Right, so no use bothering with that, then.
Looking at the UK discs, I am wondering if a different master source was used for PAL simply because at that period (1993), Fox didn't release laserdiscs in the UK and, unlike every other studio except MGM/UA, didn't do PAL mastering at the same time as the NTSC masters because they could save a few hundred bucks going for the much cheaper and shoddier NTSC-to-PAL standards conversions, which made already bad masters look much worse - motion-blurring and colour movement a guarantee. Certainly the first half of
Star Wars looks like an old video master of the worst kind, with the scenes in the desert staggeringly awful (though the second half does improve).
Having seen - but never owned - the NTSC laser disc set, this simply doesn't look comparable or even as if it was the same source. In fact, it's clearly worse than the last video release of the originals in the UK (Lucas did a last-time-ever on those before remastering them again and putting on some cringe-making interviews with Leonard Maltin where it became increasingly clear he hadn't a clue what was going to happen in the prequels to get the fanboys to buy it again - luckily at the time I was still getting review copies).
Still, judging from past experience we should only have two years to wait...