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What is your main way of watching the Original Trilogy? — Page 2

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I only watch official versions of the Star Wars movies, so even though I don’t have the 2006 bonus DVDs, I would preferably watch them because they are the only release of the pre-SE trilogy on a digital format.

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I tend to watch whatever version of the films is easily available to me at the time. If I’m at my computer and I feel like watching Star Wars, I’ll connect my external hard drive and watch Harmy’s Despecialized Editions. If I’m channel surfing on TV and see that one of the films is playing, I’ll watch that one. If I’m at my brother and sister in-law’s house and they feel like having a movie night, we’ll watch their Blu-rays of the original and prequel trilogies.

Long story short, I go with the flow, though on occasion I’ll seek out a specific version if I really feel like watching it (like the Special Editions rather than the theatricals, etc). It all depends on the moment and how I’m feeling.

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I mostly just watch them when they are on TV these days. I am planning on watching the harmy despecialized
versions soon though as I have them on my pc.

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When I really want to sit down and entertain myself with Star Wars, I go to my Harmy discs for the Original Trilogy. The unaltered versions will always be my favorite. But sometimes I just want to see the best possible picture, so I put in the 4K UHD just to take in the higher resolution and HDR (and imagine what could have been if they included the unaltered version with this release).

But if we’re talking how Star Wars is played most often, when I am doing things around the house and just want something playing in the background, I open Disney+ and just stream away. If there was a counter on how many times I’ve streamed all the Star Wars movies, I’m sure it would be high, very high. Clone Wars, Rebels, and Resistance too.

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My Despecialized Blu-rays if I wanna just enjoy the original trilogy and HAL’s Custom Special Editions if I feel like incorporating other films or more into the marathon. My letterbox VHS tapes from the old '92 Star Wars Trilogy boxset was my go-to before that. Bought that set after the Blu-ray Saga collection came out, having gotten fed up with the continuing additional changes with each release.

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I almost always watch the Despecialized Editions. I love that Blu-ray detail and contrast. They’re incredible achievements and look fantastic overall.

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I forgot how close to the original color timing the CBS FOX releases on Laserdisc are, so those are an option used occasionally. They also have the original Dolby Stereo mixes.

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My ideal way is to wait a long period of time between viewings of one film that I liked. This way, I can forget that one film and come back to it so that I can get that same enjoyment of when I first viewed it. In the case of the first three Star Wars films however, that is no longer possible since I’ve been involved in doing audio projects for them and I have to watch them to see if my work is done well. It’s like listening to a popular song. You first heard it over the radio and you’ve enjoyed it so much in that first listen. You would listen to that song repeatedly for hours and days to get that same ‘high’ of enjoyment. After a while, when you reached that 100th listen, that enjoyment starts to wear-off.

Before that, I had the first two films on CED disc in the 1980’s and I would watch them often for a year until my player broke in 1985. I, then, got a VCR (finally), but I never bothered buying the Star Wars films on tape. Fast-forward to 1991, I made a visit to a once-popular department store and I saw a home-theater display that contained a Toshiba 4:3 47-inch big-screen TV, a Sony laser-disc player, two Sony tower speakers with powered subwoofers and a comfortable sofa where people were watching a movie on that TV without a care in the world-the salesmen nor security men weren’t telling these people to move along. On a whim, I bought the Star Wars Trilogy “Definitive Collection” Laserdisc box set (despite my not having a LaserDisc player), went straight back to that department store and started playing ANH. Because of the size of the TV, the letterboxed picture was enough to put the black borders in my peripheral version. The remastered soundtrack was crisp-sounding coming out of those Sony speakers. Those speakers also did a good job in making the explosions rumble.

Into the playing of these discs in the store, customers and even the salesmen were gathering around the ‘living room’ area to see how this movie looked and sounded in that home theater set-up. One mother came in with her children and the kids were sitting close to the TV-screen in front of the sofa to watch the flying space ships. Each week, I brought in a different Star Wars movie to play in the store without objection from the salesmen. The store didn’t have any LaserDiscs to sell, so, I like to think that I was doing that store a favor by my playing these discs with the store’s equipment.

