Gotta agree with Harmy
What was on the o-neg of star wars in 1977 is not what people saw on the release IP's in 1977!
What all of us saw in the cinemas in either 77',78',79',81,82' or 97' was nothing more than 500-800 lpph(not that much more than Standard definition)
This report performed tests:
http://www.etconsult.com/papers/Technical%20Issues%20in%20Cinema%20Resolution.pdf
and this was there verdict:
Film theoretically has very good resolution capabilities. What is delivered to the theatre is another story. If we believe the ITU tests, then images captured at almost 2400 lines per picture height on the camera negative deliver significantly degraded on screen resolution through the projection system – in the range of 500 – 800 lines per picture height. 500 lines corresponds to about 9 line pairs per degree from 2 screen heights.
Chinawash wrote:
But if you want to capture Star Wars the way it was seen in theaters in 1977, it's likely to be somewhere between 2K and 4K quality. Unless you saw it in 70mm, in which case it was probably above 4K quality.
I saw SW in 81' and 83' on the big screen and it looked fantastic.....compared to my 1982 rental tape!!
And that is the problem.Old school Cinema only had to compete with crappy 70's /80's TV's and video systems.But now the playing field has been redefined.
A 1080p/24 presentation would be better(but not necessarily superior) than a late 70's/early 80's deluxe(or technicolour )3rd/4th generation InterPositive release print.
This study confirms it:
To create an equivalence to the release prints tested by ITU, if the pixels on screen are “1 to 1” with resolution, current 1280 x 1024 projectors are adequate. Oversampled displays will substantially reduce pixelization, driving towards 2K x 1K display requirements to satisfy an equivalence to 500 to 800 lines per picture height.