I watched the OOT years before I ever see the SE, but for some reason or another -- probably childhood naivete combined with hero worship of Lucas, the creator (so I thought) of Star Wars -- I bought into the whole "the SE is better than the OOT because these are the films as they were always meant to be" schtick and came to see the OOT as a hopelessly underdone prototype.

Thank God the shock of how bad the PT was combined with a more mature post-adolescent mind roused me from that delusion, though.