Picked it up on Sunday. A lady friend of mine who works at a store was nice enough to loan it to me on the condition I pay for it later today.

First I'll say that Lucas and crew did a fabulous job with the visuals in these movies. You'd never believe these were 20-25 years old. They are incredible. I thought the Godfather Trilogy was done well, but this is a whole 'nuther level.

The DD EX 6.1 track is fairly competent, with some nice surprises. There are more than a few scenes that really benefit from the rear surround field. (FYI I have a "7.1" setup) Even in 5.1 (which I played with for a bit out of curiousity) the sound track is excellent. John Williams' score never sounded so good.

There are more than a few scenes that suffer from dialogue drop though (similar to Alien 3, but not nearly as bad). Especially in Star Wars (or Ep IV: A New Hope). These are relatively minor, and you don't notice them until the tonality changes when a person's voice returns to how it's suppose to sound like. I'm glad they didn't try re-recording though.

The "new scenes". I really don't know what everyone complains about. With the exception of Greedo apparently shooting first and missing Han Solo in the bar, these are all harmless scenes that had they been included in the originals, wouldn't have taken anything away from the films at all. People just love to complain I guess. There's a few subtle changes that tie the original trilogy in with the prequel trilogy (Anakin's "Force Ghost", no eyebrows on the dude under Darth Vader's mask, etc.) Given that none of these changed the plot much at all and probably would have gone un-noticed if included in the originals, I let them slide without a 2nd though. Some of them are actually kind of cool.

Seeing these again really made me think about my take on the Ep's I and II. I'll be honest, I enjoyed them, thought they were "above average" in terms of today's movies, though I've never felt they quite lived up to the Star Wars franchise, and in that they were kind of a disappointment. But I never understood all the complaining about them...I guess if something sits for 20 years, while anticipation builds, it's pretty much doomed from the start.
After watching the Original Trilogy again, and constantly thinking about Ep I and II, I've come to realize that everyone (myself included) have been way too hard on Lucas for The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones.

The pace, cheesy dialogue, bad Lucas humor, and even "Shakesperean" plot evolution is actually quite consistent in all 5 movies. I had to honestly ask myself, if all 5 of these were released in 1977 at the same time, would the Ep I and II be any worse? In hindsigh, I doubt it. As much as the stupid pod-race bored me (too long, my least favorite part of all the movies so far) and the under water stuff in Ep I, it wasn't much worse than the first 50 minutes or so of A New Hope. Action wise, there's alot more interesting stuff in the new films. I really noticed, however, just how valuable Han Solo's character was. This kind of lowest-common-denominator humor isn't quite so prevalent in Ep's I and II.

There's a lot grander story being told in the new trilogies, and maybe it suffers because the whole world all pretty much knows what it is? Or maybe it's just that it's "more of the same" and not really "revolutionary" as the originals were? Who knows.
My own thought is that the originals can stand as 3 stand-alone movies, whereas the the newer films almost need to be approached as small parts of a larger story, and because of this, can drag on a bit at certain points.

At any rate, I think I'm going to blow the dust of Ep I and II and spin those later this week too, with an open mind and no criticism...Darth Maul was a pretty cool bad guy.