1) The laserdiscs are very 'bright' compared to the official dvd release and to most of the bootlegs. Laserdisc transfers in general tend to be lighter, and most laserdiscs do not put out 'superblack' or 0IRE.
2) I believe the video posted was the direct capture from laserdisc - So if they look grey and bright exactly the same as the laserdisc, this is a good thing. It means that all the available detail from the laserdisc has been captured as a master to work with, This is what you *should* be aiming for when starting off on this process.
3) This doesn't mean that the final result will look like this. With colour correction tools available in most packages, you can adjust a cetain 'black level' down to absolute black, restoring the blackness of space for example without really affecting the stars, or losing shadow detail. You can also adjust the gamma settings to change the levels of part of the spectrum of the image, so you can get a wider dynamic range, with nice inky blacks without crushing them or losing your whites. In combustion you can colour correct just parts of an image etc.
In other words, you want to capture the footage 'as is' and work with it from there - you don't want to do it *as part of the capture process* as this means you are throwing away information you may wish to restore later.
Many of the current bootlegs suffer from crushed whites and blacks, i.e. You lose detail in Vader's cloak, and on the stormtroopers armour for instance - as all darkish areas become black, and all quite white areas become uniform white.
Although this makes them look 'punchier' it really degrades the image. The idea is to get black back down to true black, white up to true white and keep all the detail in the gradients in between - that way you get the punch AND the detail.
I believe that's what mebe is trying to do. If I am talking out of my rectum mebejedi, please jump in!
(Hmmm that didn't come out right....)