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Post #305146

Author
Scruffy
Parent topic
Star Wars: The Best of 2007 (Looking Back at 30 Years)
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/305146/action/topic#305146
Date created
1-Jan-2008, 2:04 PM
You say "now" as if it wasn't a complete mess before. I suggest it became a complete mess ca. 1998/1999, and was never fixed. In the late 90s, the Matrix was DVD's killer app, we were fresh off the 20th anniversary and waiting for the prequels--or had not yet realized how bad they would all be. How does Lucasfilm take advantage of this radical and rapid shift in the home video market?

They don't--for about another five years. And then the expectations of consumers (or at least the connoisseurs) had changed yet again. By 2004, we expect to have multiple versions of interesting films on disc. We can get unedited/unrated/etc versions of classics like American Pie, Manhunter, and the Butterfly Effect, but no such love for Star Wars. Not for another two years.

And by then, 16x9 TVs had started to break out. So of course Lucasfilm released the OOT formatted for 4x3 TVs. And now that HD media is starting to reach the common man, we can expect--in a few years--another Star Wars release that fails to capture the excitement and expectations of the modern consumer. Maybe they'll release an HD DVD/BD version with the DVD soundtrack, or encode it at 720p, or use MPEG-2 and/or PCM and leave no room for extras. Maybe they'll just scratch the discs with a set of keys before they package them.

I've heard of planned obsolescence, but that means that a product soon becomes outdated after its release, forcing an upgrade. Not that the entire product line is retarded in comparison to the feature sets common throughout the market. That's so insane it has to be intentional.

So, yeah, I don't expect anything big from Star Wars in 2008. And I don't expect anything exciting on video ever again, really. They've been behind the times for about a decade now.