Having not seen the films for over 6 years, watching them with that home-theater set-up was the best that I can get of enjoying the films outside of the theater when I first saw them.

Nowadays, after viewing the SW films via ‘film-with-live-orchestra’ concerts, I can go for long periods of time without seeing the Star Wars films, so, I can wait forever for the completion of ‘4K80’

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I have the Despecialized Editions and 4k77 downloaded to my computer and I just watch it on there. Sometimes stream it to Plex. I never bothered burning them onto discs.

I also have some Special Edition VHS’s, and the 2011 Blu Rays, but I don’t watch those very often. Pretty much the only times I ever interact with them are solely to skim through and check something.

Reading R + L ≠ J theories

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I discovered the Despecialized Editions around 2014 and they’ve been my default versions ever since, at least until v3.0 drops.

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How often does everyone here marathon some/all of the movies?

I’ve found if I watch one, I have the overwhelming urge to watch the next one in the series soon after. I regularly watch them all in chronological order.

Once I even took the time to incorporate the animated series in their respective chronological order. It really added to my appreciation of how cohesive Star Wars truly is.

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I usually marathon the Saga once a year, generally in May. I like doing either a Trilogy a day over three days or one per day with the spin-offs included, depending on schedules.

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The best they did in 4K77 (besides the updated backgrounds for some scenes) was Yoda’s CGI in Episodes 1, 2. It looks much better and more natural than the doll version. The glow of swords is also more natural. I thought that with the release of the Digital Movie Collection, Yoda would update from the old series, but this did not happen.

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I grew up with the original CBS VHS tapes, Faces THX Tapes, and Special Edition 1997 VHS Tapes.

I used to strictly watch despecialized since it came out. (Purchased official Steelbook Blurays to use as cases for despecialized).

A few years ago I got a laserdisc player and collection for cheap, which contained the Fox “Special Widescreen Edition” (theatrical versions) Technidisc set of the trilogy from 1992. Official releases of the Original Trilogy are now my go to.

I have a 120" Projection Screen with a home theater projector as well as a CRT.

I’d rather zoom in on the letterbox official releases, blown up on the big screen than use fan products these days, not sure why, but it’s more fun for me this way.

I like my VHS’ and Laserdiscs, analog home video is fun, even in the digital age, and the audio still rocks.

I recently ordered the GOUT 2006 DVD set and look forward to having a DVD version of the original films if my LD player ever breaks.

Like video gaming, you can have emulators that make games look artificial, crystal clear, and smooth, but I like the experience of reliving how I originally enjoyed things.

Having never seen the original Star Wars Trilogy in movie theaters, standard def home video was how I grew up with it. While I appreciate the fan restorations, they don’t have the “magic” for me.

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Disney+. I have the Blu-Rays but for some reason the OT looks like a grainy mess on them (just the film itself: the menus look fine and so do the Prequels).

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The 2011 Blu-ray grain is mostly fake grain, so it doesn’t really represent the films as they would normally appear. Nevertheless, the negatives would still have quite a bit of natural film grain – less than the 4Kxx projects, but maybe only slightly less than 4K83. The real odd-looking ones are the UHD’s. The only significant grain to be found on them is frozen grain.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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CatBus said:

The 2011 Blu-ray grain is mostly fake grain, so it doesn’t really represent the films as they would normally appear. Nevertheless, the negatives would still have quite a bit of natural film grain – less than the 4Kxx projects, but maybe only slightly less than 4K83. The real odd-looking ones are the UHD’s. The only significant grain to be found on them is frozen grain.

I’ve heard of Blu-ray releases “de-graining” old films, but I’ve never heard of adding fake grain. Why would they do that?

Star Wars is Surrealism, not Science Fiction (essay)
Original Trilogy Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Beyond the OT Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Amazon link to my novel; Dawn of the Karabu.

