Well, the AOTC Blu-ray colors are all fucked up and there’s a ton of DNR and other processing done to it. That’s why 95% of all fan edits and other fan projects for AOTC are done using the high-bitrate HDTV caps, which have the right color and, even after some processing to reduce compression artifacts, more detail than the Blu-ray.
I’d be more surprised if your scans resembled the Blu-ray at all.
interesting and kind of ridiculous as no way HDTV should be able to beat blu
so does the HDTV stuff look like my scans in terms of color and luminance curve?
Yep, absolutely.
It’s funny, being a member of this forum so long I kind of take it for granted that people are aware of how God awful the BD of AOTC is and how much better the HDTV broadcast was. Schorman made excellent preservations of all the pre-BD HDTV broadcasts for the first 6 films, and he’s coming out with updated versions of these releases very soon. I’d urge you to check out his work.
The BD of TPM is similarly God awful (DNR’d to hell and iffy colors), but the HDTV for TPM isn’t as clearly superior since it’s plagued by pretty rough sharpening/edge enhancement from a subpar 35mm scan and different color issues than the BD. Also burned-in generic-looking subtitles instead of the theatrical subtitles the AOTC HDTV had.
Thankfully, other than some a couple very minor alterations, ROTS’s Blu-Ray is pretty excellent, with accurate colors and no DNR, so unless you really want to restore the pre-BD Wookiee hut rooftops on Kashyyyk, the HDTV of that one is kind of redundant.
now that I think about it I have vague memories, I think, of thinking things looking sort of washed out when blu-rays came out for AOTC and parts of TPM (and rather smooth for TPM), compared to what I had recalled at the theaters. I know there is one scene in TPM with Amidala in Palp’s office, which had storng contrast and cool colors in some release and then looked very muted in other releases. Can’t recall at this point which releases I was referring to. Maybe theatrical vs. all home or maybe it was even say 35mm theatrical vs all others or digital theatrical vs all others.
It’s pretty bizarre how often studios muddle home releases. I mean, what, they sent some poor versions to theaters that needed to be fixed up later? That makes no sense. So if the ultimate theatrical presentation doesn’t need lots of DNR and so on, why on Earth do home releases suddenly ‘need’ DNR, new colors and other crap?
Ironically, I sometimes find bargain basement titles, so long as not too, too low ont he pecking order, end up with the best home releases, just big enough to get top quality scans, but not big enough titles that the studios bother spending money ‘fixing’ them and paying for photoshop monkeys to fiddle with things.