharing those memories. I always enjoy hearing of others Star Wars experiences. Unfortunately, I do not know personally as many people who love Star Wars as those of us on this site and others like it. I'm truly glad to be here.
I too remember fondly those early days of the official web site, the pictures and articles. That plus the weapon replicas and X-wing and Tie-fighter models on the Sharper Image catalog and the pictures of jigsaw puzzles of the old posters were all a sort of Bible for me. What I knew of Star Wars, for a while was from blurbs. I ended up creating my own fantasy of what the movies were in my head. What surprises me to this day, is that the movies were so good, they didn't disappoint my expectations.
I cannot disagree with what you said about restoring vs. tampering. Although there is no law that says directors can't "improve" on their work, those same people have, in my opinion, a moral obligation to give their customers what they want. Also, there is a historical obligation. It is good to preserve the past to see where we came from.
I was not aware of the last Wizard of Oz release being tampered with. That's disappointing. I have the earlier DVD release, I better hang on to it. It's Warner Brother's 2005 two-disc release. Is that a purer version?
I've recently found myself reselling and returning Blu-ray releases of older movies due to digital noise reduction. It can be tastefully done, but when people's skin starts looking like wax, I'm out.
I agree with what you said about Blade Runner. And it fits that Warner Brothers was involved. They've been pretty good about this stuff. Their Outlaw Josey Wales Blu-ray is fantastic and grainy and the skin looks great!
The crown jewel of my movie collection are my Criterion Blu-rays. Those folks know how to restore. They even include restored original mono tracks.
Some movies, I refuse to get on Blu-ray. I go to Bluraydotcom for my research and have decided to stick with my 2005 Star Trek movie collection on DVD until Paramount eases off on the DNR. The Star Trek Original TV Series on Blu-ray was a thankfully different story.
I've recently gotten L8twr's prequel edits and am watching them. They may replace Phantom Editor's. They're that good plus L8twr doesn't use the opening scrawl to get cute. ;) I'm trying out Q2's next. Sadly, my Blu-ray player (unlike my old DVD player) won't play Thorogood's 97s. It's because they're PAL. That leaves me to rely on the entire GOUT restoration. I can't complain. It's just that my introduction to Star Wars was with the 97s and it was all I knew for a good while. :)