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ZkinandBonez said:

CatBus said:

The 2011 Blu-ray grain is mostly fake grain, so it doesn’t really represent the films as they would normally appear. Nevertheless, the negatives would still have quite a bit of natural film grain – less than the 4Kxx projects, but maybe only slightly less than 4K83. The real odd-looking ones are the UHD’s. The only significant grain to be found on them is frozen grain.

I’ve heard of Blu-ray releases “de-graining” old films, but I’ve never heard of adding fake grain. Why would they do that?

It’s pretty common. They degrain the film first, so that they can do major image enhancements without the grain causing weird effects (i.e. so you can boost the yellows or the sharpness without having yellow/extra sharp grain, also for 3D conversion so you don’t end up with 3D floating grain). Then, because the image looks like crap without grain, they add it back in at the end, after all the image adjustments have been made. People blame Lowry for inventing the degrain/regrain process, and I’m not sure where it really started, but it’s widespread. Some places go through more effort than others to make the added grain look natural and filmstock-accurate. Rarely does the film end up looking as grainy as a film (negative) from that period really would, so the whole process is still a net loss of grain (so a “de-grained” Blu-ray likely still has added fake grain). In these cases, the grain that’s there isn’t from the film, it’s from a computer. “Filmic” is what reviewers tend to call it when it works well.

What the UHD versions of Star Wars are is the version prepped for 3D conversion (so scrubbed as completely as possible of grain), but the 3D project was abandoned. Normally such a film would be fake-grained back up before a 2D release, but apparently nobody got the memo.

Ideally you wouldn’t bother degraining and regraining, but film negatives often have wildly differing colors than the original projection prints, so if you have a process that starts with scanning negatives (and people tend to like seeing all that extra fine detail on their Blu-rays that comes from the negatives), color grading and grain management usually just have to come with the package deal. But as with everything, there’s how to do it right, and how to do it cheap, and you can get wildly different results.

For an example of what they’re trying to avoid through degraining, mess with the sharpness setting on your set. Go ahead and turn it up to 11, then watch a grainy movie. It’s… not right. Also keep in mind that most displays are sold with default sharpness settings that are not zero, so grain really does genuinely look wrong for most people, because their sets are pre-configured to make grain look bad. The correct setting for sharpness on your display is always zero.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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CatBus said:

ZkinandBonez said:

CatBus said:

The 2011 Blu-ray grain is mostly fake grain, so it doesn’t really represent the films as they would normally appear. Nevertheless, the negatives would still have quite a bit of natural film grain – less than the 4Kxx projects, but maybe only slightly less than 4K83. The real odd-looking ones are the UHD’s. The only significant grain to be found on them is frozen grain.

I’ve heard of Blu-ray releases “de-graining” old films, but I’ve never heard of adding fake grain. Why would they do that?

It’s pretty common. They degrain the film first, so that they can do major image enhancements without the grain causing weird effects (i.e. so you can boost the yellows or the sharpness without having yellow/extra sharp grain, also for 3D conversion so you don’t end up with 3D floating grain). Then, because the image looks like crap without grain, they add it back in at the end, after all the image adjustments have been made. People blame Lowry for inventing the degrain/regrain process, and I’m not sure where it really started, but it’s widespread. Some places go through more effort than others to make the added grain look natural and filmstock-accurate. Rarely does the film end up looking as grainy as a film (negative) from that period really would, so the whole process is still a net loss of grain (so a “de-grained” Blu-ray likely still has added fake grain). In these cases, the grain that’s there isn’t from the film, it’s from a computer. “Filmic” is what reviewers tend to call it when it works well.

What the UHD versions of Star Wars are is the version prepped for 3D conversion (so scrubbed as completely as possible of grain), but the 3D project was abandoned. Normally such a film would be fake-grained back up before a 2D release, but apparently nobody got the memo.

