Might be more pertinent to mention that Superbit is a trademark of Sony Pictures Entertainment and ergo only Sony and Colombia releases can ever be true Superbit releases.

Star Wars is CBS/FOX - therefore:

Click here for disc comparision. The R1 Superbit has superb picture quality while the R2 Ultimate Edition has a full bit-rate DTS track, there's no mention of the Superbit having this.

I've been slowly trying to collect all the Superbit editions, but the R2 UE of The Fifth Element got my vote, mainly for the DTS track.

My next Superbit purchases will be the legit Japanese versions of the Ghostbusters twinpack and the Jurassic Park Trilogy, but these'll be a long way off for me as they were only produced in a limited quantity and sell for $100-$200 per disc on eBay.

I think I paid $95 for the R2 Jurassic Park superbit but it is far superior to the R1 DVD in terms of video quality. The R2 Ghostbusters superbit DVD wasn't all that much better than the R1 release.

I have the THX demo DVD and while better than the dolby digital DVD soundtrack, it still doesn't beat the laserdiscs dolby digital, which is 5.1 EX.

Actually, Dolby digital, or AC-3 on laserdisc was at the rate of 384kbps. So in the case of laserdisc, even though the dolby has the lower bitrate, it still is better than both the DVD's dolby digital at 448kbps and the THX demo's 754kbps DTS track. In my opinion, bitrate doesn't tell the story. DD on laserdisc has the lowest bitrate of all at 384kbps and it is very often superior to DTS or DD tracks on DVD that are at higher bitrates. Another one is Saving Private Ryan. I had the DD DVD and the DTS DVD, and the DTS DVD was the clear winner. I then got the DD LD and it bested the DTS DVD. Video quality was of course another matter.

I always felt that ld basically used the theatrical mix whereas DVD's are often "remixed" for home theater. When comparing the Star Wars Episode I DD DVD (at 448kbps) to the DD on the LD (at 384kbps) it is no contest. The LD is far more agressive of a mix and faithfully represents the theatrical viewing experience that I had. The DVD sounds "dumbed down" so to speak.

I have not compared the DD to the DTS on the R2 Jurassic park superbit. I know that the DTS is only at a rate of 754kbps and does not use the full 1509kbps as some early DTS DVD's did. DTS laserdisc for reference used a bitrate of 1235kbps. I remeber that when the R1 Jurassic park came out, the DTS DVD was very very weak and was easily bested by the DD DVD. It was found that an encoding error occured on the DTS DVD and cut it's LFE channel by 4db. A repressed DTS DVD was made available that was said to be created from the DTS laserdisc master and it shows. I believe that the Jurassic park superbit DTS is this same mix as it sounds very similar to the DTS DVD.

R2 got quite a few that R1 did not have. The reason is that in R2 Sony has the rights to films that they do not have in the states. R2 also had Gladiator superbit, the Mummy Returns, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Bridge on the River Kwai, and Taxi Driver, plus the Ghostbusters and Jurassic park movies as already noted. These are the ones I myself have and there are more that were R2 superbits not available in the US. For a list you can go to the CD japan website and search for superbit and it will show you the still available R2 superbits.

Just to note, the Jurassic Park superbit sets on ebay are bootlegs. AS noted earlier, you will pay dearly for the geniune Jurassic park alone, let alone all three films.

Laserdiscs aren't compressed AT ALL. That's what makes them sound great.

The Jurassic Park Superbits that I looked at certainly weren't bootlegs, hence the price I mentioned.