whaleman

Hi Team: I’ve been away for a while (due to not having a computer for about a year, lol) but I’m back on the grid. In the mean time I seem to have lost myspleen access:( Would be great access again to get caught up checking out the most recent excellent fan preservation efforts; if anyone could help me out please send me a PM! If not, and this is not the appropriate way to ask, then I beg your forgiveness:)

God, I love this project so much. Just watched SW 2.7, ESB 2.0, ROTJ 2.5 all last night. I love you guys. Please don’t mind if I just chime in from time to time to say that😉

No rush buddy, hoping all works out and looking forward to your stuff when the time is right👍. Anything we get from this great team is a bonus.

Thanks all for the quick responses!!

Harmy said:

Chewtobacca’s NTSC DVD5 is now available through tehp.

Video: NTSC DVD-5
Audio: AC-3 5.1 at 448kbps (hairy_hen’s latest mix)
GOUT chapter-stops

Thanks as always, Chewtobacca!

Hey guys, a question about the Chewtobacca DVD5 of RotJ 2.5. Does this contain a menu or just the movie itself? I burned the files and it plays in my dvd player but it goes straight into the movie…awesome quality by the way:) Just wanted to know if there is a menu that I am missing out on by burning it wrong? Thanks guys and keep up the AWESOME work!!

Harmy and all the passionate preservationists out there are heroes and words can’t express the gratitude to all of you from a life long Star Wars fan. Keep up the amazing work!

dark_jedi said:

Just please keep in mind that it will be the video file only, you guys will have to swap it out with the V3 yourselves, I no longer have any of those files and to be honest, most of my time is for the BLU V2 really, I just thought that this would be a good alternative for the DVD Folks.

That being said I need some help from someone, could someone make up a how to on switching out the video files with the V3 DVD and keeping the chapters and such? then I could include it in the torrent with all the right programs needed along with the new V4 video file, this would be greatly appreciated, I think Ady had a how to somewhere, or was that for audio? I can't remember.

Thanks

I just wanted to thank Dark Jedi and You_Too for their continuing efforts to enhance the original Star Wars viewing experience!  I was very happy with the previous releases by DJ, but in continuing to find upgrades you guys are doing the Star Wars community a tremendous service!  Thanks guys!

I just read the rumour (hopefully untrue!) on TFN that Lucas has made the following alteration to the soon to be released blu ray of Return of the Jedi:

Darth Vader yells "Noooo" as Luke is being electrocuted with Force Lightning by the Emperor.

If this is true, I think he has crossed the line and actually ruined his movies.  I hated a lot of other changes, but this would be right up there and probably my most hated change.

The reason I post this here is it drives home the importance of this project.  With Dark Jedi's work we will have two versions in high definition: the real theatrical versions that we all love, and the bastardized GL editions, which have some good changes but a whole bunch of bad ones.  It just makes this project all the more important.

Hi Everyone, I had a chance to watch Return of the Jedi last night; here are my thoughts:

The menu is similar to that of Star Wars and ESB.  Beautifully crisp and clear posters alternate slowly in the background with soft music playing.  I like the second poster showing the alternate title to the movie - Revenge of the Jedi!  This disk does not have any bonus features, but makes up for it with the best quality visuals of any of the movies in this fantastic set!  More on that in a minute.

The audio is perfect as is the case for the rest of the set.  Lots of options for the audio lovers out there.  It sounds wonderful.

Now onto the video.  In my opinion of all of the project blu releases, Return of the Jedi looks the best; and that's saying a lot since the others were really good too!  Unlike a lot of other people, I liked RotJ (not as much as SW or ESB) and think that it is a worthy conclusion to the OT.  It was a pleasure to see what a thorough and fantastic job Dark Jedi has done in restoring this movie to high definition.  This version, as with the rest of project blu, looks the best I have ever seen Return of the Jedi look.

There are also 50 chapter selections, so lots of options for those who like to skip ahead to their favourite parts.

In conclusion, an outstanding job was done by Dark Jedi to put this set together and improve in every way what was previously available to put out the real theatrical cuts that we've all been waiting for.  A project of this importance is nothing less than monumental.  Well done Dark Jedi!  Mission accomplished!

Hey guys, just thought I would put up my review of Dark Jedi's Blu Ray version of Empire Strikes Back.

