A New Hope 2004 DVD's picture quality too dark?

Hmm, I've never heard about this artificial brightness stuff.  Perhaps the '04 version isn't as dark as I thought?  Then again, I do know for a fact that snow wasn't blue, and neither were the death star corridors.

I can certainly agree that IV is way too dark. VHS and Laserdisc transfers always come off as a bit brighter, but its usually dependent on your viewing setup. However, this should not be drastically affecting the orginal film elements unless there has been artificial brightening. The 2004 dvd was restored by Lowry Digital, and then color corrected and re-color timed. This led to the implementation of computerized color tones that did not even exist back in 1977 onto elements from 1977. Thus everything looks too colorful and is lush in color, all adding to the darkness effect. The naturally dark lit scenes such as the cantina now have harsh red tones that make the background almost unrecognizeable. Upon first watching the 04 dvd, I thought to myself: When did Wuher start decorating the cantina like The Godfather?

http://www.starwarslegacy.com/site/pages/Editorials.html

Read the section titled "crunch time".

It's true. These modern transfers suck all of the life out of film elements all in order to give maximum definition. Its really sickening in some ways, like remastering soundtracks with entirely different and new sound effects.

R2-918 said:

Does anyone else agree that the 2004 DVD version of Ep.4 A New Hope seems too dark (Picture Quality) in certain scenes like the Cantina, inside the Sandcrawler and on the Death Star? The other day I watched the Original 1977 version of A New Hope from the 2006 DVD set and the picture appears to be brighter then the 2004 DVD version. I have read on other web sites is that the reason for this is that in the past when movies were released on VHS and even LD they were artificially brightened to make them look better, is this true?

The 2004 DVDs are very dark.

Have you seen this screenshot page?

http://www.aptirrelevance.com/otscreenshots/

Check out the comparisons of shot #34 in particular (Han in the cockpit). Look at the loss of detail in the background of the 2004 DVDs.

captainsolo said:

It's true. These modern transfers suck all of the life out of film elements all in order to give maximum definition. Its really sickening in some ways, like remastering soundtracks with entirely different and new sound effects.

 You're telling me. I just watched the end of RotJ 2004 version and the sound effects are TERRIBLE! The final attack on the Death Star is filled with overly punched up sounds. It sounds like some kid was just fooling around on Adobe sound forge. Boom! Kabaam! And there's the terrible color timing. For me, there really is no contest with the version to watch.