Obviously, the original trilogy is much better. The two things that I keep noticing are:
Content vs. movie length - it always felt the there was a lot of great LotR content that had to be cut in order to fit the story into 3 movies (and 3 very long movies). With the Hobbit, every movie (at least the 2 I have seen so far) seems to be adding in silly stuff to stretch it out.
The CGI is much more heavy-handed in the Hobbit and used quite a bit for slapstick-like action scenes. I agree with you about the comparison of Hobbit 1 and 2 with the SW prequels.
And by the way, did they change the title of Hobbit 3? I thought it was going to be called "Here and Back Again".