When you put the disk in, the menu is of the same style as Star Wars.  Crisp, high resolution, cycling slowly through different movie posters from ESB with all the various options, scene selections, bonus features(!).  The menus look very sharp and crisp, with gentle music playing in the background which is great because I hate when the music on blu ray menus is so in your face and constantly looping every 30 seconds.  Very tastefully done.

The first thing I checked out was the bonus features.  The feature offered on this release is a real treat - the rare 1980 Empire hotline recordings released to hype the movie.  Included is Darth Vader, Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, C3P0, and Princess Leia.  When you select each one a still image of the character comes on screen and you hear a 30 second or so speech from the character describing their character and their motivations going into ESB.  I found this to be a lot of fun, and the audio sounded great!

Next, there are a ton of audio options; very impressive, and the sound quality was just fantastic.  To have all these options is amazing.  From the start of the movie I must say the crawl looked less sharp than from Star Wars.  This is due to the source material; I know DJ cleaned this up as much as he could.  When the movie opens in a blue Hoth, there is a good amount of grain, which I prefer to the alternative.  As the movie progresses it is apparent that more grain reduction has taken place, but this is an issue with the source GOUT.

What I would say about picture quality is that it is by far the best I have ever seen ESB's theatrical version.  This is vastly superior to Lucas' GOUT and is a real treat to watch.  As a previous reviewer noted, I did see a few "bad frames", (but not many!) and they are really so minor that they did not bother me in the slightest.  GREAT WORK DARK JEDI, this release has already surpassed my expectations of what I was hoping this set would be!  I really look forward to watching RotJ and will post my review on that in the next few days.

Hey guys; I got my blu ray set a bit late but I had the chance to watch Star Wars and all the hype is legit!  From the opening when the menus come up they are beautiful and rotate between all these different posters with nice soft music going in the background.  Very professional looking.

I found the sound on this blu ray to be phenomenal!  Seeing the Star Wars crawl at the beginning was incredibly crisp and looked amazing; I was even pleasantly surprised after all the good stuff I had heard.  The picture quality of the rest of the movie is really good and while not on par with modern blu ray releases, it is leaps and bounds better than any Star Wars I've seen before and kicks the @ss of the previous Lucasfilm DVDs (GOUT)!  The improvement is night and day.  Bravo Dark Jedi!

It was a treat to see such great picture and listen to the fabulous audio while getting to enjoy the movie without the CGI creatures fooling around, no stupid Jabba and Han scene, and most importantly Han shoots first in HD! The movie is also broken down into a ton of chapter markers so you have a lot of flexibility if you want to skip ahead to a certain part.

Well done Dark Jedi - we cannot thank you enough, and I will put up my thoughts on ESB in the next few days! 

Thank you DJ; you are incredible and all of your devotion and hard work is for a great cause and is highly appreciated!

dark_jedi said:

I am getting there LOL, but every DAMN time I burn what I hope is the final BD, I find more SHIT frames(and then another fucking disc into the trash!) I have done well over 125 frames so far and I just found 15 more that I want to try and fix, but I already told my Wife, this IS the last batch of frames I am going to mess with, I just want to finish and get these out, either way, just what I have done so far is way better than it was, some are not fixed 100% perfectly, but at least it is way better than what it was.

Star Wars is done, and I have not seen any real bad ones in Jedi yet, I still have to watch that all the way through though, and then obviously I will have to watch Empire all the way through again to.

My goal is to have ALL 3 BD's done by the end of this weekend so I can start shipping these out.

Great news!  Thank you again for the continued effort devoted to this.  Tell your wife thank you for her patience from all of us!

dark_jedi said:

Doctor M said:

V4?

LOL, not by me, no way, getting very tired of Star Wars LOL, but I may go back and fix some of the very bad frames, it is a lot more noticeable on these Blu version than the DVD versions, the 2 mentioned here are already fixed,

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Whats-missing-from-GOUT/post/457778/#TopicPost457778

but not sure if everyone wants to wait a little more for me to re-render and encode.

I say take as long as you like and as long as you are willing to spend on it.  My personal opinion is I'd rather wait for the best quality product possible:)

Those blu ray covers are beautiful!!!  Great work!

Thank you so much Dark Jedi for all the time and effort spent working for this very worthwhile cause!