Originally posted by: darkhelmet

Mielr, so are the DVDs really cool enough to consider buying? What would you say on a scale of 1 to 10?

Yes, they are worth buying.

I can't really rate them on a scale of 1-10, because I have to take into consideration that I have a 20" 4:3 TV. All I can say it that they look a LOT better than the DC/Faces laserdiscs. On my little TV, they look nearly indistinguishable from the 2004 DVDs (in terms of clarity, etc.)

There are pros and cons to both- the OOT films have more grain due to all of the original FX optical printing & compositing, while the SE prints were all digitally re-composited in 1997. But, the colors of the OOT discs are more natural and truer to the original films, so no 'blue' tint.

There's more dirt on the OOT prints (especially SW), but I don't consider film grain and dirt to be flaws of the transfers, because even if GL did what we wanted and made new anamorphic transfers using the best OOT prints existing, the film grain (and probably some dirt) would still be there.

The only way to eliminate most of the grain and dirt from the OOT is for them to digitally re-composite all of the FX shots from the OOT, OR combine the un-altered SE shots with the OOT shots that were cut out/altered for the SEs, but we all know that is NEVER going to happen.

I was always relatively happy with the laserdiscs, although there was some color smearing and the skintones looked reddish, but those problems seem to be gone on the DVDs, and the DVDs are significantly sharper, clearer and more detailed.

That's the best I can do- I wouldn't tell you they looked good if I didn't think they did. If you have a larger TV, you may want to rent them first to see if they look better to you, but I honestly don't see how anyone wouldn't see at least a slight improvement over the LDs (or any of the fan edits made from the laserdiscs) and I think they're worth buying based on that alone. Also, considering the fragile nature of laserdiscs and laserdisc players (and even DVD-Rs), the fact that you don't have to change discs, and the fact that the DVDs should also look better on a progressive-scan TV, since LDs are interlaced.