deepanddark20 said:

I thought the idea behind their project was that the GOUT, even for all its flaws, is the best version of the unaltered trilogy that has thus far been officially released, but some comments made in this discussion are making me think otherwise

AntcuFaalb already answered this pretty completely, but I wanted to add that most of the issues with the GOUT are fixable, and indeed are fixed in our preservations. The colors can be corrected so that they're even better than the JSC. You can replace the lossy '93 stereo GOUT audio with the lossless theatrical audio of your choice. The only thing you can't fix is the DVNR--and even though the DVNR is occasionally awful, for most people that's not enough to counteract the resolution advantage of the GOUT, or other advantages like the theatrical crawl, etc. Most people, including myself, do consider the GOUT to be the best official release, but the point is arguable, depending on your priorities. And frankly, the fact that it's arguable at all shows that there are very serious problems with the GOUT, because a half-decent DVD release would have been hands-down better across the board.