As far as preservation source material goes, I’d say these new UHD releases are distinctly better than the 2011 Blu’s. It really looks like DNR took a heavy toll on the UHD’s, but the color is better – in particular it doesn’t have the clipping due to the boosted magentas that the 2011 Blu’s have. So, more fine image detail, better color, less clipped detail… that’s pretty good. Unfortunately it will still require a bucketload of fake grain to get it looking like a movie, but there’s always something with these Lucasfilm home video releases, isn’t there? Four eyed stormtroopers and whatnot, they never get it right.

Have to say I’m a little disappointed by the grain. I was really hoping the lack of grain/frozen grain on the Disney+ versions was just due to how the stream was encoded, and the disks would be better… but it was not to be. I can’t believe people are still doing this to movies on purpose.

But, hooray for new source materials. Fire up the editors.