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The Official 2006 Discs Will Be No Better Than What We Have!

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 (Edited)

I hate to say this, as today we should be celebrating and retiring this site, but it seems the battle for a quality release of the original Star Wars on DVD has just begun.

Why?

Because these brand new DVDs will be using ancient video masters. Here’s Jim Ward, of Lucasfilms, comment: “The original films’ video quality will not match up to that of the restored versions. ‘It is state of the art, as of 1993, and that’s not as good as state of the art 2006,’ Ward says.” That quote can be found in this article from USA Today.

This confirms that they are using the old video masters used for the Laser Discs and VHS tapes, last released more than 10 years ago. Basically, every disc that every fan at this site has ever made is as good as the product Lucasfilm will be releasing. These will be the official Lucasfilm “bootleg” editions, or maybe the “Infernal Creative Decision” edition.

I could curse. I could scream. But I’m going to take the high road. I’m going to inform everyone I know not to be suckered into buying these discs. I’m going to urge you all to do that too. I don’t even think anyone should own them. Lucasfilm should not be rewarded for this amateur and sloppy decision. Lucasfilm doesn’t respect our wishes, so lets not support them. I’m not advocating piracy and I don’t think anyone should offer an alternate disc to prospective buyers. Education is the key here. Demonstrate what is going on with this release. Show that instead of investing and preserving a classic, Lucasfilm are instead resorting to the lowest common denominator in order to make a fast buck. Explain that these are being dumped off in a quick firesale, just before high definition home video becomes commonplace.

Neil

Well at least the reversed surround channels have been addressed.

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No f- way?!?!?!?! Crappy laserdisc masters??!?!? Are these releases supposed to be the way we watched them on video?!??! or the way we originally saw them in the theater!?!?!? That sucks!!!!

So Lucasfilm wants to present the films the way we SAW THEM ON VIDEO, not the way they were in theaters...??? no 16:9? in 1993 there was no 16:9... will the fan made discs actually be better?!?!?

I saw the films in six track 70mm!!! (March 28th, 1985 was the last time...) and the mixes... especially Star Wars was remarkably different!!! So how can they just put a 2.0 track on these releases?!?!? How about the original six track remixed into 5.1...!?!!! Why do a half-assed job!??!

As if people can even remember the last 'major release' that wasn't 16:9... and are these new discs going to be THX certified? I doubt it... so if it's not up to lucasfilm quality standards, why do it? And if our 'fan' releases of the films can be 16:9, are the fan discs going to be better than the lucascrud stuff?!?!?!?!

or are they putting the new versions of the films in the box so that they can actually use THX on the box and mislead the customer again???

Does George not believe that his new versions are truly superior, so he has to screw the old films quality to insure that his new crap looks better? I'll bet anything that they don't even fix the sound on Star Wars!!!! It sounds like this is the cheapest releases ever!!!!

Hey, didn't Spielberg have an anamorphic transfer of E.T. theatrical edition in his release? Is E.T. more important the Star Wars?

What was the last film that was a classic release that was widescreen that wasn't 16:9?!?!?!

We need to speak up now!!! The original films should be respected and the same quality standards that the new versions are.... Give the negatives to Lowry (DTS) Digital, and make the films as incredibly beautiful as the 2004 crap!!!

THEY HAVE TO DO IT RIGHT, OR WE'LL JUST KEEP BOOTING THEM!!! WE'LL TAKE THE NON-16:9 DISCS and CONVERT THEM TO 16:9 OURSELVES!!!!

HELP!!!!!!

CS

Before “Intentional Creative Decisions”!!! it was “…A certain point of view”???

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For the love of all that is holy, ease up on the punctuation.

I used to be very active on this forum. I’m not really anymore. Sometimes, people still want to get in touch with me about something, and that is great! If that describes you, please email me at [my username]ATgmailDOTcom.

Hi everybody. You’re all awesome. Keep up the good work.

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I don't believe this!!!! NOW Lucasfilm has changed their announcement on www.starwars.com to LEAVE OUT the comment that the crawl will not have 'EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE".... What's next, the stereo mix presented in mono as they claim it is the mono mix?!?!

