Originally posted by: zombie84
Owning a 35mm print is legal.

Scanning a private print is legal.

Just as owning a laserdisk is legal and digitizing a laserdisk is legal. There is nothing at all unique about this situation at all other than it is on a different format. VHS, laserdisk, DVD...35mm film.

In Canada? I know that "backing up" a commercial DVD is illegal in Canada, the US, the UK, Australia, here, and just about anywhere that respects copyright - I really don't think backing up film would be legal either. Also I agree with Lucasfilm's right to decline to allow anyone to show Star Wars publicly - I don't agree with the reasons - however it's illegal to show it publicly without their permission, so they can say no if they like. And that makes sense.

Now if you could borrow the best digital telecine available in 1000k radius of where you live, and obtain the best quality 35MM prints from collectors - and then spend thousands of dollars and years of your time "restoring the movie" - your resulting frames would probably only be about as good as a good-quality 16MM print. The september DVD's will have the resolution of a good-quality 16MM print, and they were professionally digitally mastered back in 1993 - so I really don't think you'd be able to achieve much better. The film stock is old anyway, so if Lucasfilm did a new transfer of the OOT (which I might add they may do like they did the 2004 SE and therefore take away the authentic look) it would undoubtedly look better - but I really don't think that fans would be able to achieve anything near that quality. Did you know that camera-shake (while FILMING onto the original negatives) was removed for the 2004 DVD's - they might even try to remove the camera-shake when doing a full OOT restoration (it may not sound like a big deal to you - but to me who believes restoration is about bringing the film back to it's original condition - not surpassing it, it is). He may do the highest level of grain removal on the OOT like he did with the 2004 SE - something I wouldn't like to see either.

So when I think about all the things that could go wrong with a new OOT transfer, and recognize that the best source without these problems will continue to be the laserdiscs - it makes me happy that Lucas is at least releasing it without touching it up at all first. So that's why I'll be happy with the September DVD's. Even if I do eventually get an HD set - and use an up-converter to view them, they'll still look great. 16MM resolution is good enough. Lucas is right, it would cost millions to fully restore the OOT back to it's original condition. And one day, I hope that they will. But I would much rather see this then see their restoration go wrong.