Originally posted by: Scruffy
When lots of bands release their old material to CD, they remaster them with all kinds of dynamic compression, even to the point of clipping, just so they can be louder and hotter. Not unlike oversaturating colors or too much edge enhancement on certain DVDs. Your analogy generally works -- CD is capable of a better approximation of the original sound than is vinyl, just as anamorphic DVD is a better approximation of a film than is VHS or LD -- but it fails when many (most?) modern CDs are taken into account.

I see what you mean, but, ignoring the fact that many artists choose to 'tweak' their music for it's CD release, the analogy still holds. The studio tapes are the original sound, or, if you want to get even closer to the 'original sound' the noise you would have heard if you were standing in the room during the recording is the original sound. Vinyl is merely a medium for getting that sound to the ears of listeners, and when CD came along and rose the bar for the quality of the sound that could be given to listeners, it made sense to 'redeliver' that sound using this new improved method. Today's DVDs are capable of delivering movies with clearer picture and sound than VHS or Laserdisc, and Lucas should deliver Star Wars in the best way he can. That doesn't mean he has to alter the movies, repaint lighsabers, remove garbage mattes, mess around with the colour balance or any of that stuff. He just has to take whatever masters he has, be it the original negs or a later print, and present it on DVD as best he can. And that is all we are asking.