How much worse can it get????

F-ers...

Before “Intentional Creative Decisions”!!! it was “…A certain point of view”???

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how about the fact that the same usa today article you mentioned says they will be sold separetely not in a box set, and be 30.00 each totaling a 90.00 price tag for all three.

We who have the 2004 versions we should not have to buy them again, some people already bought both the 4 disc and 3 disc 2004-2005 sets and will not want them a second or third time over, but will have to just get the originals.

not only is this tripple dipping but the price could be cut in hald if we could buy the originals only, not only that but the promised future releases with the deleted scenes etc. are not being offered these are bare bones releases.

There are probalbly only a few scenes minutes in each film that have not been remastered for the 1997 or 2004 release, but they have at least 90 to 95% of the job already done, they would just have to restore those few scenes that were not restored for the 1997 or 2004 release. and it would not cost millions like lucas has said to clean up a few scenes.

basically what they are offering is the same laserdisc master as the definitive collection/Faces releases

in spite of the fact that they did not use these masters for the 1997 re-issue or dvd release because of so called artifacting.

Some of the worst official dvd releases out there for movies have simply been laser masters dumped onto dvd with no care involved.

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.

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Originally posted by: skyjedi2005
Some of the worst official dvd releases out there for movies have simply been laser masters dumped onto dvd with no care involved.

And that's exactly what we'll be getting from the company that at one time was at the forefront of producing quality presentations.

Neil

Well at least the reversed surround channels have been addressed.

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It's hard to say. I know that my friend's lab actually washed the trilogy a few months ago for LFL. And I don't think the 04 versions exist on film. So either her lab washed the SE's or Theatrical Versions.

We returned to the Lucasfilm Archives to search exhaustively for source material that could be presented on DVD


according to Jim Ward, so it could be possible they dug up some preserved print. Otherwise the D2 masters would be only slightly better than the LD resolution. I have my hopes up, but I'm also prepared to have my heart broken. Spoken like an SF Giants fan.
There's good in the Original Trilogy, and it's worth fighting for.
"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people."
http://www.myspace.com/harlock415
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Harlock stole some of my thunder there, but I want to make the same point.

Jim Ward says, "We returned to the Lucasfilm Archives to search exhaustively for source material that could be presented on DVD. This is something that we're very excited to be able to give to fans in response to their continuing enthusiasm for Star Wars."

I highly doubt Lucasfilm would release a crappy laserdisk tranfer of the films. This quote seems to imply that they went back to find something original. If I had to guess, that would mean the original film, but transfered to a respectable DVD resolution, with the superior DVD technology (color and all that), as well as using decent compression (few artifacts). After all, the origianl film was not displayed in high definition in the movie theater, it was on analogue film, and that means it was blurry by today's "video quality" and I hope that is all Ward meant in the USATODAY quote.

As for VHS quality, that would be laughably bad quality. This world would have to be one shitty place for Lucas to treat his original-trilogy fans so poorly. He's a completely illogical dumbass, but I can't imagine he's pure evil like that.


Either way, even if the transfer is, in actuality, poor (laserdisk quality), Star Wars fans will have to get it if we ever want to hope for a "restored" version of the original films on DVD. It sucks, but if we boycott this bone, they'll be less likely to give us anything better. Suckers who shell out cash get more attention than stingy complainers.

"Now all Lucas has to do is make a cgi version of himself.  It will be better than the original and fit his original vision." - skyjedi2005

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The other thing to remember is that LD quality was the shit until HD TV came along. Also, the LDs were from Digital masters if I recall when they were first cleaned up back in the mid 90's. So the quity of the masters when transfered to DVD should be better than the LDs. But this is early speculation so far. I know for a fact about the film cleaning so it may be a new transfer from a clean telecine for all we know.
There's good in the Original Trilogy, and it's worth fighting for.
"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people."
http://www.myspace.com/harlock415
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Technically DVD isn't HD, but it is superior to Laserdisk. Even if we can't get the trilogy in a "digitally remastered" or "restored" form, I would like a DVD-dedicated transfer of at least the original film quality to DVD. Well, whatever that would entail of course. I'm not a video expert. I just know that VHS sucked and Laserdisk had problems as well.

