I've watched SW and ESB so far, and I don't see any additional grain. If there is any additional grain visible, I'm pretty sure it's because these DVDs are so much sharper than the LDs. I own both the DC and the Faces LDs, and they are much fuzzier than the DVDs. I think the softer picture of the LDs hides a multitude of sins- including film grain and some of the aliasing.

I think that so many people here are so used to watching the 2004 DVDs, that these new DVDs look grainy in comparison. You have to remember that the images were not digitally composited in 1977/1980/1983, so a lot of grain built up due to optical printing. This is not a fault of the master tapes- the grain was present on the original prints.

I never watch the '04 DVDs, so the OOT DVDs look fantastic to me. I would rather have the extra film grain than all of the crap that was added to the SEs.

Originally posted by: MeBeJedi
Ran across this. Anyone else ever hear of this?

As dilineated in the classic VIDEO WATCHDOG article, Lucasfilm, when
making these transfers, were apparently SO exasperated in the
pre-digital age by the appearance of ONE LOUSY HAIR at the VERY
beginning, in the top center of the screen, which can be seen for a
few frames superimposed onto part of the Star Destroyer... that they
RE-COMPED the entire film, lopping off a dozen or so scan lines and
cropping it down to about a 2.20:1 image.

Of course that same article mentions it could have been done
independently by the telecine operator...but still....every version of
JEDI since then, including the one used as the basis for the 1997
special editions, has also been re-comped... .

I've heard about the hair in the gate on Jedi, supposedly it was cropped off for the DC set, but fixed for the Faces disc. I really don't know if there's any truth to that- I see no evidence of the cropping on the DC disc.

If they were so worried about hair- why didn't they fix the huge one that hangs down on the Fox logo on all 3 movies?!