captainsolo said:I don't believe for one second that Lucas would have been stupid enough to splice the 97 footage directly into the 77 original negative.
I know it sounds stupid, but that's actually what happened. With any movie that was shot on film, the original camera negative is the highest quality source that there is. That's why Lucas cut the alterations directly into the negative instead of making a copy first and cutting the changes into the copy.
It feels like it's been forever since we've heard anything about what's happening with the films. Lucas was quoted sometime last year as saying that the process for converting the movies into 3D is kinda expensive, something on the order of 10 million dollars per movie I think. Apparently he was considering cutting his losses and not going through with it. But we've gotten multiple reports from people who've seen demonstrations of converted scenes from A New Hope, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if the release ends up happening after all.
Right now there are rumors from thedigitalbits.com that we could see some of the movies on blu-ray as early as next year. I somehow doubt that's going to happen. If what happened with dvd is any indication, Lucas will wait at least a couple more years until blu-ray is selling better than dvd. By that point the 3D conversion will probably be finished, so 2012 could see the 3D theatrical release and then the blu-ray (hopefully with remastered OOT) later on in the year.