You used to be able to find DVDs that were made from the Japanese mastercopy laserdisks that were unmolested but I can't find it on innerwebs anymore. What you saw was actually two re edits, he did it first in 1997 and then in 2004.
In commemoration of the franchise's 20th anniversary in 1997, Lucas and his production company,
Lucasfilm, digitally preserved and restored the original
negatives of the first three films. In addition, new
computer-generated (CG)
special-effects shots, CG enhancements to existing shots, new scenes, and changed musical pieces were added. The alterations have been controversial among fans, giving rise to the phrase "
Han shot first", which references one of the more contentious changes made to the original film.
For the
original trilogy's 2004 DVD release, the negatives were re-scanned, the
color timing was redone, and further changes were made to the films to fix continuity issues with the
prequel trilogy. At the time, Lucas claimed the original films were "25 to 30 percent" of what he had intended and stated these DVD releases are the
canonical versions of the original trilogy.
[1] However, the original, unaltered theatrical editions were released on DVD in 2006. The six films received Blu-ray releases in 2011: The original trilogy used the same masters as the 2004 DVDs with additional tweaks,
[2] and minor changes were made to the three films comprising the prequel trilogy.
List of changes in Star Wars re-releases - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
