Originally posted by: boris

Of course, someone who would describe the letterbox vs. anamorphic dilemma as a "little thing" wouldn't be bothered at all. Similar people couldn't care less about a potential significant improvement in video quality, so long as their widescreen display allows them to stretch their letterbox DVD horizontally to fill up the screen.

Zion, I'm not stupid. I've gotten so pissed off at seeing people here just dismiss the OUT as shit - before even seeing it - and then claiming that the crawl is recreated, that there should be PCM audio (name 1 official DVD with PCM audio?) whine, whine, whine. What would bother me is if we got an NTSC release, or an interlaced release.

But if you can't be happy with this Zion, if you can't be "mostly" happy with this release - then I doubt you'll ever be happy. I'm pretty sure that if they remastered it and released it in a pristine format I would be more disappointed due to the over-saturation, inconsistent colour, contrast and brightness that plagues the 2004 restoration.

It's good enough for me. And you know what? Personally - while I respect you Zion - I wonder how it could possibly be worth it to you spending soo much time restoring your X0 project, so that certain scenes may have a very slight edge over the OUT. I don't think it's worth that much time, blood sweat and tears. Also, I have more respect for Falle, Coov, Rikter and the other partakers in the SW covers thread - now that really is creative, and I think sometimes that it would never have existed if Lucas hadn't kept the OUT from us. And there's some great stuff in there - I've printed some of it too.

If you would rather spend 2000 hours restoring Star Wars from a laserdisc capture then to spend $20 to get the official DVD - well that's your choice. It wouldn't be worth it for me to do that, however... I have other hobbies which are more entertaining then removing defects frame by frame.

Anyway, I'm not trying to kill your passion for your project, I'm just saying my priorities are different, and if you can't see that then so be it - but I don't need to be flamed for my opinion.

I guess I struck the wrong chord there didn't I? OK, first of all, the second part of my comment was not intended to be directed at you. I was making a point that some people who don't see the anamorphic issue as a big deal also don't seem to care if they have to stretch the picture on their widescreen TV - or even notice for that matter. I did not intend to mean that you were one of those people. Personally, I can't watch anything in "fish eye" mode on a widescreen TV because it's way too distracting. Anytime my friends are watching a movie on TV, I'm the first one to point out if it's in the wrong aspect ratio, which is usually at first glance. Some people say they can't see any side effects of the DVNR like the ghosting shots I posted or the "4 eyed stormtrooper", but I notice that stuff all the time while I'm watching the films in regular motion. Did I "dismiss the OUT as shit" before I even saw it? In a way I did, yes. But if you go back and read what I posted, you'll note that I was the first person to point out that the DVNR would be present on these and, combined with the letterbox presentation, these were going to be subpar by today's standards. I was also one of the first to point out that these would be slightly more detailed than the even the PAL transfers, which was a good thing. So call me what you want - a vidophile, a quality nazi, whatever. I've been editing video for years as a hobbie - well before I ever got started on Star Wars. And to be honest, I'm in the X0 Project more for my own enjoyment than to please "fans". If people like what we do, that's great. If nobody else on the earth cared but us, it wouldn't change my attitude one bit.

The fact that they upscaled the NTSC video to create the PAL version means that they clearly had the time and resources to create a pseudo-anamorphic version. It especially bothers me that they didn't do it because I know how ridiculously easy the process is.