so i got all the older star wars widescreen issues, funny that return of the jedi has the picture way up, no captions, however, a new hope is in a fox jacket with fox labels, but shows cbs/fox video

The picture is up because they used the Japanese WS master and the Japanese had moved it up to put the subtitles below, so fox just masked them. All 3 of the first WS discs came from Japanese masters - Fox just used them instead of doing new WS transfers.

That explains why my JEDI copy is that way, right, that's rather cheap I think not that it bothers me JEDI is the same as the release 35mm I heard in the cinema all the rest after it THX versions are not what you heard in the cinema, well some portions are but most of the dialouge panning in JEDI THX CAV / SE '97 / THX DVD / Bluray are not. Grab the originals on early letterbox editions while you can.

for me the only problem i have are the english subtitles when Jabba is speaking.
back in the day i didn't care but now i sort of wish they were in the image so when i have it playing
on my projector i have to show some black on the screen.

Yeah it sucks when they put any text or subtitle below the black boarder.

i notice "jedi" has very little use of the surrounds, and the centre channel seems a bit louder.

True, but I'll always take English subs in the black borders over inside the actual frame.

This is correct. Because of this, all non-Technidisc pressings of that version of the trilogy have a shrinking AR problem. They typically start out at 2.35:1 and end up at 2.55:1 (approximately).

Technidisc silently corrected this flaw when it started pressing these LDs. Interestingly, they used an entirely different master for A New Hope. It is believed that this different master was later fed into the DVNR-1000 to create the '93 DC version of A New Hope.

The different master that Technidisc used was the IP used to generate the original '77 theatrical run. The '81 crawl was spliced-in and a different master was used to splice-in a subtitle-free version of the Greedo scene.

All I need to do is take some black sticky easy to peel off tape and place it over the subtitle text on the screen.

I believe that if subtitles were burned-in for the theatrical run of the film, then they should be burned-in for home video releases as well. For instance, Star Wars and Return of the Jedi should have burned-in English subtitles for the Greedo and Jabba the Hutt scenes, respectively.

Otherwise, I prefer subtitles to exist outside of the picture.

I don't know what sick mind decided to have subtitles removed from the 35mm prints for home release, needs to be shot first by Han Solo on sight!

Its only the TV shown runs or early very early Laserdisc or VHS or Beta tapes that have it in-tact.