That's what the Special Edition SHOULD have been. I do like the cruddy original for its historical value, and would be curious to see a version that approximates what it would have looked like in theaters in 1977 without all the extra clean-up and roto and registration fixes, but my god, once you clean it up, it makes you wonder why they even needed to redo the shot in CG! (Yes, I know Lucas and Muren wanted a single shot, but even then you can't tell me the 1997 version could have been pulled off with models if they wanted to. But I digress.)

The blue-green tint to the ships still intrigues me. A lot of old prints (not official video releases) seem to look like that, and I can't help but wonder if it was intentional. (It definitely masks the monochrome R2-D2 cheat to some degree...)

I'm also glad that you are keeping the original versions backed up.