Harmy said:
As to the Emperor, I'd recommend using Ady's 97SE 1080p reconstruction MKV (it's on tehparadox). That's where mine came from...
Keep in mind that he didn't fully restore that scene, see the lack of blinking lights in the wall behind the hologram. Just thought I would point that out as it is easy to miss small details like that.
I often hear that one of the main problems with the 2004 transfer of Empire is that it's too blue compared to how it originally looked, this popular thought needs to go away. The original Empire had always a lot of blue in it, especially on Hoth. The 2004 transfer has instead for the most part an ugly cyan tint, and that's a big difference.
Not to discourage you OMEN, but besides having crushed blacks, it also have many instances of clipped whites, and many scenes are already more bright in the SE compared to the original, so I'm afraid that just slightly boost the brightness and reduce the blue will not help making this disaster of a video transfer look anything close to how this film looked originally.
An example of the clipped white levels in the 2004 transfer.
2004 DVD
SWE LD
GOUT
Even the THX transfer with its blown out whites have more detail in the bright areas than the DVD in some parts. The old LD transfers aren't perfect either, this example have the contrast too low, but it helps demonstrate that the crushed blacks aren't the only problem with the 2004 video. One setting for the whole film doesn't solve the problems with either Star Wars or Empire, there's simply too many problems that are changing depending on what scene you are looking at, there's no way around it than to correct it scene by scene if you want some good results.
Look at this matte-shot for example, the '04 DVD at the top and the '97 SE below:
A few moments later when it cuts back to the bridge on the 2004 DVD, someone have turned on the red lights:
Still look lifeless, see how pale the skintones are. Anyway, this wild inconsistency is present in all levels throughout the '04 transfers, from colors to saturation to contrast and brightness. Combine that with the artificial sharpening, grain reduction, starfields and engine glows that have somehow lost their former glint, and finally add some horrible audio re-mixes and added digital effects, and you will have something that is starting to resemble Lucas' vision of how these films were always meant to be seen.
Btw, shouldn't this be in the fan-edit section of the forum?