I know that you have very eloquently stated that your intention is to preserve the 'experience' rather than the film as closely as it actually was when released, and I'm in agreeance with you up to a point there... there's those that seem to obsess about it far too much... I mean really, does it really matter if it says Episode IV or not at the begining of the crawl? How does that affect the actual movie... What I'm a little iffy about (don't get me wrong though, I'm very interested in your final version) is the 'fixing' of effects they didn't get right back then, like the speeder smudge under it, or the little jumps due to cuts for effects etc... I'm all for being able to still see those things as it was what was achievable THEN... from a film history point of view, being able to say to someone "See, see how great this film is, how amazing it really does look? And this was all done in 1976!" is surely of major worth for future generations of film buffs and students etc.? With the actual releases that Lucas provides it's a case of "See, see how good that bit... no, that bit there... no, not that bit... wait, ok this bit, and that over there, but not the windows there... all of that, well, minus the CG creature over there... that was done in 1976! Oh, wait... no... no, that was 'fixed up in 1997'"... it doesn't sit well.... Your version, while not having the CG etc (Well, actually it does now doesn't it... really, with the laser flash), does have 'clean ups' of original effects... not to their original versions, but better than original...
The answer to this would fall along the lines of "you're never going to see it anyway so why do you care what I do." Don't expect a warm fuzzy discussion about this, as there seem to be two distinct perceptions of what preservation is. The purists believe in preservation in film history a la "you can't change anything about the film because it wasn't like that in '77. The other school of thought, which is where people like Mike's feelings lie, says that you should preserve the experience. Things that distract you from enjoying the story and the characters such as crappy effects shots can be fixed because we have the ability and desire to do so.
(completely off topic, but for some reason if I edit a post in one of the sticky threads it goes to the top of the list. wierd.)