Ideally you wouldn’t bother degraining and regraining, but film negatives often have wildly differing colors than the original projection prints, so if you have a process that starts with scanning negatives (and people tend to like seeing all that extra fine detail on their Blu-rays that comes from the negatives), color grading and grain management usually just have to come with the package deal. But as with everything, there’s how to do it right, and how to do it cheap, and you can get wildly different results.

For an example of what they’re trying to avoid through degraining, mess with the sharpness setting on your set. Go ahead and turn it up to 11, then watch a grainy movie. It’s… not right. Also keep in mind that most displays are sold with default sharpness settings that are not zero, so grain really does genuinely look wrong for most people, because their sets are pre-configured to make grain look bad. The correct setting for sharpness on your display is always zero.

Weird. I had no idea. I’m guessing this is mostly done with more “popular” films, franchise films, etc. or do they degrain/regrain films in general? I can see the logic of doing this with f.ex. the SW SE’s since they had to add and “fix” effects, but I can’t imagine this is necessary in order to clean up old films in general?

It’s funny really, ever since I started watching the various restorations and grindhouse editions at TheStarWarsTrilogy forum I’ve started seeing blu-ray released of old film with entirely new eyes. Which in this case is not a positive, because I always assumed that other than the SW SE’s and its few copycats generally weren’t tampered with at all, but now I’m starting to find a lot of “restorations” quite frustrating to watch. So I guess I can now add de-/re-graining to the list alongside incorrect colour grading.

Star Wars is Surrealism, not Science Fiction (essay)
Original Trilogy Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Beyond the OT Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Amazon link to my novel; Dawn of the Karabu.

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ZkinandBonez said:

I can’t imagine this is necessary in order to clean up old films in general?

Blu-rays of old films aren’t made from projection prints because projection prints, in most cases, don’t have enough fine detail to make complete use of 1080p resolution. People like all the extra detail Blu-ray had the capacity to reveal, and 35mm negatives give us the ability to provide all that and more, so I don’t really blame anyone for doing what they do in this respect.

But if you go back to the negative or something like it, you’ll usually have to redo the color grade, because the colors on the negative frequently look nothing like the film as it was originally projected. And usually there’s some other cleanup people do as well. “Grain management” is part of the modern restoration workflow of any film-based movie, but what the grain management entails can vary. Degrain/regrain is one of the blunter tools in that toolkit, and all I can say for sure is that it’s used a lot, and it was used on the 2011 Blu-rays.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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I haven’t much interest in watching the films anymore, but I got the GOUT copies of SW '77 & TESB if ever the urge comes upon me.

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CatBus said:

ZkinandBonez said:

I can’t imagine this is necessary in order to clean up old films in general?

Blu-rays of old films aren’t made from projection prints because projection prints, in most cases, don’t have enough fine detail to make complete use of 1080p resolution. People like all the extra detail Blu-ray had the capacity to reveal, and 35mm negatives give us the ability to provide all that and more, so I don’t really blame anyone for doing what they do in this respect.

But if you go back to the negative or something like it, you’ll usually have to redo the color grade, because the colors on the negative frequently look nothing like the film as it was originally projected. And usually there’s some other cleanup people do as well. “Grain management” is part of the modern restoration workflow of any film-based movie, but what the grain management entails can vary. Degrain/regrain is one of the blunter tools in that toolkit, and all I can say for sure is that it’s used a lot, and it was used on the 2011 Blu-rays.

I’m assuming then that “grain management” is done on new movies shot on film as well? Could that be why a lot of new movies shot on film end up looking so digital?

BTW, I get why they redo the colour grade when restoring films, I just feel that they make poor judgments on the aesthetic and often make old films look too new. I’m obviously no expert on film colours, but I find that this is a bigger problem with franchise films which are more popular, while more niche films end up looking appropriately “retro” (though I’m sure this varies greatly as well depending on who restores the film).

Star Wars is Surrealism, not Science Fiction (essay)
Original Trilogy Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Beyond the OT Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Amazon link to my novel; Dawn of the Karabu.