moviefreakedmind said:

I was positively shocked when the GOUT didn't include the New Hope crawl, especially since they would've had to have edited it out of the laserdisc transfer I believe

This shocked me as well. As you said, it pretty much meant that they had to do something with the film other than merely port over the LD transfer. And it means that someone at Lucasfilm was aware that the very small act of reverting to the 77 crawl meant something to a relatively small group of people.

On the other hand, since they were aware of how passionate these people were about it, the fact that they thought for a second they could get away with the crappy transfer we got boggles the mind. The only answer is what it always is for Lucasfilm...Dollars, Pounds and Euros. The only people they'd get to buy those films again are the die hards, and they'd have to give us something to shell out more more for the crappy SE's we hate and in any event already had.