I just noticed that Ward said "search exhaustively" for source material, and unless he's grossly exagerating, a direct Laserdisk-quality transfer does not require "exhaustive" searching. This is confusing and we'll have to cross our fingers.

"Now all Lucas has to do is make a cgi version of himself.  It will be better than the original and fit his original vision." - skyjedi2005

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Maybe they've exhaustively searched the LF-archives for the old Laserdiscs...

But honestly, lets just hope they do it right, and not as sloppy as the "Ewoks"-DVD.
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You're not going to get the original film quality to DVD, since film and digital video are different formats. They are, literally, qualitatively different. They're quantitatively different, too, in the amount of information they contain. You can consider a 35mm film frame to have 3 to 12 million pixels (link), while a DVD frame has exactly 345,600 pixels. Not all of those pixels will be visible or carry image data -- the 1.5:1 frame is squeezed or stretched to the correct display aspect ratio, and the letterboxing on the top and bottom doesn't convey any useful information. Even if you prefer to use that site's number for average lines visible in a theater, that's still almost 60% higher than DVD.

On the other hand, a DVD should be made from a clean print, and you can control the viewing conditions, so the quality of your viewing experience may be better than what it was in the theater. Hard to tell.
"It's the stoned movie you don't have to be stoned for." -- Tom Shales on Star Wars
Scruffy's gonna die the way he lived.
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I am agree with Scruffy. If the very first 70mm or 35mm film originals yet exist, it's transfer to DVD without any remastering will be fine. Though it's quality will be a few less than in 2004 DVD release due to noise (sound noise and image noise). I'll prefer this, without THX and other remasterings. I am afraid that at remastering they may do also other changes: voices and some image elements or even again do a few special edition changes.
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I think cooler heads should prevail here and reserve judgement until these are actually seen or at least until we have more information.

EDIT - It's occurred to me that everyone has seen the 1993 version that was released on laserdisc, but no one has seen what the same transfer, directly from that master, will look like on DVD.

In other words - even if it's the same transfer it's going to look a hell of a lot better than any laserdisc that has been used as a source for fan preservations.
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Originally posted by: TheCassidy
I think cooler heads should prevail here and reserve judgement until these are actually seen or at least until we have more information.

EDIT - It's occurred to me that everyone has seen the 1993 version that was released on laserdisc, but no one has seen what the same transfer, directly from that master, will look like on DVD.

In other words - even if it's the same transfer it's going to look a hell of a lot better than any laserdisc that has been used as a source for fan preservations.


True dat. Don't count your chickens before they're hatched, yo. If we all buy them and they suck, then we can complain. And although that individual pricing thing kinda blows, I'm too shocked that this is actually happening to care right now.

http://jgtwo.wordpress.com

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Hopefully these discs will be better than the fan preservations, being taken directly off the masters at least, and not a Laserdisc copy. Since it sounds like any hope for a release of the various sound mixes (mono, 35mm, 70mm) won't happen. Perhaps someone here could use these discs as a basis for a fan preservation release that would have these various sound mixes in them. On this note, as said before, the Dolby Surround 2.0 mix is great, but why not also include a 5.1 track based off the 6 channel maxtrixed mix? Is it that hard to do?
As said before, I'm now a bit worried about these releases, but its better than nothing, I guess. A boycott of these releases would not be productive, IMHO. It would only end in Lucasfilm coming back and saying that they were right, and nobody wants the O-OT, and everyone loves the changes, so giving the green light to more changes in a future blu-ray/HD-DVD release.
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"but why not also include a 5.1 track based off the 6 channel maxtrixed mix?"

