Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

Well, there were pan and scan releases before the GOUT.

The telecines used for LD would go straight to what format tape? UMatic? 1-inch? And already letterboxed?

Usually D1 or D2.

The format on the tape matched the output format, so letterbox LD had a letterbox telecine run.

Pan and Scan were different masters, the telecine unit zoomed in optically, so you ended up with a lot more vertical resolution on the P&S master tapes, but of course, the sides were cropped off.

The argument about the restoration of the OT being too costly was total BS. There is only about, what, 8 minutes or so completely changed in Star Wars, and nearly all of the other scenes were restored anyway to use as a basis for the changes (e.g. the 'infamous speeder shot' was restored, so that it could have a Ronto added in, the shot with the Stormtroopers questioning Ben Kenobi was restored, and then had a ronto composited in, the greedo shot was restored to add Greedo shooting etc.)

So all that would have been required was adding the 1977 crawl to make a restored version, as basically all the restoration work had been done to prepare Star Wars to add the CGI in for the SE.