"Do you remember, when DVD first came out many people argued that Laserdisc was actually still better quality and people wouldn't upgrade because they were happier with the quality of their LD's?"

Do you remember that many of the first DVDs that came out were straight LD ports, most of which lacked al the extras that the original LDs came with? In this regard, the LDs were of similar video/audio quality and yet had tremendously better value. In fact, many - though certainly not all, early LDs were of superior quality than the comparable DVDs, both in terms of video and audio.

"But since we're talking about "capitalism," where's DanielB when you need him ?"

LOL!

"always remember it takes two to make an argument, not one."

No, it doesn't!

"Actually, I think boris is right. Resolution is not the end-all and be-all of a good transfer."

In and of itself, no. But, even a current non-anamorphic transfer, as opposed to a 12-year-old transfer, could certainly benefit from today's advanced scanning technology. On top of that, I don't hear anyone complaining about the lack of detail in the '04 DVDs (this being the one good thing I have to say about them.)

"When scanning a film for DVD release, they scan at about 1080 (like the OT was for the 2004 SSE) because that’s the point at which there’s no further noticeable benefit (or at least it's a good enough rough point for a rule-of-thumb, plus it's already HD-ready - however for HD it would be even better to scan at a higher resolution still of about 2000 lines and scale down to 1080)."

For the record:

Sound & Vision : So the Star Wars films were processed at high-def, but not at the 4K level — four times high-def resolution — that you've been using for some other films?

John Lowry : At high-def, yes. - Link

"and also was 'ready to go' into post production"

This was a major biggie, as far as Lucas was concerned...

"Also, when you say Lucas shot the prequels on HD, we are not talking conumer HD (i.e. 4:2:0 1920 x 1080 interlaced and heavily compressed.)
Even the aging Sony cinealta 950 camera captures colour in 4:4:4 RGB, and it is really old hat these days. The newer arri rigs shoot uncompressed 4:4:4 at over 3000x2200 (I can't remember the exact rez) in 12 bit colour (actually colour is better than that via the algorithms they use)."

It would seem all the films are scanned as such:

Sound & Vision :Did George Lucas actually let you borrow the original camera negatives of his Star Wars films to do your high-resolution scan for the restoration?

John Lowry : No. We sent one of our 6-terabyte servers up to Skywalker Ranch in San Rafael , California, where they loaded it with full RGB [red, green, and blue] data without having to go through the component output that tape masters would demand.Link