I suppose you are not aware but these were extremely controversial in the home theater community and especially here. The general consensus amongst home theater enthusiasts is that they are possibly the worst mainstream DVD release in the last five years or so, and represent a bold middle finger to the fans who tried so hard to get a DVD release of the original films. A complaint compaign was launched by many home theater enthusiasts but it seems to have made no effect. Around here the release is referred to as the GOUT which stands for "George's Original Unaltered Trilogy" due to the fact that it was sourced from a medium-quality 1993 non-anamorphic laserdisk master. There are a number of benefits to be had from the disk though--surprisingly, it includes the original crawl which is a terrific bonus, and the sheer act of releasing this at all when Lucas said it would happen over his dead body is a great sign, as well as the fact that it exposes many people to the OOT once again. The quality of course is watchable, and of course is a welcome improvement over our well-worn VHS tapes, but for those of us who wanted and feel that a proper modern transfer of the films is necessary this stands as one of the most henious missed opportunity in home video history. But i have to say the whole debacle got me back into the OOT like nothing before.

Progressive scan can make it look like a modern transfer in 16:9 zoom mode.

(at least with RotJ, I haven't watches Star wars on my 51 inch HD yet)

I'm satisfied enough with them.
They look lovely on my normal sized (25 inch) TV, much better than the laserdisc transfers I had before as far as overall detail.

The only problem I have is when viewed on my mom's huge bigscreen TV, some of the the Tatooine scenes in ANH and Hoth scenes in ESB have a distracting amount of what I'm assuming is film grain.

I never expected them to be perfect, but I was hoping for a cleaner transfer from a better source (and making them anamorphic wouldn't have hurt either)

Maybe not as mainstream as Star Wars, but I've found an even worse release:
Condorman R2
Non-anamorphic letterboxed widescreen, grainy transfer - same as the GOUT DVDs. However, this release has static menus (GOUT DVDs are animated) and is on a DVD5 - in fact, the entire DVD is sized at just 3.82GB. Really disappointing.

I tried watching them on my 50 inch widescreen hd tv. The GOUT DVDs suck bad enough without using the zoom function, which to me, makes the picture look 10 times worse.

The picture quality on these suck.

I need to find my Dr. Gonzo dvds I got from Rik a couple years back and see what they look like on the 50 inch.

When I first got the GOUT DVD's, I absolutely loved them. I also only had a 27" 4x3 TV, and on that TV, they looked dated, yes, but perfectly servicable. We recently got a new 32" HDTV, and now....I don't love them. They look okay, I guess, but there's lots of noise on the image, ghosting, grain, not nearly enough fine detail, and the whole image is just soft. An anamorphic transfer, even without a lick of remastering would have fixed many of these problems. Zombie84 said it best; Lucasfilm held up a bold middle-finger to all the fans who campaigned for these DVD's for so long. Lucas could use the money in his pocket to pay for a remastering of these, and he's too much of a self-absorbed douche-bag to do so.

Agreed.

But who is like the beast?
I know It's pretty substandard and I even have a widescreen computer and TV myself, but its the only way now to get the OOT on DVD without resorting to piracy. It sucks, but we can't do anything about it. Plus, I kind of have a weird fascination with archaic technology (laserdisc), even though this came out two years ago; and I even play my SNES games on my LG, in 4:3 mode, so I guess the GOUT would not be that unbearable. The only true reason to pick up the GOUT if you are desperate and you will kill yourself if you cannot watch the OOT in a legal, non-disintegrating form.

i just got the 2006 DVD oot a few weeks ago,

and i'm happy with them.....they're basically a footnote,

since i have the 4 or 5 other released versions on laserdisc,

so i'm not really missing/gaining anything anyway..

 

its more of a convenience, and an easier way for people

who don't have laserdisc players to watch it....

 

i've only watched the theatrical versions a handful of times,

so i dont' notice all the color changes/different soundtrack versions/dialogues etc......

 

thanks George, its about time....

 

later

-1

Officially, it is actually the OUT (Original Unaltered Triliogy).  A clever individual on this site suggested GOUT (George's Original Unaltered Triliogy) and it stuck.

I called it the gout with some friends not on this site and they didn't know what the heck I was talking about.  I was happy to explain, though.

Who's responsible for this (2nd entry):
http://www.amazon.com/tag/gout/lists-guides/ref=tag_tdp_rb_ilag_all

Those fuckers on Amazon who Like the prequels and special editions must be from Tfn it is the only logical assumption, LOL.

TheDoctor1987 said:

I to do like this set however the production value is so bad on the quality of the original films itself i actually prefer the special editions over the original i like the covers but there not authentic at all. But i will not buy another set i intend on making my own box set with these covers here http://www.rixgrafix.com/index_094.htm and i will be waiting for ADYWANS edits of Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi i highly suggest you check out ADYWANS fan edit of A New Hope. 

 

very cool looking covers..

 

by the way, i'm pretty sure every single person here has heard about/seen ANH:R already..

 

later

-1

 

Speaking of crappy DVD covers (which the 2004 DVDs are pretty bad), have you really ever looked at the 97 SE posters?  Now I love Drew Struzan, and he did do this in a hurry, but I don't know...

Nothing much to complain about in this one.  That shot of Leia isn't from ANH I don't think.

I love the Empire poster, but it has Vader's TIE from ANH and Ian McDiarmid, who wasn't in that movie until 2004.

OK, the centerpiece of this poster is the beginning of the battle from the previous movie.  I don't get that.

Maybe this is because they're meant to fit together, but he could at least have tried to use more images from the individual movies on the individual posters.

Waaay off topic, but it hit me a couple weeks ago.

 

Those three SE posters were meant to go together as a set.  As such, they were meant to reflect the trilogy collectively rather than work as three standalone posters.

And also, on the original ROTJ poster, didn't the artist copy the pose from the ESB battle as well?

Yeah, on the teaser poster.