Because that would require a financial INVESTMENT... this is a lucasfilm slap that essentially says that if you people are going to bootleg the laserdiscs... well... we can get some cash from you if we bootleg them ourselves... at least we won't have to spend any money.... so it's free money to us... and since we're whores to begin with... then why not? Besides, if we don't release these now, you won't buy our rainbow colored sh!t next christmas because Hidef will be the going standard... so if we don't release this crap (in their opinion or they'd do something to make it quality) now, we'll lose out on all of that extra money you people are spending... oh yeah... and since it's obviously the die hards who MUST have these releases, then I think we'll screw them too by making the price $30 a film (see www.scifi.com)... and we'll even give you the 2004 editions so that you can see how much better they are... can't you see that the 2004 editions are so much better because we updated them digitally? Look at R2-D2's center eye in ESB when luke is close to dagobah... that's sooo much better than the originals...

http://www.2livefools.com/ArScrew.jpg

Before “Intentional Creative Decisions”!!! it was “…A certain point of view”???

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CorellianSmuggler, where did you got this images? VHS, LD, DVD, 70mm or 35mm film? The differences may be due to the types of media. And I wonder what means 1980??? As far as I found in Internet and on eBay, the first VHS and LD releases of A New Hope has been printed in 1982. The Empire strikes back obviously at the same year or later.
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That reminds me. R2 had better be black in these releases.

I don't see what people are complaining about. I agree with Cassidy. I'm sure the '93 transfers are perfectly fine. In my opinion, the less work they do on these, the less chance there is of them messing it up and having it be not quite the originals.

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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Okay, heres something I've been pondering about the video of this 2006 OOT. At first i thought it might be a dvd transfer of the LD print but then i realised something.

It may be the 97 SE quality print.

Jim Ward said in the USA Today article that it wont be as good as teh 2004 dvd and that it will be from 1993. Well when did work on the original Special Edition commence? 1993. And the first thing they did was preserve and restore the original negative, which they discovered had deteriorated quite a bit. It was washed and clean up of dirt and I believe and new Interpositive and Internegative was made from it, which was then used as the basis for the CGI additions in the SE.

Like Ward said, the 93/97 print is not as good as the 2004 one--theres more dirt and scratches that were digitally erased by Lowry in 2004 because that technology wasnt available when they first made the SE. But the 97 SE still looks fantastic and although it is dirtier than the 2004 release it is still stunning (and the colours are right!).

So dont fret yet. The screenshot of the X-wings on the official site looks damn good to me.
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I'm confident that it will probably be about halfway between the '93 LDs and the 2004 DVDs, which actually excites me. I DON'T want them recolored and whatnot like the 2004 DVDs. I think a fairly decent DVD transfer of the source material they made the LDs from will be accpetable (to me) and is probably what we will get.
40,000 million notches away
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Maybe "1993" refers to when the sound mix was done and the film source for those laserdiscs (whatever that was) was created?
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say it isn't so. that's bullox man.
He big in nothing important in good elephant.

"Miss you, I will, Original Trilogy..."

"Your midichlorians are weak, Old man." -Darth Vader 2007 super deluxe extra special dipped in chocolate sauce edition.

http://prequelsstink.ytmnd.com/
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Take a close look at the X-wing screenshot.
Zoom in, and you see big blocky stars... like a clean-ish laserdisc transfer.

It could just be a webmaster who resized them poorly, but in conjunction with the other things they're saying, it's not looking too great.
Darth Lucas: I am altering the trilogy. Pray I don't alter it further.
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Originally posted by: zombie84
Okay, heres something I've been pondering about the video of this 2006 OOT. At first i thought it might be a dvd transfer of the LD print but then i realised something.

It may be the 97 SE quality print.

Jim Ward said in the USA Today article that it wont be as good as teh 2004 dvd and that it will be from 1993. Well when did work on the original Special Edition commence? 1993. And the first thing they did was preserve and restore the original negative, which they discovered had deteriorated quite a bit. It was washed and clean up of dirt and I believe and new Interpositive and Internegative was made from it, which was then used as the basis for the CGI additions in the SE.

Like Ward said, the 93/97 print is not as good as the 2004 one--theres more dirt and scratches that were digitally erased by Lowry in 2004 because that technology wasnt available when they first made the SE. But the 97 SE still looks fantastic and although it is dirtier than the 2004 release it is still stunning (and the colours are right!).

So dont fret yet. The screenshot of the X-wings on the official site looks damn good to me.


But weren't the colors in the '97 versions criticized for being too pink tinted?

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.